Black Opinion Leaders Starting to Endorse Bernie

Not many, and of course Hillary has all the Establishment shills lined up, but people outside the CBC and official black advocacy groups are starting to Feel the Bern.

1. Boring, overpraised blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates announced a couple of weeks back that while he is not endorsing Sanders, he will in fact be voting for Sanders.

I don't understand that distinction, but I'm sure that Ta-Nehisi Coates can and eventually will spin a turgid 13,000 word think piece on the crucial distinction, and also explain that the entire concept of an "endorsement" is a racial construct like Whiteness Itself.

2. Spike Lee has cut a radio ad for "Brother Bernie."

3. Van Jones drops a line I've been waiting for someone to drop for two months -- Bernie Sanders was fighting for civil rights at the same time Hillary Clinton was a presumably-racist Goldwater Girl. I don't think he's endorsing Sanders, but this is a telling and persuasive observation. I know, because I found it telling and persuasive when I thought of it two months ago. I told it to myself, and I persuaded myself.

Hillary's counting on the black vote to come out for her almost monolithically, to save her in South Carolina (remember, they vote this coming week on the Democrat side) and the south generally.

But what if the black vote should begin splitting something like merely 60/40 for Clinton?

Doom, I tell you. Doom.

Also see this useful Ed Driscoll post noting that Spike Lee is talking up the economic misery blacks have suffered under Obama. Quite a long way from his previous ejaculatory boosterism, no?

posted by Ace at 04:43 PM

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