Okay, let's get into it. Apologies for the length.
I'm 42 years old and black - My grandfather was born in 1900, in North Carolina. How long do you think he waited to vote? Just so you know, it was decades. *Every* election, I went with him every election to see him vote. It was drilled into me that people waited, marched, and were killed trying to vote, so you do *not* let a 3long line, or a white person harassing you, stop you. And I'll say, straight up, that I've talked to younger black people - college age, that spent 2016 rejecting that message, that, this year, are saying "Oh. Guess I should've listened." But a few things about the elders.
The old black folks especially, lean conservative. I'm not joking when I say Louis Farrakhan is far right socially. And if you think that they know nothing about politics, you're often wrong. Where they live, the ones most likely to organize rides to the polls, who organize voter registration drives, are the ones that host and run the local DNC headquarters, located in the basement of their churches. So first, when Sanders badmouths "the establishment", he's badmouthing them.
Second - now think about it. Do you really think they love Biden, and hate Sanders? Well, some will, because, you know, antisemitism. But most will not trust white people to do the right thing by them, period. And the white people around them have never given them any reason to do so. But they know he's been a Dem for a long time. They know he was standing next to Obama, when Obama was getting things done.
And they don't worry about Anita Hill, because they liked Thomas at first too, until he turned out to hate civil rights. They don't care if he worked with segregationists, because some of them worked for straight-out Klansmen! Many have stories of white people they thought were friends, that they saw murder a black guy for "being uppity", or chanting "******* go home" during integration. Hell, I've got similar stories, and I was born post Civil Rights Movement. And they don't care about the Crime Bill, because "Violence was out of control, something had to be done!".
Biden's a lifelong Dem, who stood with Obama, only to his side and a step or two behind. When Obama told him to work on something with the Senate, he did it. That doesn't mean "trust him", but it stands for something to hope for.
Sanders? As much as this simple argument makes the Bernie Stans howl and rage, they know he's not a Democrat. They know he seriously considered primarying Obama in 2012. For many of them, that's the end of the matter.
I saw a lot - *a lot* - of college-age voters reporting 2-3 hour long lines, and who are new to the political process, who have no clue at all how it works, who saw those lines and said "no way can I stand there for that long" and simply didn't bother. Some of them *couldn't* bother, because they had to go to work or whatever, and I can't really fault anyone in that crowd. It sucks, I get it. But there were also quite a few that just gave up. And that I don't respect, even if I can understand it. My mother stood in line longer than that, back when she was pregnant with me.
But I've got to say, how are you in college and it's your first time at a voting booth? How did their parents not drag them along when they went to vote? Or did they just not vote at all? Someone, or really several people, failed them in this regard. And yes, some of them will lean right at first, but college has a way of getting rid of prejudice against people of other races, or "SJWs", or whatever asinine term they use for "people who have a sense of empathy".
