Backlash against Sanders as he questions Clinton’s embrace of Obama

Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mass., on Monday. (Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters)

CHARLESTON, S.C. — A suggestion by Sen. Bernie Sanders that Hillary Clinton was pandering to black voters by “trying to embrace” President Obama drew a sharp rebuke on Tuesday from one of Clinton’s top local allies, Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C. A professor who studies state politics called Sanders’ remark “insulting,” and said it could be a “significant deciding factor” in South Carolina’s Democratic presidential primary on Saturday.

Sanders made the comments in an interview with BET’s Marc Lamont Hill. Excerpts of the conversation were published on Feb. 18, and it aired on BET on Feb. 21.

“Hillary Clinton now is trying to embrace the president as closely as she possibly can. Everything the president does is wonderful. She loves the president, he loves her and all that stuff,” Sanders said, adding, “And we know what that’s about. That’s trying to win support from the African-American community, where the president is enormously popular.”

African-Americans make up more than 27 percent of South Carolina’s population. They made up the majority of the electorate in the state’s Democratic primary in 2008, when President Obama defeated Clinton. Obama, the nation’s first African-American president, is enormously popular in South Carolina, where he enjoys a 97 percent approval rating among black voters.

Clinton, who has a wide lead over Sanders in polls of South Carolina’s
African-American community, spent over four years as Obama’s secretary
of state. In the run-up to the primary, she has been emphasizing her connection to Obama, while calling attention to Sanders’ past criticisms of the president.

Kendra Stewart is a professor at the College of Charleston who focuses on politics and state and local government. In a conversation with Yahoo News on Tuesday, she discussed the potential impact of Sanders’ remark.

“I think that could be a significant deciding factor here and, you know, because the community has been so supportive of the Obama administration and would like to see his legacy continue,” Stewart said. “I do think it is problematic when Sanders is framed as being anti-Obama, and the fact that he would call that pandering is insulting when, you know, truthfully, Clinton was part of the Obama administration. It’s not really false advertising from that perspective.”

Clyburn, a former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus and the third- ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives, endorsed Clinton on Feb. 19. Before entering Congress, Clyburn was a civil rights activist in South Carolina, and he is one of the state’s leading African-American political voters. In a press conference call on Tuesday, Yahoo News asked Clyburn about Sanders’ comments.

“I guess you’re always trying to find where the sweet spot on anything may be. If you don’t reach out … you’re ignoring the African-American community. When you reach out, you’re pandering. I just believe that people have to follow their heart,” Clyburn said.

Clyburn also suggested Sanders’ argument didn’t “hold water” given Clinton’s early work for the Children’s Defense Fund in the South.

“I don’t know how you can look at Mrs. Clinton’s history — she was not running for president in the 1970s when she came to South Carolina to work with those African-American juvenile detainees or juvenile inmates trying to better their conditions, when she went to work with Marian Wright Edelman, a native of Bennettsville, South Carolina, to come down here working with her trying to better the lives of children. … So, what was she doing? Who was she pandering to back then?” Clyburn asked.

Clyburn noted that Clinton’s early work certainly couldn’t have been an attempt to curry favor with Obama, who was born in 1961.

“If you’re talking about the 1970s, that she was down here, right around the time that Barack Obama was — before he was a teenager,” Clyburn said. “When she was down here working on these things … she certainly wasn’t pandering to Barack Obama, or any other president for that matter.”

The Sanders campaign did not respond to a request for comment about Clyburn’s remarks.