There has been a flurry of news stories recently reporting Bernie Sander’s campaign efforts to reach out and attract Donald Trump supporters. You know—supporters of the guy who spews racism, sexism and xenophobia at the drop of a mic. His very own bigot brigade.
Actually, they are not Trump’s really. They are just (mostly) white American’s who proudly support any and all iterations of vilification and “othering”. Trump is just playing to their deeply held beliefs — aka hate. He’s the loudest of the bunch, and the current front-runner but the rest of the Klown Kar Kandidates on the R-side are no better.
Take a look at this data from Nate Cohn in “Donald Trump’s Strongest Supporters: A Certain Kind of Democrat“
Donald Trump holds a dominant position in national polls in the Republican race in no small part because he is extremely strong among people on the periphery of the G.O.P. coalition. He is strongest among Republicans who are less affluent, less educated and less likely to turn out to vote. His very best voters are self-identified Republicans who nonetheless are registered as Democrats. It’s a coalition that’s concentrated in the South, Appalachia and the industrial North, according to data provided to The Upshot by Civis Analytics, a Democratic data firm.
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His geographic pattern of support is not just about demographics — educational attainment, for example. It is not necessarily the typical pattern for a populist, either. In fact, it’s almost the exact opposite of Ross Perot’s support in 1992, which was strongest in the West and New England, and weakest in the South and industrial North. But it is still a familiar pattern. It is similar to a map of the tendency toward racism by region, according to measures like the prevalence of Google searches for racial slurs and racist jokes, or scores on implicit association tests.
In other words—his strongest followers are racists. They bathe in the glow of his open and unabashed bigotry. He validates their deeply held beliefs. His refrain is a thinly veiled “Make America White Again.”
At a time in our history when our young people have again taken to the streets, demanding this country recognize our lives matter, why in hell would we want to embrace the very instruments of our oppression?
I’m not a Sander’s supporter specifically because I don’t believe that his laser focus on income inequality will resolve the ills of this country which are built into its foundation. I have no issue with addressing it—and we should—however I know it won’t fix racism, or the other “isms”. I know that a large chunk of the population who are not a part of that 1% we hear about so often on the left, have been the perpetrators of crimes against me and mine.
Here’s Bernie:
Sanders told CBS’s Face the Nation that many of Trump’s supporters have legitimate fears stemming from income inequality that Sanders is best positioned to address. “What Trump has done with some success is taken that anger, taken those fears, which are legitimate, and converted them into anger against Mexicans, anger against Muslims,” Sanders said.
“In my view, that is the not way we are going to address the problems facing this country,” he said.
Instead, Sanders supports a platform of bringing citizens together to push Congress to pass laws that address income inequality. He said that many of Trump supporters are “working class people and they are angry” because they are losing their jobs to overseas firms, cannot afford to send their children to college and are working longer hours for lower wages.
Yes. “They” are angry. Working class (read white) people. Angry and filled to the brim with hate. The kind of hate spewed by Dylan Roof as he murdered black people at prayer. The kind of hate that motivates cops to empty their guns into the bodies of black boys and keep shooting and shooting and shooting the already dead. “They” may not get great wages but are willing to live on bile. “They” are willing to get rid of those hated Latinos who are “taking jobs” that they would never do.
NBC reports
Sanders has made a direct appeal to Trump voters while on the stump in Iowa. And in New Hampshire, aides said they found a larger-than-expected number of voters who say they're deciding between the socialist and the billionaire. "We hear it a lot," said one Sanders aide.
While any other Democrat would likely write off a voter who expresses a preference for Trump, Sanders canvassers are told to pitch their candidate to those voters. The campaign even prepared a script specifically for the situation.
"A lot of people feel like this country isn't working for them — because it's not," Sanders canvassers are instructed to say, according to the script shared by the campaign. "[T]he solution is not to turn to someone like Trump, with a message of hate, xenophobia, and division — it's to elect a leader with integrity like Bernie, who's proven time and again that he won't be held hostage by moneyed special interests. That's the right way to address the challenges we face."
Sure. Come vote for Bernie. “They” will magically shed their snakeskin and emerge as transformed oligarchy fighters. Singing kumbaya and hugging black folks. Born again.
I’m not buying it.
Working class white folks have been voting against their self-interests since the poor white paterollers joined forces with plantation owners. What should be clear is that Trump hasn’t made them racists. That racism has always been there. He’s just their Pied Piper of the moment, from a long line of dog whistlers who know their favorite tunes.
Asked about Trump’s most recent attack on the Clinton campaign, suggesting that Bill “he has demonstrated a penchant for sexism” and shouldn’t campaign for Hillary, Sanders said: “The real issues are not Donald Trump’s vulgarity—and he is vulgar—it is the fact that Donald Trump does not think we should be raising the minimum wage, he believe wages in America are too high,” Sanders said. “Meanwhile what he wants to do is divide our country between Latinos and Americans and Muslims and everybody else. That’s not the kind of America we need.”
Those Muslims and Latinos are Americans. Black folks that Republicans love to hate are Americans — including our President. The racist divisions that exist in this country were not created by us. They are not maintained by us. They are fueled by the same flames of hatred that drew people to lynchings and have their faces immortalized on postcards. Yeah. Those poor, deprived working class whites who just need to rise up and throw off the bonds of the 1%. They are much more likely to pick up a gun like Dylan Roof and shoot some black church people, or go on a killing rampage at a Sikh temple like white terrorist supremacist Wade Michael Page.
“They” are this dude in the video blow — multiplied. This is the face of a 23 year old who sounds just like a host of other Republicans — not in the south — but in Pennsylvania.
The white grandparents who brought out their rocking chairs to block fracking are the kind of activists we should be working with, and not the racist bigot who showed up to confront them, and the black cameraman.
(warning — hate speech)
You want this guy, and all his clones to vote in the Democratic primary?
I remember the launch of the southern strategy. It worked. A majority of the most vile racists decamped. I’m a Democrat because I don’t have to share space with Klansmen. They can go to hell in a handbasket.
I’m not saying we don’t have internal work to do on racism in our Party. We have to do better with GOTV and outreach to Latinos, and other groups who can build the party of the present and the future. We need to work on getting Democrats to the polls, and doing voter registration. We need to be fighting harder against voter repression. We need to be organizing precinct by precinct and running people for local office. What we don’t need is to waste time and effort “reaching out” to racists. They are not going to miraculously wake up and embrace a party full of the very n**gers they love to hate.
Some of us watched you go to Liberty U and shook our heads. Some of us sure ain’t gonna stand up and applaud your latest campaign strategy and don’t need no Trump supporters.
For the Bernie supporters who think this is a good idea — well, be prepared to lose some of the black folks who’ve been supporting you.