Bernie Sanders - Mcdowell County, WV MSNBC Towhall - Airing on 13th March

[OneJ]

Sanders is doing the right thing. Dems need to be laser focused on white voters for the next four years.

I'd somewhat tend to agree, but there also has to be outreach to younger black Americans, for example many younger African Americans especially men aren't as loyal to the Democrats as their grandparents and parents are. Many of them didn't vote in 2016, for example, which killed Hillary's campaign.

Exactly. If Trump has an uneventful first term he'll easily get 13-15% of the black vote in 2020, so long as his opponent is white. A lot of younger black men are joining their white male counterparts on the anti feminism train, and it is only a matter of time before a decent number start voting Republican.

But Trump's presidency has been nothing but eventful thus far. Black voters already overwhelmingly disapprove and have an unfavorable view of Trump. I mean come on. Do you really think that he could do that well among Black voters overall? 11% is his ceiling tbh.

[OneJ]

I see Bernie has learned his lesson from 2016 about only appealing to rural white Democrats and college students by doubling down on rural white voters. Might help him in a general, but probably not in the primary. Perhaps he should have chosen Mississippi for his "Bernie in Trump country" gig.

You do realize that Bernie went to Mississippi to help Nissan auto workers organize?

My mistake, you're right.

However, I disagree that this is about voter outreach. Very few people would go to an MSNBC-hosted, Chris Hayes-moderated, Bernie Sanders town hall apart from those who are already likely to vote for Sanders, at least in a Democratic primary. Remember, this is a county he won by 25 points in the primary. So, while this is billed as "Sanders in Trump Country," I find it hard to imagine that it actually represents Sanders stepping out of his comfort zone.

Rather, I think the audience for this is absolutely the Democratic establishment and party apparatus - a way for Bernie to say "these people like me, why don't they like you?" It could be a very effective strategy, as I said, in a general election. But Bernie's problem wasn't the general, it was the primary.

This.