Democratic Candidates Court Black Voters at Debate

With the Democratic presidential primary moving into states with more black voters, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders took extra efforts at a debate Thursday to address them.

The two candidates made sure to touch on the major issues, such as criminal justice reform and police violence. But they also worked to make their other answers more inclusive too as they looked ahead to the South Carolina primary.

After a question from a Facebook user asked the candidates what they would do to address America’s high incarceration rate for black males, Sanders called mass jailing “one of the greatest tragedies in our country today” and called for “fundamental police reform.”

“I would hope that we could all agree that we are sick and tired of seeing videos on television of unarmed people, often African-Americans, shot by police officers,” he said. “What we have got to do is make it clear that any police officer who breaks the law will, in fact, be held accountable.”

Clinton, meantime, argued that the videos of police violence were actually a step forward, since they allowed a longstanding problem to come into the daylight.

“We have a lot more social media, we have everybody with a cellphone,” she said. “So, we are seeing the dark side of the remaining systemic racism that we have to root out in our society.”

Sanders also expanded his economic critique to use more inclusive language.

“African-Americans and Latinos not only face the general economic crises of low wages, and high unemployment, and poor educational opportunities, but they face other problems, as well,” he said. “So, yes, we can talk about it as a racial issue. But it is a general economic issue.”

The two candidates have been working hard to court African-American voters since the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary ended.

On Thursday, Sanders debuted a video featuring an endorsement from the daughter of Eric Garner, an unarmed black man who was killed in a chokehold by New York City police in 2014. Clinton, meantime, earned the endorsement of the fundraising arm of the Congressional Black Caucus.