Along the campaign trail so far, Sanders has discussed a number of issues—but some commentators have noted that issues of race have been remarkably absent. Dara Lind at Vox and Joan Walsh at Salon have both noted that Sanders has not talked in detail about immigration reform or issues surrounding police violence and #BlackLivesMatter, while Hillary Clinton has addressed these issues with more prominence. Not only that, but even the economic inequality argument can leave minority voters out in the cold when one focuses only on the generalities; participants in the economic recovery are sharply divided by race, with the vast majority of gains going to white households. In that context, reducing economic inequality through reining in Wall Street and taxing the rich may be a better message than it ever was before, but how to make sure those gains go to the communities that need them most is still an open question.
More on Sanders, race, and the Democratic primary process below.
Commentators on the left and right have noticed the comparative discrepancy. In a take that is surprisingly not terrible, Charles Cooke at the National Review offers a perhaps cogent explanation:
As far as I can tell, Sanders believes that the Democratic party is strong — or at least tolerable – on the questions of race and immigration and police excesses, but unacceptably weak on the question of economics. That being so — and presuming that he knows he can’t win – he is making a smart calculation here. Why would he bother talking about immigration when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have already staked out a hard-line position? Why would he use his candidacy to discuss race when the first black president is still in office? Why would he expend his energy critiquing the excesses of American policing when Barack Obama is in the White House and Hillary Clinton is busy condemning her own husband for the tough-on-crime policies he advocated when in office?Cooke's analysis is thoughtful, but mistaken in my view. Sanders understands the importance of keeping the White House in Democratic hands, hence his commitment not to run negative ads against Clinton. But nothing about his candidacy indicates that he is participating in the primary simply to be a message candidate; and even if he at first supposed that his only role would be to move Clinton to further populism on the issues of Wall Street reform and inequality, the strong start to his campaign would likely lead him and many others to think that he would be a viable alternative if Clinton's support erodes.
Instead, there are two reasons that Sanders hasn't yet addressed police violence and immigration in as much detail as many would like: one is called Iowa, and the other is called New Hampshire.
It may have made sense at one point for these two small states to have such outsized importance in the Democratic Party's process of selecting a presidential nominee, but if they ever existed, those days are long over. In today's political world, black and Latino voters are the Democratic Party's core constituencies, and yet the first state on the nominating calendar is Iowa, with a population that is 3 percent black and 5 percent of Latino origin. New Hampshire, the second state up, is even less diverse. Traditional arguments in favor of keeping the primary calendar the way it is usually state that these small states vet presidential candidates by forcing them to engage in retail politics and one-on-one conversations with voters. But even if we grant that premise, the voters Democratic candidates are learning to appeal to do not represent the country's voters as a whole, and they especially don't represent the Democratic Party's base voters.
Simply put, communities that are over 90 percent Caucasian with relatively small urban centers are going to care far less about immigration reform or racial bias in policing than those in South Carolina and Nevada, the states that immediately succeed Iowa and New Hampshire on the presidential primary calendar. From a purely political perspective, it is important for Hillary Clinton to address these issues to make sure that nobody else can outflank her with minority primary voters. But Sanders' only chance of success is to make a strong showing in the retail states of Iowa and New Hampshire by keeping a laser focus on the traditional message of economic populism that has appealed to Democratic voters since the campaign of William Jennings Bryan in 1896.
Imagine instead if Nevada and South Carolina were the first two Democratic primary contests. In 2008, the last time there was a contest for the nomination, Latinos comprised 15 percent of the total voters in the Nevada caucuses, whereas black voters were a solid majority of Democratic primary voters in South Carolina. Kicking off the Democratic primary process in states like these would leave candidates no choice but to talk about the issues that matter to minority voters.
It's not as if Sanders won't ever address these issues: it is almost certain that they will come up in Democratic primary debates, as well as the primary campaigns in South Carolina and Nevada if the nominating contest is still at issue at that point. But those who are upset that these issues have not been a key point of the Democratic debate already shouldn't blame Sanders or the easy catch-all of "white liberalism." Instead, they should turn their ire on a nominating calendar that is a counterproductive vestige of a bygone era.
