MERGE AHEAD

 

On why Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont will have trouble capturing the Democratic nomination

1.

Rewind to Election Night 2012 on MSNBC. It is 10PM (Central, I was living in Denton, TX at the time) and polls have closed in California, Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Rachel Maddow is running through projections: Obama has won California, Hawaii, and Washington; Romney has taken Idaho. Oregon and Iowa are too early to call but Obama is leading in those states. Polls have closed in these states but are classified as “Too close to call”: Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

Electoral vote is Obama 243-188.

Pay attention to the exchange between former McCain-Palin campaign manager Steve Schmidt and Reverend Al Sharpton.

Schmidt is noting that 60% white support once yielded Republicans over 400 electoral votes in the Reagan-Bush era. The last Republican to carry California was George H.W. Bush in the 1988 election. Today, California Democrats dominate state politics in the same manner Republicans do in Texas. The demise of Republicans in California is due to Proposition 187 aptly named because it pretty much killed off any electoral victory path for Republicans in the state that was the launching pad for Richard Nixon’s and Ronald Reagan’s political careers. Latinos viewed 187 as a threat so they turned the Republicans in the state as a permanent minority party.

Sharpton points out that if you want a group’s support, you have to offer them something. You can’t spout off anti-immigrant rhetoric – as it was with Republicans throughout the 2010s – and then expect groups – as it was with Latinos – to support you. Frontline/Independent Lens collaboration “Immigration Battle” highlights the vice Republicans were in after Obama’s 2012 re-election victory.

Instead, Republicans decided to double down on the rhetoric as well as some help with targeted voter suppression that helped elevate the candidacy and then the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

So, what does this have to do with Sanders and Warren?

I’m paying attention to their support in South Carolina, which is when the Democratic base – mainly Black voters – have their first say in the nomination process. It is not good.

That lack of Black support is why Sanders failed to capture the nomination four years ago. Instead of making an effort to win them over, Sanders and his supporters continue their strategy of dismissing them and making a risky move to replace the reliable Black Democratic base with a shaky white voting bloc that hasn’t supported a Democratic candidate in decades.

Sanders hinting that the nomination process was rigged is the same coded language that Republicans used during Obama’s electoral victories in an effort to delegitimize him and put in place efforts to restrict ballot access in the 2010s. In other words, only “certain” people should be voting, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more.

Warren did herself no favors in echoing those statements that she later had to walk back. Which brings me to my next point

2.

Sanders and Warren draw on the same pool of supporters and their campaigns need to figure out to expand their supporters. Both campaigns have operated under the assumption of a non-aggression pact that was dissolved during the recent Democratic debate when Warren noted that her and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar had more electoral success in the last 30 years than the men running for office. Sanders noted that he was elected to congress in 1990 in a bit of semantics. After the debate, CNN caught Warren on a hot mic confronting Sanders.

Both candidates occupy the Democratic left lane of the party, and unfortunately there can only be one candidate in that lane. One of them needed to be edged out and it could end up with neither of them being in contention for the nomination as the nomination process goes further on.