Bernie's politics appeal to upper middle class whites and no one else at this point.
No. That's not the issue. The policies aren't the issue.
Sanders's policies are in most respects well in line and well in tune with what a lot of visible minority groups in the United States want out of government. If you had an upper-middle-class white and a working-class member of pretty much any non-white ethnic group and asked them to run through a list of Sanders's policy positions, it's very probable that the latter would agree with him on much more. But the thing is that Sanders has done nothing to demonstrate to non-white voters that he would be
better at advocating for their interests than Clinton or somebody else with more of a track record of
actually having minorities as constituents.
You're right insofar as Sanders's 'brand' of politics comes across as champagne-socialist to most people outside Vermont. This is because the way Sanders presents his ideas--again, not really the ideas themselves, but things like presenting the ideas as a form of socialism--goes against several really basic, foundational assumptions about what is and isn't politically permissible or possible that most Americans who don't fall into one or both of two groups hold. Those groups are the middle-class leftist activist 'base' (insofar as it can even be called a base; personally I have no love lost for most of these people) and actual Vermonters. To his own constituents, Bernie is a man of the people and very much a retail politician. But the nature of Vermont as a state is not such that that reputation translates well to a larger stage. Even so the way he operates within Vermont probably means that Sanders could make a pretty respectable dent in that part of the white working class that votes in Democratic primaries if he tries hard and believes in himself. (Almost certainly far more so than with minorities, really. Fantasizing about a scenario in which an improbably strong Sanders campaign creates a situation in which he replicates Clinton's 2008 primary coalition and Clinton replicates Obama's 2008 primary coalition is a fun and surprisingly easy exercise.)
It must be frustrating to Sanders, because there really isn't anything that he's doing
wrong, at least nothing that he could be doing differently. It's not a question of incompatibility between his actual views, taken in a vacuum, and those of black America or Hispanic America or whatever. It's also not a question of just throwing together a few ads of him with Jesse Jackson or something; that would be rightly seen as pandering. It's a question of what types of communication and what types of constituent service (or perceived competency at constituent service) his public career so far has prepared him for. And there's nothing he can do about the fact that living out his public career in the great state of Vermont has not prepared him for addressing the needs, interests, predilections, or concerns of most minorities in any really knowledgeable way.
