Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said Wednesday on MSNBC that his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination former Vice President Joe Biden was winning the support of African Americans by running on his ties to President Barack Obama.
Host Rachel Maddow said, “You mentioned the Midwest and how important the Midwest has been. I also want to ask you about the South. I mean, in 2016, you ran basically equal with Hillary Clinton everywhere in the country except the South where she really ran the table against you. That seems to be happening again. You didn’t reach even 20% of the African-American vote anywhere in the South. In North Carolina, you actually did worse. You did 19% with African voters in 2016. That dropped two points last night. What is going wrong with your campaign when it comes to competing in the South, and competing specifically for black voters?”
Sanders said, “Let me give you the other side of the story. In California, if my memory is correct, we received 39% of the votes of people of color, which were Latinos, Asian Americans and African Americans. If I am not mistaken, I haven’t studied these results. We probably won the young people, young people African American vote probably in all of those states.”
Maddow said, “But in California, you’re being well outpaced by Joe Biden among black voters.”
She added, “Let’s talk about black voters. It is a persistent problem. You knew it was a problem in 2016. It might have cost you the nomination. Then it hasn’t gotten better.”
Sanders said, “We are running against somebody who has touted his relationship with Barack Obama for eight years. Barack Obama is very popular in this country in general in the African American community. Running against Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton was enormously popular. If you look at some of the national polls, there have been some polls recently that we were running ahead of Biden in the African American community. It’s not that I’m not popular. You know, Biden is running, you know, with his— with his ties to Obama, and that’s working well.”
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