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John Lewis: 'I Never Saw' Sanders at Civil Rights Events

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Targetpractice2/11/2016 2:02:49 pm PST

re: #80 goddamnedfrank

I’ll just leave this here for any Bernie supporters who think the Bernie Bro meme isn’t based on actual experience:

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Now, honestly I think this behavior of harassing black people who don’t support their is based more on desperation than actual animus, and would almost certainly be occurring on the other side if the shoes were reversed. But the fact is that a lot of Sanders’ supporters feel entitled to the support of black Americans and they are extremely upset that they aren’t getting it. Responses to this range the entire spectrum of frankly racist coping mechanisms, from patronizing rationalizations that blacks just aren’t educated enough about Bernie’s record to outright, abject harassment.

I actually like they guy, but considering that his campaign puts forward official surrogates like Cornel West and Killer Mike, who have both called President Obama a house n-word, I don’t think they should be surprised at their lack of headway in pursuit of the african american primary vote. In fact, using people like that as his “ambassadors” smacks more of assuaging white guilt sensitivities about a lack of visible black spokesman support than it does of a genuine attempt at black outreach. In fact it’s more of the same patronizing and insulting strategy, assuming that black voters don’t know exactly who these guys are and what they’ve said.

It still sticks out to me that Bernie blew off a vote on North Korean sanctions, something he was speaking up about last week as a way to puff up his real lack of foreign policy experience, to go kiss the ring of Al Sharpton and stop off to appear on The View. I’m not sure how that can really be read as anything other than patronizing.