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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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Sanders for some reason did better among the rural counties in Massachusetts, which is where Bill was campaigning.
I think the demographics for the state are largely white, so this situation would be more about blocking time-crunched poor whites and minorities. (People trying to get to the polls after work, etc.)
@ Solipsist Owl
One thing I will say though is I'd still like to think it wasn't intended as voter suppression. I mean I still kind of think that in a state like Massachusetts, there's so much overlap between Clinton and Sanders voters that it would seem counteractive to try to suppress the latter (besides being morally terrible). And the fact that Bill was speaking near the polling place and going inside would seem to suggest an expectation of winning votes in that area.
But yeah, I see the issue in terms of time of day and how it impacts who can vote.
edited 2nd Mar '16 2:34:23 PM by Hodor2
X5 Very impressive.
X4 What indication is there that Bill was blocking votes? He certainly might have been conducting illegal canvassing/voter intimidation, but vote blocking is something different.
edited 2nd Mar '16 2:32:31 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIt's fine. I can understand the criticsm against him, he clearly is a supporter of racial justice (and minority rights, hell he's been pro LGBT since the 1970s.), but I can understand the criticism he's lack evidence to show for recent proof of good will.
The reason Sanders keeps harping about getting white votes is the Democrats, if they want to perform any sort of 50 State Strategy to sweep State Houses, Governors' Mansions, and take back the Senate and House of Representatives and put them under Democrat and left wing Independent/Green Controls, you need to find someway to coax the Dixiecrats and Moderate Republicans (who vote basically only for low taxes or because tradition rather than policy), and Sanders argument is you should square the circle on a common frustration of Poor Republicans, Democrats, Middle Class Repubs, Progressives, etc.:
The banks and the comical amounts of Deregulation and the hollowing out by Trade Deals for decades are a bad deal. Make the Republican voters who can stomach their own disinterest in Dem Social Justice by appealing to the desire of Econ Justice, and win them over slowly on Social Justice, I believe is the logic Sanders is running on.
Trying to find a good way to phrase this- besides I guess some skepticism about those economic ideas in themselves, what worries me is that while it would be great to have those extra voters, when you make the "tent" bigger, you may also need to change the party's ideology.
And so what worries me is that if the party is this coalition of people who agree on economic issues (but nothing else) the social issues drop off. Like for example, I believe the Democratic Party platform currently supports abortion rights and gay marriage. Would it in the future if Sanders successfully brought in all those people?
The other thing, is that while I don't think Sanders himself is at all like Trump (Sanders is a great guy, Trump is... Trump), it strikes me that Sanders implicitly (explicitly?) wants to win Trump voters- people who are liberal on economic issues but more conservative on social issues (which sometimes includes being flat out racist). it's kind of a Deal with the Devil to court those voters.
edited 2nd Mar '16 2:50:17 PM by Hodor2
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I think that would strongly alienate his current supporters who see themselves as radical and progressive. While it's true that most of them are white, being strongly progressive is part of how they self-identify. Those voters would just default to Clinton as "the lesser evil" if Sanders tried anything like that, so it wouldn't really be any kind of gain for him at all.
edited 2nd Mar '16 2:59:25 PM by Clarste
You know, Sanders and Trump have frequently been compared. I wonder if there is a white electorate which does not like banks, lobbyism and this kind of sorta-corruption that both of them tap into (with some people going for one over the other, depending on someone's social policy preferences) - the "missing white voters" for both parties.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanYeah, I think there is some connection, particularly in the anti-establishment aspects. Although, I'd doubt that Sanders would get votes of racist people nor that his voters have that authoritarian mindset linked to Trump voters. And while I have some suspicion that somehow Obama voters went to Hillary and Democrats who were iffy or hostile to Obama (for whatever reason), I can't really see Democrats who voted for Romney over Obama voting for Sanders.
Edit- Which is to say that my concern is less that Sanders is going to win and take the Democratic Party in a bad direction than it's that he's shooting himself in the foot. And I wish that he'd talk more about his views on same sex marriage and racial issues than about the need to win white voters (as if that's the most important demographic).
In fairness, Sanders does talk a fair amount about the prison industrial complex, although I still se that as tied to how he sees problems in terms of economic issues.
edited 2nd Mar '16 3:10:49 PM by Hodor2
I might be wrong on it being the Dixiecrats 100%, but he's definitely been keying that the Dems have failed to appeal to poor and middle class White voters, who do feel the Democrats have left them out on the cold by chasing Social Justice and quietly walking away from Econ Justice (Econ Justice was a fairly significant part of the New Deal/Great Society Dems, and the Neo Liberals have been VERY hesitant to touch anything that isn't DEREGULATION! TRADE DEALS! Just trust the market! with regards to a large amount of Econ policy).
But yes, Sanders is trying to hunt for the Democrats' Missing White Voters who he suspects would be willing to forge an alliance with the party if it walks from Neo Liberalism towards FD Rism.
Now the concern is if they're the bigots or not.
I cannot imagine Bill Clinton going gangs of new york
near polling booths :P
(Disclaimer: Reich's kind of pretty left wing for an American and pretty much very Sanders-y in rhetoric.)
I think the thing with Sander's is that he's more of a change your mind politican then a change his stance politician.
Yes he wants the votes of white racists, but he doesn't want to get them by becoming racist, he wants them by explaining to them how their problems aren't caused by minorities but by big business. .
edited 2nd Mar '16 3:45:20 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranKeep in mind the Clintons have a good history with the African American community in the south:
Bill hired a LOT of African American people and apparently tried to cross-race with regards to governance. He was also very comfortable with African American voters when running for the various levels of office. Also, remember, the Clintons' time as President and First Lady are remembered EXTREMELY fondly for an era of economic boom time, when Americans, but also African Americans, saw a MASSIVE boost in the money they took home due to the boom.
But Sanders, while an ally of Civil Rights, just hasn't also had as good a connection to people in the South, nor African American voters. The Clintons have a record.
Though I keep seeing the one thing that keeps hurting Sanders is he isn't willing to go beyond the Clintons, by declaring we need to give African Americans reparations.
Largely because the Democrats more or less left the working class behind when they ceded economics as a whole to the GOP and went off to fight for social issues.
Having won a major victory in one of the big battles (gay rights), they will hopefully pivot back towards economics and break the spell of the voodoo schools.
No. Not only are those just stereotypes, they make no sense at all. How can the South be responsible for the politics or law enforcement of other states? At best, those represent the primary political concerns of various regions but that's not true either.
Also, California is the biggest agricultural state.
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Seeing as most of the Democratic voters down South are black, I doubt this was much of an issue, and might have been a point of favor for him. No he lost because Hillary had a good ground game and Bill was seen as the "first Black President" until Obama came along. I never understood why that was. Near as I can tell it was relating the Clinton scandals to the alleged plots to bring powerful black men down.

Yeah blocking works based on the idea that if you block 10 voters against and 2 voters for you've gained votes by blocking access to the polling place. Plus it's possible to use shame/fear as a block, think about what anti-abortion groups do outside abortion clinics , now imagine supporters of one candidate doing that outside of a polling stations.
I don't believe that that's what Bill Clinton is being accessed of here though, the accusation is that he either campaigned too close or that his "go into the polling station and thank the workers" things qualifies as campaigning.
edited 2nd Mar '16 2:08:31 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran