The Hillary Clinton campaign is playing the race card on Bernie Sanders. And shame on Team Hillary for doing so.
The campaign sent a press release to Virginia media outlets on Wednesday with a statement from Del. Lionell Spruill, D-Chesapeake, “in response to disturbing reports from Vermont.”
The disturbing reports? The campaign provided a link to a story in The Daily Beast with quotes from black leaders in Vermont who claimed they were “invisible” to Sanders.
Sanders’ sin: responding to issues of racism through the prism of income inequality.
“He just always kept coming back to income inequality as a response, as if talking about income inequality would somehow make issues of racism go away,” said Curtiss Reed, Jr., the executive director of the Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity.
Reed characterized Sanders’ dealings with African-American groups in Vermont as “benign neglect.”
“We are a major statewide organization. It would stand to reason that you would check in with your major constituents, but voters of color are simply not on his radar,” Reed said.
The story also referenced Sanders’ clumsy handling of the interruption of a rally in Phoenix this past summer as being indicative of his cluelessness on issues of race.
Disturbing reports, sure.
(Eye roll.)
Cue the comment from Spruill:
“This troubling report about Senator Sanders being absent from African American communities in his home state adds to the concerns I have about his policies. From gun violence to health care, Senator Sanders’ views do not align with the best interests of African Americans in Virginia. We need a leader like Hillary Clinton who has put forward detailed plans to break down barriers for struggling communities, create jobs, and make our neighborhoods safer; along with the proven track record of fighting for African American families.”
This is blatantly ugly, race-baiting politics from the Clinton camp, but it’s obvious why you do it in Virginia, where roughly 20 percent of the general-election electorate is African-American, so you can surmise that the black vote is closer to 40 percent of the turnout in a Democratic Party primary.
A recent Christopher Newport University poll has Clinton ahead of Sanders by 12 points among Virginia Democrats, a safe margin, maybe, but Clinton can’t risk maybes when it comes to her firewall.
And so her campaign hits the dog whistle and essentially calls Sanders a racist.
She doesn’t have to win that way, which is the shame of it all.
– Column by Chris Graham
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