Dr. Cornel West introduced Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders at the historically black Benedict College on Saturday in Columbia, South Carolina.
“He’s going to win. He’s going to win because he represents so much of the best and the latest in Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel and Dorothy Day and Miriam McCloud Bethune and so many other s who said what? ‘We are concerned with unarmed truth and the condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. And if the concern about truth in politics is that you’ve got to push got to push out the big money,’” West told the students as he introduced the Vermont Socialist Democrat.
The rousing introduction from West, backed by rows of black students sitting behind him, was no doubt helpful to Sanders, but New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote one day later, “Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders spoke Saturday to a half-empty gymnasium at Benedict College in South Carolina. The school is historically black, but the crowd appeared to be largely white.”
Sanders, who recently leaped ahead of national Democratic Presidential primary frontrunner Hillary Clinton in Iowa as well as New Hampshire recently, is now eyeing two areas to conquer where Clinton is besting him—the south and the black voters. (RELATED: Poll: Bernie Up Big In Iowa, New Hampshire As Enthusiasm For Hillary Wanes)
Clinton’s favorability among black voters in the Palmetto state is 80 percent while Sanders sits at 23 percent, an August Gallup poll shows. Additionally, The New York Times reports that in 2008, 55 percent of Democratic primary voters were black.
Sanders viability among southern Democrats may not be a complete loss. He managed to attract 9,000 supporters in Greensboro, North Carolina on Sunday as he prepared to make his way to Virginia where he would to give remarks to Evangelical students at Liberty University.
Although Congressional Black Caucus Chairman G.K. Butterfield told Salon that Sanders “speaks our language,” when Sanders reached out to CBC members for an event, only six of the 46 CBC members showed up to the gathering: Butterfield, Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Charlie Rangel, Rep. Yvette Clarke, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, and Rep. Karen Bass.
“I forgot about it,” one CBC member told Politic365’s Lauren Victoria Burke, when asked why they did not show at the meeting, while others cited schedule conflicts or support for Clinton. (RELATED: ‘Morning Joe’ Hosts Can’t Believe How Bad Hillary Is Doing And How Well Bernie Is)