FAIRFAX, Va. — As Sen. Bernie Sanders made a nationwide pitch to young progressive college students on Wednesday night, he attempted to widen his base to minority voters, but was met with some skepticism.
Young, Caucasian liberals have traditionally been in Sanders’ wheelhouse, yet he has struggled to gain traction in the African-American community. While the crowd at his National Student Town Hall at George Mason University was majority young and white, his speech was being live-streamed on hundreds of college campuses nationwide, so Sanders aimed at a different audience: young African-Americans.
As has become the norm on the Sanders campaign trail, the crowd treated the candidate like a rock star upon his booming entrance to “Rockin’ in the Free World.” He received multiple standing ovations for lines such as, “We should be proud that the American people are voting for candidates based on ideas, not the color of their skin,” and “Our goal must be to end all forms of institutional racism and enact reform in our criminal justice system.” Throughout his 45-minute speech, there wasn’t a moment when the room was quiet.
“I’m not going to vote in the election if it’s not him,” Maddie Brothers, a recent college graduate and a self-described “unapologetic liberal,” said while waiting in the rain for Sanders’ event. “The enthusiasm and straightforwardness draws me to him … I thought about it and realized, man, these other candidates are just as bad as the other side, they are just happening to have liberal values. It’s all just some political scheme, nothing about it seems genuine.”
Hillary Clinton leads Sanders in national polls 48.2-25.4, but Sanders has a larger grassroots base of support and his traction has created sweeping momentum across the country in recent months as voters have warmed to his Democratic socialist values.
However, Clinton has gained much more support from the African-American community on the trail thus far. Sanders, meanwhile, has been criticized for not taking a firm enough stance on the Black Lives Matter movement and other issues important to African-Americans. Where he has gained traction, though, is appealing to people by talking about the economy, healthcare reform and money in politics.
“He did sit-ins back in his time, so that stood out to me a lot because that was a time that really mattered to African-Americans. I don’t think people look at that, we only look at the now,” Chanel Grice, an African-American junior at George Mason University, said prior to the event
Throughout his speech and subsequent Q&A, Sanders highlighted issues of racial inequalities and called for criminal justice reform. He also laid out his plan to decriminalize marijuana, and thus lower the number of people arrested for possession.
While Sanders did make significant inroads in the African-American community, not everyone was taken with Sanders’ remarks.
“My personal preference between Bernie and Hillary is Hillary,” GMU student Travis Evans said. “Drawing on what Bill Clinton did for the African-American community, that just by association makes me want to side with Hillary more in terms of minority support. It’s not what Hillary does, but it’s her husband. I think Bill is going to run a lot of things behind the scenes.”
