“I decided to vote for Hillary, but it was a tossup between her and Mr. Bernie, cuz I really think he want to make a change,” she said, referring to Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Top of mind for Rivers, a behavioral health specialist for the state Department of Mental Health, was the rising cost of electricity and health insurance, coupled with stagnant wages.
“We livin’ from paycheck to paycheck,” she said. “Our insurance is up — way up. It’s like if you took a whole ‘nother $150 out of my check, and I’m already struggling.”
While Sanders’ message appealed to Rivers, who is African American, she was ultimately swayed by the belief that Clinton was better equipped to get the job done.
“Mr. Bernie, I think he really focusing more on the wage than anything, but I just think she a little bit stronger,” she said. “But I hope they work together, whichever one win.”
Before driving away, Rivers grabbed a piece of paper from her white Kia sedan to show a reporter. It was a receipt from South Carolina Electric & Gas showing that her family owed $595.63 of a $763 bill.
“Who can afford that?” she said. “That’s like buying a downpayment on the car every month.”
By the end of the day, more than 73 percent of South Carolinians voting in the Democratic primary had joined Rivers in pulling the lever for Clinton, while just 26 percent voted for Sanders. Far more jarring for the Sanders campaign was the percentage of black voters who chose Clinton over him: 86 to 14 percent, according to exit polls.
“We’re going to have to do a lot better,” Sanders said Sunday morning on ABC’s “This Week” when asked about Clinton’s advantage with black voters. “But I think you’re going to see us doing — and I think the polls indicated it — much better within the African American community outside of the Deep South. You’re going to see us much better in New York State, where I think we have a shot to win, in California and in Michigan.”
Maybe so, but Sanders faces more immediate challenges in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Tennessee — four southern states with significant African American voting populations, all scheduled to vote on Tuesday. Sanders’ trouble attracting black voters may explain why he’s set his sights instead on the Super Tuesday states of Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Vermont — most of which are northern and relatively white.
But if Sanders can’t attract support from African Americans throughout the country, he will have a hard time arguing that he can defeat the Republican nominee in November. In 2012, Republican nominee Mitt Romney actually won the white vote; it was black voters who carried President Barack Obama to victory.
There is, of course, no single reason why a large and hardly monolithic group of voters chooses one candidate over another. But in interviews around Columbia on the day of the primary, many African Americans expressed the feeling that they could trust Clinton more than Sanders, because they had seen her fighting for them for years.
“I like them both. It was difficult, to say the least,” said Kerry Gilliam, a 44-year-old surgical technology student at Midlands Technical College. “I pretty much made up my mind as of yesterday.”
Gilliam, who also voted at the Latimer Manor Community Center, said he ultimately chose Clinton, because he believed she had been fighting for criminal justice reform longer than Sanders has.
“She’s been on this issue as of the last almost 20 years,” he said. “She never was in a gray area about where she stood on the issue.”
At the nearby Hyatt Park Elementary School, Army veteran and retired state worker Floyd Williams said he had decided to support Clinton, in part, because he has fond memories of former president Bill Clinton’s administration.
“He had a balanced budget,” Williams said, adding, “I think she’d be her own person.”
As for Sanders, the 81-year-old voter said of the 74-year-old candidate, “He got too much on his plate and he’s a little too old. He’d have a heart attack with all the problems in the world.”
Across town, in the rapidly gentrifying Five Points neighborhood, heavy equipment operator Albert Thomas said he thought Clinton was the best candidate to carry on Obama’s programs. The 59-year-old said he found Sanders’ pledge to make public higher education free implausible.
“What he talkin’ about, I don’t think he gonna ever be able to do that,” Thomas said. “That would never happen. It would never happen … Ain’t no free education.”
Not everybody voting at the Martin Luther King Jr. Park community center, where Thomas cast his ballot, supported Clinton. Jacob Borchardt and his girlfriend, Lauren Hamm, said they had just enthusiastically voted for Sanders.
But Borchardt and Hamm, students at the nearby University of South Carolina, are white.
“To me, he seems like the only candidate who’s saying anything different than they’ve always said. This is the first election I’ve really cared about,” said Borchardt, a graduate student in archaeology. “The fact that he refuses to take money from lobbyists says a lot.”
“Out of our friends, I would say almost all of them are Bernie supporters — and our family,” said Hamm, who plans to pursue a masters at the University of Iceland.
As Borchardt and Hamm left the community center, two poll workers met Mable Davis Carter at the curb, to help her vote without leaving her car. She and her husband, Durham Carter — both of whom are African American — said they were voting for Clinton.
Durham Carter, an 87-year-old community leader and retired teacher, said he had been familiar with the candidate since Bill Clinton served as governor of Arkansas.
“I think she’s the best person for the job,” he said. “She’s more knowledgable about foreign affairs. She’s more knowledgeable about [the] social needs of the country. And she’s more people-oriented.”
Mable Carter was quick to mention all the work her husband had done for the neighborhood. He was “instrumental,” she said, in renaming the community center and park after King, noting that African Americans were not always welcome there.
“It has been a struggle for us as blacks,” she said. “We feel that the Clintons and the Kennedys, regardless of what others may say or feel, our gut feeling is that they’ve done more for us as African Americans than any other president — all the rest of them put together. Let the record reflect.”
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“What he talkin’ about, I don’t think he gonna ever be able to do that,” Thomas said. “That would never happen. It would never happen … Ain’t no free education.”
How sadly ironic.
On another note, I remember Howard Stern asking this same population questions about voting for Obama and giving points from the opposite campaign as the reason. Most of the interviewees had no idea what was going on in the world.
Is this ultimately any different than, say, the support working class white voters (think Reagan, and the ardent support he received from farmers, among others, twice) give conservative candidates for office?
One thing I have found interesting about this piece and that of many other stories written about the “black” vote is that there is a connection made that if Bernie does not win their votes in the primaries he would somehow not win it in the general.
It seems to me that the quotes from some of those in the article point out just the opposite. Obviously Paul spoke with many people, I guess I am wondering if the following questions is asked of either Hillary or Bernie apporters of color…”if your candidate is not the eventual nominee, would you vote for the other one compared with the Republican candidate or would you be likely to vote for the Republican?” That seems to be the test question regarding electability in purple states (Not S.C.) with higher populations of people of color.
I also find it interesting that a few acquaintances and neighbors have asked me, an African American, why, you know, “my people”-didn’t come through in the aforementioned primary. I point this out because it’s important to remember how distant ( geographically and otherwise) Vermont is, and remains, from a very different 2016 America. Just as I was about to remind these folks that I don’t know every black American in South Carolina, I remembered where I was…
That’s a fair point, Sen. Zuckerman. And while I didn’t ask the specific question you raise, I can only assume that some of those I interviewed (Rivers and Gilliam, in particular) would quite happily support Sanders in a general election.
I think the question is whether African-American voters would turn out in high numbers in a general if a candidate many aren’t excited about wins the Democratic nomination. The same question can be asked of young, enthusiastic Sanders supporters, should Clinton win the nomination. My guess is a lot will depend on who the Republicans nominate.
Two other points worth considering, which I didn’t get to in my story:
1. Sanders generally seems to do better among ALL voters once he’s had a chance to fully introduce himself. I think that helps explain why he did better in the early states, where he spent a lot of time, and why he’s struggling in the March states, where he’s much less known. Which means if he’s able to somehow win the nomination, he will have more time to introduce himself to all voters before the general, including those of color.
2. While I explored the issue of race in this story, I did not touch on age — and that’s a pretty key factor. As I wrote a few days earlier (http://sevendaysvt-test.newspackstaging.com/OffMessage/arch…), most of the older black voters I spoke to in Orangeburg, S.C., supported Clinton, while many of the younger ones supported Sanders. The difference was quite stark.
Plenty to consider here. I should also reiterate that it’s a perilous path to make too many assumptions about a large and diverse group of people.
-Paul
As a southerner now living in Vermont I can say it is my observation that the majority of Vermonters I’ve encountered, though well-intentioned, are very out of touch with the struggles of black Americans and the very colorful, glorious, and dysfunctional mess that is the South. I would have to guess Sanders may be equally out of touch. Unless you’ve lived it it’s hard to understand and if you don’t understand the South it’s hard to connect to southern voters, in my opinion.
I tend to agree with Avery except that I would wager Bernie is much more in touch with the struggles of black Americans than Hillary, mulit-million dollar “speaking” engagements aside, although the perception of black Americans is obviously much the opposite. It would seem Hillary has connected with black Americans however disingenuous it might be.
Just as Trump is a master of convincing poor whites to vote against their best interests the Clintons are supreme vampires at conning poor blacks into voting against their best interests.
No one has a record of killing and imprisoning Afro peoples at home and abroad that comes close to the Clintons. Hillary and UK PM Cameron and their Saudi partners used Jihadist rebels in Libya who were an Arab KKK that went on a lynching rampage hunting every Black African man they could get their hands on.
Torturing and murdering them. There are solid case files of 150 cases and two to three hundred more men for whom there are not evidence cases but who were never seen or heard of again. Gaddafi provided financial aid to the poorest sub-Saharan Black African countries and seasonal work in Libya to their citizens. When the UK/France/US/Saudi Arabia destroyed Libya and murdered Gaddafi with the sociopath Clinton caught on camera relishing the blood lust….millions of Black Africans were pushed into economic despair. They gave their last dollars to people smugglers and many drowned trying to cross to Europe. This is the foreign policy experience of Hillary Clinton that apparently folks in South Carolina have such respect and admiration for.
“It has been a struggle for us as blacks,” she said. “We feel that the Clintons and the Kennedys, regardless of what others may say or feel, our gut feeling is that they’ve done more for us as African Americans than any other president — all the rest of them put together. Let the record reflect.”
Those words should be engraved on a monument to brainwashing, ignorance and beyond a credible formal education the apparent inability to use the internet.
For the record it was LBJ not JFK who did the most for Black folks and it was Clinton as President who put more Black men in prison than the number of Africans who had been in slavery at any one given time.
Bill Clinton decimated the domestic economies of Jamaica and Haiti by dumping US subsidised goods and wiping out Jamaican and Haitian farmers and farming. Pushing people into sweat shops for the likes of Disney at 20cents an hour.
The Clinton administration’s policies in Africa were nothing less than genocidal. Protecting the copyrights and profits of Big Pharma denying essential medicines to tens of millions of Africans.
There were of course many non Afro victims of the Clinton crimes against humanity across the world but until Black America learns and thinks in terms of global solidarity Hillary can kill all kinds of people and they will keep on voting for her. Malcolm X would be utterly disgusted with the prevailing mentality in South Carolina.
Bernie has great ideas on several important issues but is light on proposals regarding Black Lives Matter. While Bernie frequently mentions Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland and many others killed by police or who are victims of police misconduct, he has not yet come forth with clear proposals to put a stop to police impunity.
Here are three ideas Bernie could consider advocating and submitting as legislation in the senate:
1) If a police officer killed someone, require appointment of an independent and impartial special prosecutor if a reasonable person would question the independence of judgment of the usual prosecutor because of race or because of day-to-day association with, relationship with, or dependence on the police, or for any other reason;
2) Establish in the US Department of Justice a special prosecutor branch to supervise investigation and prosecution of alleged police misconduct under state criminal law; and
3) Recognizing that jeopardy does not attach in grand jury proceedings, require reopening cases against the cops who allegedly murdered Eric Garner and Michael Brown and others that had been closed by local prosecutors who had a conflict of interest. As the US Supreme Court said, “The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment does not bar a grand jury from returning an indictment when a prior grand jury has refused to do so” (United States v. John H. Williams, Jr., (1992)). There is no bar to reopening these case under an independent and impartial special prosecutor.
Equal justice under law can put a stop to police impunity: Police misconduct must be prosecuted with the same zeal as black defendants are prosecuted.
I wish the folks in South Carolina would understand that the AIPAC approved Clintons are on the wrong side of this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsdpg-9cmSw
Wow. A bunch of white people on here who think blacks are too unsophisticated to know how to vote, cuz they didn’t vote for your old white guy. Shame on you.
@Howard Simon Marks, I don’t dispute your characterization of the Clintons but perhaps Mable Carter is not as “brainwashed” or “ignorant” as you describe. Perhaps, in measuring the historical impact of LBJ vs JFK, Ms. Carter is looking at the entirety of LBJ’s presidency and not solely the Voting Rights Act. She may recognize that LBJ, just like another more recent President from Texas, lied America into a foreign war vs. a country that never attacked us, aka Vietnam. And that a large number of the 58,000 plus Americans killed in LBJ’s Vietnam War were low-income and working class African-Americans.
Perhaps Ms. Carter also recognizes that JFK; MLK, Jr.; and RFK were all assassinated on LBJ’s watch. She no doubt is further aware of the strange coincidences of “lone gunmen” quickly being pinned for the responsibility of all of these assassinations, in spite of significant evidence to the contrary. Finally, Ms. Carter no doubt saw the unanimous verdict many years later in the King Family vs. Jowers trial that determined a government conspiracy (during LBJ’s presidency) was responsible for assassinating MLK, Jr. and that James Earl Ray was solely a scapegoat.
Her gas and electric bill is INSANE! They generally have much lower rates in the south than we have here in Vermont. Either somebody is stealing power from her or (I’d bet on this) a family member is using HID lights to grow pot in a closet. It is sad that she blames the government.
I would love to see a strong HONEST woman that Will stand for The united state of america . We need to look at the sign 1. She has been a defence attorney for a rape/molestation case. She help set him free knowing he was Guilty! How is that for woman and children?2. She back a kkk senator 3 .She help wall street during the time the housing collapse and never prosecuted the crokes created a bubble for themselves.4. she put the blame on the people that has their homes foreclosed. How will a white woman billionaire, that states, that she is for the people and endless action showing that shes not . ask your self Is this the first woman president we want. everything that i stated is fact check it out . i am not hating just tying to open eyes. Believe me I think trump would be a disaster for this country ! We don’t want hitler. to me the only candets that could help us would be Bernie or Kasich. god bless and use your heads and hearts when you vote
I am puerto rican and for bernie