Democratic state chairs in South, still stewing over Sanders dismissing votes, say stop

Jamil Smith ?@JamilSmith 17h17 hours ago
Democratic state chairs in the South would really like @BernieSanders to stop dismissing Clinton’s wins there. https://t.co/dpU60oOuu6

NEW YORK — An influential group of Democrats is piling on Bernie Sanders for portraying Hillary Clinton's Southern victories as a product of a conservative region that is out of step with the rest of the country’s thinking.

When asked about his delegate deficit against Clinton, Sanders has on several recent occasions tried to explain away her lead as the result of wide margins of victory in deep red Southern states that rarely vote for Democrats in general elections. Those dismissals have irritated Southern Democratic Party leaders who insist their region is a growth opportunity for the national party, especially in the age of Donald Trump. And some are acutely sensitive to the racial dimension of Sanders’ remarks, since Clinton’s victories in the Deep South have been powered by her landslide margins among African-American voters.

In a stern, roughly 800-word letter sent Wednesday via post to Sanders’ Burlington, Vermont, headquarters, a high-profile group that includes the Democratic Party chairs of South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi expresses its concern about his characterizations of the South, which they contend “minimize the importance of the voices of a core constituency for our party”: African-Americans.

“We commend you on running a spirited campaign that has energized and mobilized a new generation of voters, but we are concerned about the way you and your campaign have characterized the South,” write South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Jaime Harrison, Louisiana Democratic Party Chairwoman Karen Carter Peterson, Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Allison Tant, Democratic Party of Georgia Chairman DuBose Porter, Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Rickey Cole, former South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges, and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler, each of whom now supports Clinton.

“The greatest asset we have as a party is our diversity — a diversity of cultures, religions, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Yet over the course of this Democratic primary, you and your surrogates have sought to minimize Secretary Hillary Clinton’s victories throughout the South as a symptom of a region that, as you put it, ‘distorts reality.’ You argue that the South is ‘the most conservative part’ of America; implying states that traditionally vote Republican in a general election are not worth contesting in a Democratic primary..."


Gabriel Debenedetti ?@gdebenedetti 17h17 hours ago
One passage of the letter that Southern Democrats just sent to Sanders: http://politi.co/1Su7cPT