*IN SOUTH CAROLINA, HOW BERNIE SANDERS COULD ACTUALLY PULL OFF AN UPSET ~ Viewpoints and Realities
Last edited Tue Feb 2, 2016, 10:18 PM - Edit history (5)
"HOW BERNIE SANDERS COULD ACTUALLY PULL OFF AN UPSET IN SOUTH CAROLINA: Surprising Numbers of South Carolinians like Bernie-- If They've Heard of Him". In These Times, Feature, Jan. 25, 2016, by David Moberg
CHARLESTON, S.C.— Even without miracles, Sen. Bernie Sanders could be the next American president. But miracles would help. The Independent/Democrat/democratic socialist from Vermont, by way of Brooklyn, could plausibly win at least some of the first three decisions on the path to nomination—in Iowa, New Hampshire (where he’s had a narrow lead in polls) and Nevada, disrupting any smooth march to victory by Hillary Clinton. Should that occur, Clinton strategists are counting on her winning a “firewall” of Southern states, starting with South Carolina on February 27 and extending through six of the 11 contests on March 1, aka Super Tuesday. Even Rand Wilson, a volunteer with the independent Labor for Bernie organization and a firm believer in Sanders’ chances, says, “If Bernie doesn’t break the firewall, it’s game over.”
A Sanders victory in South Carolina—or even a near-miss—would smash through the firewall and force the press and voters to pay more attention to him, undermining the self-fulfilling prophecy of Clinton’s inevitability. But South Carolina will be challenging terrain for this test. A Dec. 20, 2015, CBS poll showed Clinton with a 36 percent lead among likely primary voters in the state. The gap stretched even wider, to nearly 60 points, among African-American voters, who made up 55 percent of South Carolina’s Democratic primary turnout in 2008.
Conventional wisdom, of course, can be proven wrong. After all, Clinton was supposed to take South Carolina in 2008 and lost to a skinny young senator from Illinois with a funny name. Sanders has a longer way to go in a shorter amount of time—by January 2008, Obama and Clinton were tied— although he can probably count on a last-minute burst of enthusiasm from South Carolina’s university students and young voters, as in other states. >>And momentum is on his side. He narrowed Clinton’s lead by around 15 points in the last two months of 2015. That’s where key Sanders supporters like Christale SPAIN and John GRIMSLEY enter the fray.
Until last September, SPAIN, a 39-year-old African-American graduate of the University of South Carolina Aiken, was deputy executive director of the state Democratic Party. Then she joined the Sanders campaign, where she now serves as the political outreach director. Like so many of his supporters, she was drawn by “Bernie’s message, his platform, specifically racial justice,” such as reforms of policing and criminal-justice policies. But she also finds Sanders’ campaign appealing because it promotes policies that combine both racial and class justice, such as a $15 minimum wage, expanded social security, free tuition at public colleges and universities, and universal, singlepayer healthcare.
- Sanders Shakes Hands During a Visit to South Carolina in November, 2015 -
What is there to fear?
*Much more: http://inthesetimes.com/article/18780/can-bernie-sanders-sell-socialism-in-south-carolina
David Moberg, a senior editor of In These Times, has been on the staff of the magazine since it began publishing in 1976. Before joining In These Times, he completed his work for a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked for Newsweek. He has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Nation Institute for research on the new global economy. He can be reached at davidmoberg@inthesetimes.com.
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As a democratic republic "We the People" are supposed to be represented by those we elect, not the Kochs, Alec, the banks and corps. Enough! Things will work out democratically and without disturbance in the best interests of all, as has happened previously I believe.
- Followers of labor leader Jacob S. Coxey, known as Coxey's Army, on a march to Washington, DC in 1894 to protest the federal government's response to the economic depression in the 1890s after the major Panic/Economic Crisis of 1893.
- COXEY'S ARMY -
In 1894, Jacob S. Coxey, an owner of a sand quarry in Massillon, Ohio, faced difficult financial times as the Panic of 1893 gripped the United States. In protest of the federal government's failure to assist the American populace during this economic downturn, Coxey formed a protest march that became known as "Coxey's Army." The group left Massillon, numbering one hundred men, on Easter Sunday, with the intention of marching to Washington, DC, to demand that the United States government assist the American worker. As the group marched to Washington, hundreds more workers joined it along the route. Coxey claimed that his army would eventually number more than 100,000 men. By the time that the army reached Washington, it numbered only five hundred men.
Upon arriving in Washington, Coxey and his supporters demanded that the federal government immediately assist workers by hiring them to work on public projects such as roads and government buildings. The United States Congress and President Grover Cleveland refused. Law enforcement officials arrested Coxey for trespassing on public property. Coxey's Army quickly dispersed upon its leader's arrest.
>"Coxey's Army" illustrates the harsh financial situation gripping the United States during the Panic of 1893. It also shows a growing desire among Americans for their government to play a more active role in solving the people's problems. http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Coxey's_Army?rec=583
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Coxey's proposed "Good Roads" program for the federal government to put desperate people back to work, was referenced by the first Roosevelt administration in creating early New Deal programs I've read.
L. Frank Baum supposedly saw and was influenced by the Coxey marchers. Some think his famous work "The Wizard of Oz" published in 1900, was in some ways a political allegory for the Gilded Age industrial era and progressivism.
