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Liberal pundits blame Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not Bernie Sanders, for Democrats’ division
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski went farther than (Van) Jones on Wednesday, calling for Wasserman Schultz to resign.
"This has been very poorly handled from the start," Brzezinski said. "It has been unfair, and they haven’t taken him seriously, and it starts, quite frankly, with the person that we just heard speaking [Wasserman Schultz]. It just does. ... She should step down. She should step down."
Sanders might be stubborn, but Wasserman Schultz drove him to it by favoring Clinton from the start. (Let's point out that Bernie is not a Democrat. He refuses to raise money for the party or support any other Democrat)
Top complaints include briefly suspending the Sanders campaign's access to a voter database
The database suspension was a penalty imposed after Sanders acknowledged that a staffer improperly exploited a software glitch that allowed him to view confidential voter information held by the Clinton campaign.
(From the beginning Mika has been pro Bernie. She even said his message isn't that important. That it's about the movement and how he gets people excited. The message isn't that important? No wonder Trump is doing so well. All his suggestions.)
Bernie Sanders’s base isn’t the working class. It’s young people.
Because young voters also tend to have lower incomes, the massive age gap between Sanders and Clinton has sometimes looked to observers like a gap in economic class, according to political scientists Matt Grossmann and Alan Abramowitz.
But the most salient divide in the primary is not between rich and poor. It's between young and old — and between white and black.
"What we found in Michigan is that the differences between the candidates were all based on age, and it just happens that younger people are poorer on average," said Grossmann, a professor at Michigan State University. "Age differences in Michigan were the key to the Democratic primary, and income differences are an artifact of that split."
(See? What they are saying is that Bernie is attracting young college students who haven't graduated yet. In other words, poor whites with no degree)
But under this criteria, the white working class also includes a large group of young people and enrolled students who will soon join the middle or upper class and aren't necessarily facing any real material deprivation. (A junior at Harvard with a job lined up on Wall Street may have an income of $0 right now, but she's hardly destitute.)
(and there you go. This is why his message hasn't spread to older white voters. The ones who actually pay the taxes. Nothing is "free".)
Instead, as this Jacobin feature illustrates, the national media (again, myself included!) have often said or implied that Sanders is winning with a very different definition of the white working class: middle-aged and older Americans who are at the bottom of the economic ladder, struggling financially, and generally denied opportunities in the job market.
The data supports the first definition of Sanders's "white working class" base — all white people earning little money. But according to the political scientists I spoke to closely studying the question, the second conception of Sanders's "white working-class" base doesn't have the evidence to support it.
Low-income white people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s did not break for Sanders. There was little difference in support by income among older voters, with higher-income older white voters actually more likely to support Sanders, according to Grossmann's Michigan data.
"My main concern is that the image of Bernie-supporting older poor people who've lost their factory jobs to trade is not supported," Grossmann says. "I'm least supportive of the idea that there's a population of white, older workers who lost their jobs and are now supporting Sanders. There's very little evidence of that."
Clinton has won among all households earning less than $50,000 by an 11-point margin.
But if you look a little more closely at the data, it turns out Sanders only does better among downscale whites who are also young.
For instance, he commands a massive 68-10 lead over Clinton among voters younger than 29 without a college degree. He holds similarly massive leads among young voters earning less than $25,000 per year.
However, once you get to the middle-aged and the elderly, Sanders ceases to be the candidate preferred by the majority of low-income white voters.
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So is Clinton winning among the very rich and white Democratic voters? Yes. It's true. But she is also winning among older white voters who pay taxes and understand a little better how things work. Free is NOT the answer. Seeing almost only rich kids who are pretty much pretending to be poor is why I've been critical of the Bernie campaign.
I went to school on the GI bill while I worked full time. College is pretty much the only job most of those kids have. Of course they are low income. That's all mommy and daddy give them. Just enough to get by while they are supposed to be studying.
Even with the GI Bill, I still owed over $56,000 and I paid it off. All of it. And I liked the Army. I am proud I served. I didn't spend my military career under a bar stool passed out on Rum and (sniff sniff) Coke.
MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski went farther than (Van) Jones on Wednesday, calling for Wasserman Schultz to resign.
"This has been very poorly handled from the start," Brzezinski said. "It has been unfair, and they haven’t taken him seriously, and it starts, quite frankly, with the person that we just heard speaking [Wasserman Schultz]. It just does. ... She should step down. She should step down."
Sanders might be stubborn, but Wasserman Schultz drove him to it by favoring Clinton from the start. (Let's point out that Bernie is not a Democrat. He refuses to raise money for the party or support any other Democrat)
Top complaints include briefly suspending the Sanders campaign's access to a voter database
The database suspension was a penalty imposed after Sanders acknowledged that a staffer improperly exploited a software glitch that allowed him to view confidential voter information held by the Clinton campaign.
(From the beginning Mika has been pro Bernie. She even said his message isn't that important. That it's about the movement and how he gets people excited. The message isn't that important? No wonder Trump is doing so well. All his suggestions.)
Bernie Sanders’s base isn’t the working class. It’s young people.
Because young voters also tend to have lower incomes, the massive age gap between Sanders and Clinton has sometimes looked to observers like a gap in economic class, according to political scientists Matt Grossmann and Alan Abramowitz.
But the most salient divide in the primary is not between rich and poor. It's between young and old — and between white and black.
"What we found in Michigan is that the differences between the candidates were all based on age, and it just happens that younger people are poorer on average," said Grossmann, a professor at Michigan State University. "Age differences in Michigan were the key to the Democratic primary, and income differences are an artifact of that split."
(See? What they are saying is that Bernie is attracting young college students who haven't graduated yet. In other words, poor whites with no degree)
But under this criteria, the white working class also includes a large group of young people and enrolled students who will soon join the middle or upper class and aren't necessarily facing any real material deprivation. (A junior at Harvard with a job lined up on Wall Street may have an income of $0 right now, but she's hardly destitute.)
(and there you go. This is why his message hasn't spread to older white voters. The ones who actually pay the taxes. Nothing is "free".)
Instead, as this Jacobin feature illustrates, the national media (again, myself included!) have often said or implied that Sanders is winning with a very different definition of the white working class: middle-aged and older Americans who are at the bottom of the economic ladder, struggling financially, and generally denied opportunities in the job market.
The data supports the first definition of Sanders's "white working class" base — all white people earning little money. But according to the political scientists I spoke to closely studying the question, the second conception of Sanders's "white working-class" base doesn't have the evidence to support it.
Low-income white people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s did not break for Sanders. There was little difference in support by income among older voters, with higher-income older white voters actually more likely to support Sanders, according to Grossmann's Michigan data.
"My main concern is that the image of Bernie-supporting older poor people who've lost their factory jobs to trade is not supported," Grossmann says. "I'm least supportive of the idea that there's a population of white, older workers who lost their jobs and are now supporting Sanders. There's very little evidence of that."
Clinton has won among all households earning less than $50,000 by an 11-point margin.
But if you look a little more closely at the data, it turns out Sanders only does better among downscale whites who are also young.
For instance, he commands a massive 68-10 lead over Clinton among voters younger than 29 without a college degree. He holds similarly massive leads among young voters earning less than $25,000 per year.
However, once you get to the middle-aged and the elderly, Sanders ceases to be the candidate preferred by the majority of low-income white voters.
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So is Clinton winning among the very rich and white Democratic voters? Yes. It's true. But she is also winning among older white voters who pay taxes and understand a little better how things work. Free is NOT the answer. Seeing almost only rich kids who are pretty much pretending to be poor is why I've been critical of the Bernie campaign.
I went to school on the GI bill while I worked full time. College is pretty much the only job most of those kids have. Of course they are low income. That's all mommy and daddy give them. Just enough to get by while they are supposed to be studying.
Even with the GI Bill, I still owed over $56,000 and I paid it off. All of it. And I liked the Army. I am proud I served. I didn't spend my military career under a bar stool passed out on Rum and (sniff sniff) Coke.
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