Bernie and Ben Jealous Bomb in SC Black Church

It's just very interesting. Bernie is so good at pumping up young white millennials but it's very tough for him in some black venues he's attended. A few weeks ago he lost a crowd at a black college. Now he never really had them at a SC black church.

In a Black Church in South Carolina, Bernie Sanders Struggles to Get an ‘Amen’

"The problem began as soon as Bernie Sanders walked into the dining room of the revered and predominantly black Brookland Baptist Church here. Instead of flocking to him, as supporters do at his large college rallies, many of the church’s 780 members present looked up for a moment, then quietly went back to eating their Sunday feast — unmoved as Mr. Sanders, the senator from Vermont, tried to work the room."

"Mr. Sanders delivered remarks at a microphone next to a buffet table offering chicken, collard greens and dinner rolls."

“We have, in America today, a broken criminal justice system,” Mr. Sanders said at the microphone, pausing briefly after this line from his stump speech, which is usually met with applause. Here it garnered very little, and the line for the food kept moving. Brookland Baptist Church proved a tough crowd."
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/us/politics/in-a-black-church-in-south-carolina-bernie-sanders-struggles-to-get-an-amen.html?smid=tw-share

It's been talked about how Cornell West has been a drag for Bernie more than a help.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2016/01/22/how-cornel-west-hurts-bernie-sanders/

Killer Mike has led to more trouble than he's worth in talking about how you shouldn't vote for a uterus. Bernie doesn't have any time for questions about KM but then again, the same thing happened to Gloria Steinem on HRC's side. It's part of a campaign.

Bernie's latest black friend-Ben Jealous-didn't help him in the SC black church either:

"Mr. Jealous, who introduced Mr. Sanders to the church, also failed to get the applause the team is accustomed to from crowds of mostly white voters."

“There are people who will say to you there is a dreamer who is running for president,” Mr. Jealous said, “and his dreams are so big, y’all shouldn’t dream that big. But in our community, when they tell us not to dream, we say, ‘Yes, we can.’ And so I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to dream big?”

“Amen,” said one woman, Karen Brooker, 46, who later said she was undecided.

"Mr. Jealous tried again."

“No, no, no. Are you ready to dream big?” Mr. Jealous said.

“Yes. Fired up,” a few more in the crowd offered. Most continued to eat silently.

I've argued before that there is a game show like quality to Bernie's campaign that I for one don't trust so much. Ezra Klein writes a good column today that gets to some tells as to why Bernie is not Presidential material.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/2/22/11086292/bernie-sanders-political-revolution-wonks

Charles Blow argues that black voters in particular don't 'trust politicians. Sure you make promises but will you keep them? Hillary rightly calls Bernie for making promises he can't keep. Not what she says: not 'Don't want to keep' but 'Are not able to keep.'

But when you promise what you can't deliver is this helpful? Certainly a doctor, a pilot, a mechanic who made promises he couldn't keep would not be honored as a truth teller. In few trades or specialties would this be seen as admirable. You'd be seen as a fraud for overpromising and underdelivering in most professions.

Is politics a vocation like Max Weber said or isn't it?

Goldie Taylor meanwhile has upset many Bernie Maniacs today:

"This Is the Date Bernie Sanders Berns Out."

"With South Carolina and Super Tuesday looming ahead, Bernie Sanders’ campaign is fast approaching an expiration date."

"Not only will the revolution not be televised—at least in the case of Senator Bernie Sanders—it appears to have an expiration date."

"Despite collecting millions in small-dollar donations and packing thousands of people into arenas around the country, despite topping Hillary Clinton for the first time in a national poll of likely Democratic voters, the path to victory has narrowed sharply for Sanders. Some would argue that a window of opportunity slammed shut Sunday night in Nevada and that the upcoming race in South Carolina is the proverbial kitty-bar."

"Sanders may well have the volunteers and the money to keep going, but after March 15 he’ll have to grapple with a new set of questions. Does he still have the ability to push Clinton further left? And he can he bring enough new voters into the process to exert any real influence?"

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/22/this-is-the-date-bernie-sanders-berns-out.html?via=ios

He may have the money though he's really Berning though is raised donations and then some. 

http://lastmenandovermen.blogspot.com/2016/02/feel-bern-rate-sanders-blows-through.html

So per Goldie Taylor March 15 is the day the Bern burns out.

"Sanders, the self-professed anti-establishment candidate, has run on a platform that attacks income inequality, as well as promises to expand access to healthcare and college education. His message has attracted support from mostly white progressives who are convinced that Sanders is the best candidate to carry the Democratic banner in the fall campaign. For them, Clinton represents all that is wrong in Washington."

"The problem for Sanders is that he has nowhere to grow. Black voters, who will dominate many of the coming primaries, have not responded to his message. Even black millennials, thought to be good prospects, are breaking in favor of Clinton. They are, it appears by the ballots cast in Nevada and polling in upcoming states, voting with their parents and grandparents. It must be said that Clinton won the Nevada black vote by a 3-to-1 margin and that crossed age and income. And despite what entrance polling data said in Nevada, according to analysis published by NBC News, she may have won Hispanics as well."

"After Sanders won New Hampshire and nearly bested the former Secretary of State in Iowa, many began to challenge the notion of Clinton’s inevitability. There were cracks, they said, in the “firewall.” Expectations were managed downward ahead of Nevada, even by the Clinton campaign—which started organizing in the state last April. The Sanders camp appeared to be stunned by their good fortunes. By comparison, they did not put boots on the ground until late winter when it became clear that he could be competitive there."

"But then Hispanic civil-rights leaders and members of Congress, including California Representative Xavier Becerra and Dolores Huerta, rang in and openly challenged Sanders on past immigration policy votes. Then, too, endorsements began to roll through the piedmonts of the Palmetto State. Black pastors and elected officials began digging a trench around South Carolina."

"Taken together, if the trend holds, there is no path to victory left for Sanders. At this late stage in the campaign, unlike Republicans, there is limited growth potential for either candidate in such a small field."

"More critically, one rationale for the Sanders candidacy dries up under scrutiny. Turnout numbers and the anticipated brief nature of the primary mean he has not and will not drive increased voter participation. The wave never arrived and there is no sign of it on the horizon."

"One of the more vexing things about this election year is the open hostility to basic election math and the exhausting comparisons between Sanders and the road that then-Senator Barack Obama faced in 2008. There are a paucity of similarities between Sanders and President Obama as candidates and even fewer parallels in terms of campaign and election-year dynamics."

"One day soon, Sanders will take to a lectern and announce that he is suspending his campaign. What follows could be a push for Clinton to embrace single-payer healthcare or take on student loan debt in a more substantial way. Sanders could harness his coalition ahead of the Democratic convention and attempt to force Clinton’s hand on any number of issues. Or Sanders could decide to actively campaign for U.S. Senate and House candidates and help deliver a new Congress that will take up those reforms."

"Ultimately, what Sanders does after he exits will reveal if the movement was about him or us. "

I think the hostility to math is that Bernie's coalition is all about millennials who don't want to hear about anything as unsexy as math and pragmatism and the 'art of the possible.' They don't want to hear that change will necessarily be incremental in 2017 no matter who's in the White House.

They want to believe there is no distinction between campaigning and governing. For this distinction see Ezra Klein who puts it so well.

"And, hell, let's just be honest: All this policy talk is just a way to pass the time between now and the election. It doesn't matter how strong Bernie Sanders's single-payer health care plan is — it's not going to pass, just like Donald Trump isn't going to get Mexico to pay for a wall and Hillary Clinton isn't going to get universal pre-K past a Republican Congress and Ted Cruz isn't going to set up a value-added tax."

"It's obvious that debating the details of campaign proposals is, on some level, fantasy football for wonks. Events will intercede, bureaucracies will weigh in, Congress will balk, promises will be broken. Remember when Barack Obama ran for president opposing an individual mandate and then
flip-flopped and supported one? So what's the point of paying attention to any of this at all?"

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/2/22/11086292/bernie-sanders-political-revolution-wonks

His reasoning shows why Bernie is the wrong man for the tough job Democrats need done in 2017:

"As someone who pays quite a lot of attention to campaign policy processes, here's my answer: Watching a candidate run his campaign's policy processes is one of our best ways of predicting how he would run his White House."

"The key word there, by the way, is run. Some of the most important decisions the president makes are about how to run the processes that translate vision into policy. Those decisions include whom to hire, which advisers to listen to, which ideas make sense, which strategies are likely to work. The presidency is one damn decision like that after another. Obama, famously, is so exhausted by the decision fatigue of the job that he wears the same color suit every day so he has one less thing to decide in the morning."

"This is one way in which campaigns give us insight into presidencies. Presidential candidates also have to decide whom to hire, which advisers to listen to, which ideas are truly good ones, which strategies are likely to work. To make those decisions well, they need a sound philosophy, yes, but they also need to want to hear good advice, they need to want advisers who will tell them when they're wrong, they need to have good instincts for when something they want to believe is true simply isn't, and they need to be realistic about the strategies that are likely to work and the ones that aren't."

"My worry about Sanders, watching him in this campaign, is that he isn't very interested in learning the weak points in his ideas, that he hasn't surrounded himself with people who police the limits between what they wish were true and what the best evidence says is true, that he doesn't seek out counterarguments to his instincts, that he's attracted to strategies that align with his hopes for American politics rather than what we know about American politics. And these tendencies, if they persist, can turn good values into bad policies and an inspiring candidate into a bad president."

"The reason I care about the puppies-and-rainbows promises of his single-payer proposal is that I think Sanders believes them — I don't think he's a cynical politician simply eliding the weaknesses of his plan. The reason I care about his campaign's circulation of fairly outlandish economic projections is that it makes me worry there's no one around Sanders with the sense to say that those results don't pass the smell test. The reason I'm frustrated by Sanders's promise that a political revolution will overcome all opposition to his plans is I think he believes it, and so I'm not sure he has a real plan B for when the political revolution doesn't happen. The reason Sanders's persistently superficial answers on foreign policy matter to me is that they're a test of his ability to learn on the fly about topics he's not terribly interested in."

"In a democratic polity, wonks are the help. But that only underscores the importance of electing someone good at hiring and managing them. A President Sanders could hire excellent technocrats to help him make policy, but would he want to? A President Sanders could surround himself with experts who know the shortcomings of his ideas, but would he listen to them? A President Sanders could become deeply engaged on foreign policy, but would he decide to?"

I agree with that analysis. He is not interested in learning about the weak point of his ideas. Remember, that he wields the word 'evolve' almost as an accusation.