(Fun deep cut: In the Vermont caucuses that year, Mr. Sanders, then the mayor of Burlington, was “slapped by an irate citizen after casting his vote” for Mr. Jackson.)
Yet, at a town-hall meeting in Flint, billed as an opportunity for Mr. Sanders to make a case directly to black voters, the Vermont senator refused to discuss issues of particular concern to black Americans. Instead, before yet another overwhelmingly white audience, he ceded the stage to African-American surrogates who delivered a series of searing attacks on Mr. Biden’s record.
His campaign said Mr. Sanders had scrapped his speech in order to “lift up” the voices of the black panelists.
“Bernie does not have those experiences,” a campaign spokesman said. “He’s a white Jewish man.”
Presidents, of course, have to talk about all kinds of issues affecting all kinds of people — whether they have direct experience with them or not. No president, for example, has ever given birth.
Mr. Sanders has shown little hesitation in expressing his opinions on issues impacting Latinos, women or L.G.B.T.Q. Americans. (And he has found success with Latino voters, who make up just a sliver of the Michigan electorate.) Yet, while Mr. Sanders rattles off policy positions on issues like criminal justice, housing and education, he seems less comfortable driving a message around racial justice and the lived experiences of African-Americans.
Part of the problem Mr. Sanders may face is fundamental: His campaign is deeply rooted in his democratic socialism, focused heavily on class as the root of all the country’s ills. Racial discrimination is a byproduct of economic inequality, rather than the cause, in Mr. Sanders’s telling.
From Flint to Ann Arbor, Mr. Sanders cast his campaign as a unifying cause for working-class Americans, focused heavily on economic issues like the cost of college, unions, health care and low wages. He talks far less and in far less explicit terms about racial injustice.