Nice essay, but I feel Dr. Watson glosses over a few things here concerning Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden. First, he makes a big deal out of Bernie complimenting Cuba on its literacy program when President Obama praised the Cuban school system in March 2016 as “an extraordinary resource — a system of education that values every boy and every girl.” That wasn’t a gaff, it was speaking the truth and can easily be defended to reasonable people.
Dr. Watson condemns Bernie in so many words for the possibility that Trump will frame him as a communist when he knows Biden will be condemned the same way if he adopts ANY of Bernie’s progressive policy ideas (which he will have to if he has any hope of winning the youth vote — yes, there IS a youth vote). In my essay, “Vote Blue No Matter Who is a Stupid Slogan,” I point out that no one running against Bernie has ever been able to successfully red bait him.
Nowhere in this essay is it acknowledged that Joe Biden has cognitive problems that are very visible almost every day. Here is a recent interview with Nicole Wallace on MSNBC that was very difficult for me to watch. Do the black voters (who seem to be confident Biden will do better than Bernie in a debate with Trump) really, really believe Biden will trounce Trump in a one on one? He won’t, Trump will expose Biden’s confusion and disorientation easily.
As far as the rest of the reasons that Dr. Watson mentions that are primary for black voters — past/current racist history, past/current voter suppression, and dearly wanting to extract Trump from the Oval Office — I agree with these reasons. I just feel they are taking the wrong position to win in November.
Also, do not put too much stock in Obama picking Joe Biden as his vice president as some kind of statement of Biden’s love for black Americans. President Obama was being politically pragmatic in the choice, knowing Biden was a DNC stalwart of the status quo who would calm the fears of white racists everywhere (please look at Biden’s characterization of school integration), including white Dems who have taken the black vote for granted for years.
Yes, us Bernie supporters will be sorry, especially when the DNC once again puts up a white neo-liberal, financed by big banks and credit card companies, against a street fighter like Trump exuding all his populist fake bona fides. Biden will go down in flames, an embarrassing nose dive that will mortify him, his family, the DNC, and every one of his former competitors who endorsed him en masse to push him toward the nomination. Shame on all of them.
