Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” MSNBC host and National Action Network founder Al Sharpton explained why Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) could not win over black voters during the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.
Sharpton said Sanders failed to realize the differences between Main Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard, referring to predominantly African-American neighborhoods.
“Bernie Sanders’ challenge, and I said to him, is that you cannot deal with saying ‘kill identity politics, economic populism’ and not deal with the racial problem in even dealing with economics. Because when he talks about, ‘We must bring divided politics to the Main Street,’ there’s a difference between Main Street and Martin Luther King Boulevard. We can’t act like the people on Main Street don’t have some advantages that people on Martin Luther King Boulevard have. I think that’s the challenge.”
“I don’t know that he’s tone deaf as much as I don’t know he’s articulated his feelings he’s communicated to us,” Sharpton added. “He really understands it.”
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