Joy Reid has been reporting on MSNBC this morning from South Carolina.
This is one of just several segments on which Joy has appeared this morning on MSNBC. And Joy has been pretty pro-Hillary on Twitter and on TV, even if she hasn’t openly endorsed (to my knowledge).
What I have heard her say across these segments is that she came to SC with what she called the “conventional wisdom” about South Carolina: that Hillary has a lock on South Carolina. But what she has found, in accompanying Sanders canvassers, is that there are many people in their forties and fifties who are very drawn to Bernie’s message, and are taking it very seriously. These middle-aged voters actually seem to see Bernie’s call for revolution as continuing the Obama mission. As she says in the clip above, the election of the first African-American President is now the floor. and African-Americans want more change. Rising expectations, in other words, which Chris Hayes has been mentioning recently in connection with the successes of the Obama administration, and is one explanation (although not the only one) for the French Revolution: it was not actually poverty (which had been around since the medieval era), but the rise in the standard of living during the eighteenth century, that actually fueled the French Revolution. When people get a taste of a better life, they want more.
Joy Reid also recounts (in other segments which were not a part of a specific “show” but were shown during Tom Roberts’ or Chris Jansing’s hour) how she spoke to an elderly AA woman who was undecided, but said that the most important issue for her was mass incarceration, and that she was hearing a lot from her grandchildren. (Remember Sarah Silverman (who has endorsed Bernie, by the way) and the Big Schlep? Obama playbook, anyone?)
Reid also talked about how Sanders has been on the ground for longer than the Clinton people in South Carolina, and has more offices there. Also, remember that focus group after the South Carolina debate, which Sanders won overwhelmingly?
This is all anecdotal, but here’s more:
It is not yet clear whether Sanders can change those older black voters' minds. But one candidate, eight years ago, did just that. "What he [Sanders] could do ... and this is something that Barack Obama was very effective in doing, was mobilizing his young people to convince their parents — and to convince their grandparents — to support him."
Add all of this to the new poll out of Nevada, diaried earlier today, and the body blow Sanders got in last night against Hillary about using children from El Salvador to send a message, and I think Team Clinton (of which I am a part) is in for a rude awakening.
In light of Sanders’ capture of working class whites, in both Iowa and New Hampshire, formerly a loyal Clinton voting block, I see the writing on the wall. Her previous delegate counts are no longer valid, since she is losing working-class whites. Sanders will win the Democratic primary (he will probably still lose in South Carolina, but not by the margins that are generally imagined at this point).
I think his un-electability may be largely exaggerated. I think Kasich would give him a run for his money, but I think he would handily beat Trump and Cruz.
I still don’t feel the bern. I don’t like what I take to be his lack of regard for the true complexities of the massive policy overhauls he is proposing, his bizarre statement that he wants to spend his first hundred days arguing for single payer healthcare, and his apparent lack of interest in the full foreign policy spectrum, and I remember how after Jimmy Carter’s administration, Democrats lost the White House for twelve years, and “liberal” became a label that people fled from for much longer than that (and Carter wasn’t even all that liberal). But that is not what I am interested in discussing in this diary.
If Sanders does win the primary, and then the general, I have this to say: govern well, Senator Sanders. Govern well.
PS And to those on my side who want to call me a bedwetter: have at it. I don’t care. I will listen to arguments about why I might be wrong, but calling me names or telling me to “calm down” will be totally ignored.
UPDATE: It has been pointed out in the comments that the poll released today was from a Republican outfit. Be that as it may, I think anyone who thinks Clinton has a lock on Nevada is kidding themselves. Bernie’s winning working-class whites in both states so far is significant, as the state is 60% white. Plus, Nevada is a caucus state, which favors Bernie. And I do think the “using children to send a message” will resonate there, Bernie’s immigration baggage notwithstanding. We’ll see.