Why Sanders lost, and why I think it matters.

[BainsBane]

73. Perhaps you should think about how easily you dismiss the votes of

the non-white male majority, as though we are somehow less than you? I submit that it is precisely that attitude that ensured he would not win our votes.

What you call a "narrative" was the demographic reality of the vote. Sanders supporters reaction to netroots began a chain of events and revealed an attitude that was present throughout the primary. The notion that Sanders might have to speak to the array of actual voters was seen as unacceptable. We were told we were weak women or "race-baiting" when we asked to know what he would do about abortion rights and racial inequality. As far back as last summer, his supporters insisted we had no right to question him. We learned later in the primary that intolerance for questioning or disagreement came from the top. Organizations whose members but their lives on the line to defend abortion rights were insulted as "establishment" for failing to endorse him. Southern black voters were dismissed as "confederates" and not "smart" enough to vote for him. None of that amounts to a winning campaign strategy.

You seem to imagine that if Sanders only had another 9 months to run, we feeble minded folk would have finally understood how much better he was, as though there was something complicated about his message. With more time, we might have finally caught on to how the good old days he told us we should bring back were really better for us. Only the demographics of the electorate didn't change throughout the primary season, except for an uptick of white and male support for Clinton near the end.

Falling back into the narrative that the Sanders phenomenon is some sort of expression of a racial divide means running head first into a trap. It is a convenient narrative, since it places the blame on some outside influence that lies beyond the control of the party

You really don't get it at all. There isn't a racial "divide" within the party. The Democratic party IS based on racial diversity; that diversity is central to its identity and mission. Sanders inability to win is not the Democratic Party's problem. It's him. His message was aimed at the white middle class, partly by design http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2014/11/19/365024592/sen-bernie-sanders-on-how-democrats-lost-white-voters
and partly because it was simply how he viewed the world. For Sanders and his supporters, America's best days were fifty-odd years ago, but for many, many Americans--most in fact--those were not better days. Sanders talked about poverty being at an all time high, but the fact is that's not true. Poverty is now lower than it was in the 1970s. The one demographic that has seen an economic decline since that period is white men. Yet Sanders entire vision of America was based on the experiences of that group, not all Americans, which is why his message didn't resonate. It's not that he intentionally sought to exclude, but rather his worldview is so bound by his own subject position that he never looked outside that, even when fact checkers pointed out his rhetoric about poverty rates was in error. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jan/23/bernie-s/bernie-sanders-says-poverty-us-all-time-high/

Clinton and the rest of the Democratic party don't neglect issues of economic insecurity and poverty. Clinton's has highlighted those issues throughout the campaign and her issues page of her website is filled with policy positions on how to address it. https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/plan-raise-american-incomes/ https://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/ She, not Sanders, in fact won a majority of the poorest voters (incomes under $30k a year). Just because Bernie believed he should get the votes of the poor didn't make it so.

I can tell you as someone who grew up as a poor white person in America, I found his rhetoric alienating. I don't long to return to the days when my family was terribly poor. Having worked from age 10 and earned W-2 income from age 13 in order to do pay for laundry, school clothes and the occasional movie, I found perplexing his pronouncement that the children of the upper-middle class shouldn't have to work 10 hours a week to contribute to their own higher education. I also could see that his promises of "free" higher ed without any attention to the tremendous inequality in K-12 would only not address inequality and might have possibly worsened it. Sanders focus was very much on the middle class, which is not uncommon for politicians, but when he decided talking about poverty was the way to address African American voters, it started to get strange. I was particularly puzzled when he doubled down on his claims in a debate that white people didn't know what it was like to be poor, and then when a support of his defended that comment to me by saying whites didn't suffer "institutionalized poverty."

You go on,

.It saves one from having to take a look in the mirror.

That is precisely what this OP of yours is engaged in. You've decided to erase the votes of the majority, pretend people just defaulted into voting for Clinton without thinking. You simply can't conceive that the majority of voters believed she would make a better president due to experience, competence, and depth of policy positions. You decide Clinton and the Democratic Party don't pay attention to economic inequality because....why I'm not sure. Perhaps because they don't capture the rage of a certain segment of the electorate that Sanders tapped into. The voting results show, however, that his message was not universal. It is also my opinion that voters who took time to actually look into his record found a certain inconsistency between rhetoric and action.

This post is a demonstration of why Sanders and his supporters didn't succeed in expanding support to the majority. You continue to dismiss the votes and concerns of the non-white male majority as a "narrative." You are invested in refusing to understand that not all Americans experiences and concerns are identical to yours. You don't respect us enough to even try to understand why we voted as we did. So you talk down to us, dismiss our votes as automatic, unthinking, and in the process show precisely why your candidate lost.