Bernie’s White Working-Class Strategy

I know Joan Walsh is a big Hillary Clinton supporter and thus many of you will disqualify her remarks based upon that. But I think she is right–Bernie Sanders’ strategy of chasing the white working class vote probably just can’t actually work within the Democratic Party in 2016. Even if you combine those votes with the white intellectual class, it just isn’t a winning coalition. Any winning coalition for the Democratic nomination has to feature voters of color. You might not agree with all of Walsh’s article. I don’t either, as I think she paints Sanders in more of a bad light than he deserves. But there’s no question that he has never done a ton of work to reach out to African-American or Latino voters, which was a completely defensible decision for a senator from Vermont until he decided he would run for president. Now that he’s a serious candidate, this decision is torpedoing his chances to defeat Clinton. In the future, any left-leaning candidate from any state is going to have to learn from this and start building strong coalitions with black and Latino organizations early on in their political career. It will be the difference between a candidate ultimately topping out as a protest candidate who does better than expected and a leftist candidate who can win the nomination.