Dem chairs of SC MS GA FL LA hit @ Sanders, say he's minimizing importance of African-American voter

[misterhighwasted]

Bernie faces Southern revolt

Democratic leaders want Sanders to stop dismissing the South, where Hillary Clinton's wins have been powered by black votes.

By GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI

04/20/16 04:02 PM EDT

NEW YORK — An influential group of Democrats is piling on Bernie Sanders for portraying Hillary Clinton's Southern victories as a product of a conservative region that is out of step with the rest of the country’s thinking.

When asked about his delegate deficit against Clinton, Sanders has on several recent occasions tried to explain away her lead as the result of wide margins of victory in deep red Southern states that rarely vote for Democrats in general elections.
Those dismissals have irritated Southern Democratic Party leaders who insist their region is a growth opportunity for the national party, especially in the age of Donald Trump.
And some are acutely sensitive to the racial dimension of Sanders’ remarks, since Clinton’s victories in the Deep South have been powered by her landslide margins among African-American voters.

In a stern, roughly 800-word letter sent Wednesday via post to Sanders’ Burlington, Vermont, headquarters, a high-profile group that includes the Democratic Party chairs of South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi expresses its concern about his characterizations of the South, which they contend “minimize the importance of the voices of a core constituency for our party”: African-Americans.

MORE

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/bernie-sanders-south-black-voters-222220

[CrowCityDem]

1. Bernie's really making friends with the people he'd have to work with, isn't he?

[mercuryblues]

2. yup

At this point he has nothing left but to burn bridges.

He knows he can not win, at this point he is staying in the race in an attempt to deny Clinton the victory.

[mcar]

3. Good for them

That entire line of attack is insulting and petulant.

[SharonClark]

4. Excellent!

[brer cat]

5. I think Bernie spent too long

in lily-white Vermont and as an independent rather than a democrat where he never had to give much of a thought to people of color. He has blown this badly.

[SaschaHM]

6. I can't wait for...

the salty public response from the Sanders campaign.

I hope they let Weaver give it. Let them alienate more democrats before the 26th.

[Tarheel_Dem]

7. Good for them.

[misterhighwasted]

8. They should just call him by his self-identified real name:

p u t z.