Bernie Sanders Woos Southern Voters Who Rejected Him in 2016

May 18 2019, 8:00 AMMay 18 2019, 12:01 PMMay 18 2019, 8:00 AMMay 18 2019, 12:01 PM

(Bloomberg) -- Bernie Sanders is campaigning across southern states that helped derail his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, counting on enthusiasm for his sweeping proposals on issues like health care to attract African-American voters who’ll be crucial to winning there in 2020.

“On major issue after major issue, ideas which four years ago that seemed radical and extreme are now the ideas that the overwhelming majority of American people support,” Sanders told a cheering crowd on Friday in Asheville, North Carolina.

He ticked off his support for a $15-an-hour minimum wage, Medicare for All, tuition-free college, revamping the criminal justice system and decriminalizing marijuana. He said fighting for justice includes “ending institutional racism” that has resulted in struggles for black families across the country.

A campaign swing that began Friday is taking Sanders for the first time this year to North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, and returns him to the early primary state of South Carolina for a seventh visit. All four states gave Hillary Clinton decisive wins in 2016, and Sanders failed to pierce 20% of the African American vote in any of the Democratic primaries in those states.

Party’s ‘Backbone’

That can’t happen again if he has any chance of edging out his nearly two dozen 2020 Democratic rivals, including Joe Biden. The former vice president is the early front-runner in the nomination race and is counting on his link to former President Barack Obama and longstanding relationships with black leaders to carry him through the South’s primaries.

“African-American voters are the backbone of the Democratic primary, and African-American voters make up the largest chunk of the southern primary vote,” said Democratic strategist Zac Petkanas, who isn’t tied to any of the campaigns. “Bernie Sanders is rightly recognizing that one of the key reasons he lost the nomination in 2016 was the fact that he not only lost primaries with large African American populations in the South, but he got absolutely crushed.”

Challenges

Sanders, a senator from Vermont, faces significant challenges in addition to Biden. Two top-tier Democratic contenders -- Senator Kamala Harris of California and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey -- are both African-American.

And while Sanders has a platform packed with issues likely to resonate with black voters in the South, many of his rivals have co-opted parts of his agenda, like “Medicare for All” and free college tuition.

There also is a significant generational split that will likely factor into the choices of black voters, said Todd Shaw, chairman of the political science department at the University of South Carolina and an expert on African-American voting behavior. Younger black voters are more open to progressive ideas, Shaw said, while middle-aged and older voters will tend to pick someone who can prevail in a general election in these heavily-red states that Donald Trump ultimately won.

“That is where you see a divide,” Shaw said. “Do we go for the person we know can beat Trump? That will be a fundamental debate among Democratic voters, but among African American voters in particular.”

Curtis Brown, a 17-year-old from Asheville, said he is undecided who he’ll vote for when he is old enough to cast his first ballot in next year’s Democratic primary. He said aspects of Sanders’ agenda, particularly free college tuition, appeal to him.

Biden’s Advantage

Still, Brown said he thinks Biden would probably do better in the general election against Trump.

“I would say Joe Biden probably beats Bernie,” said Brown, who is African-American. “He’s been around for so long.”

Sanders’s campaign says his track record of trying to incorporate justice into policy areas ranging from the economy to race relations to the environment can give him traction with black voters in the South. Aides said he will shift his approach, combining the big rallies he used widely in 2016 with more town halls and other smaller events to help him carefully make his case.

Direct Impact

“We see a wide swath of support for policies like Medicare for All and tuition-free college but this campaign is also about going directly to communities and voters to show how these policies will impact them and how, with Bernie in the White House, we can have a government that works from the bottom up,” said Sarah Ford, a spokeswoman for the campaign.

Keith Lord, 37, of Canton, North Carolina, said he supported Sanders in 2016 and is choosing this time between him and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Sanders has an opportunity to do significantly better in the South in 2020 because voters recognize that other Democratic candidates are adopting many of his ideas, Lord said, and his run in 2016 gives him name recognition and the reputation of a fighter for the less fortunate.

“He started a movement and people are realizing that,” added Lord, who is white. “He has an immaculate reputation on these issues, and he came out of nowhere last time and did well.”

Early polling suggests Democratic voters in these Republican-dominated states may be more open to a centrist, establishment candidate, with Biden leading.

A South Carolina Post and Courier Poll out on May 13 found that Biden had widened his lead in that state after his April 25 entry into the contest. He was preferred by 46% of likely Democratic voters surveyed May 6 to 9 in the state, up 14 points from a poll by the newspaper a month earlier. Sanders came in second, with 15% supporting him, followed by Harris with 10%. Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Warren were tied with 8%.

Enthusiasm among black voters isn’t just key for Sanders, it’s imperative to the Democratic Party’s drive to hold Trump to one term.

The black vote declined in 2016 for the first time in 20 years, falling to about 60% after reaching a record high of 67% in 2012, according to the Pew Research Center in Washington. Democrats are seeking to reignite the energy created by Obama’s candidacy. His presence on the ballot in 2012 helped lift the black turnout rate beyond the white turnout rate for the first time.

The Democratic Party has seen two recent bright spots as it seeks to regain ground in the South. In November in heavily Republican Georgia, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp.

And in December 2017, Democrat Doug Jones narrowly defeated Republican Roy Moore in a special election for the Alabama Senate seat left vacant after GOP Senator Jeff Sessions became Trump’s attorney general.

So far, Jones is one of the only high-profile southern-state Democrats to make an endorsement in the party’s 2020 presidential primaries. He’s backing Biden.