WASHINGTON — Dr. Cornel West believes Bernie Sanders will upset Hillary Clinton — because Sanders is hiring the right black staffers, he said in an interview with the chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party.
In the interview with party chair Jaime Harrison, a snippet of which was provided to BuzzFeed News, West spoke about the Black Lives Matter activists who confronted Sanders in Seattle and Phoenix, and what's happened since.
"You've got some folk in the Bernie Sanders camp, sister Symone Sanders, brother Marcus Ferrell, and brother Ernest Boston and others who are going to help turn things around," West said, referring to staffers hired by the Sanders campaign.
He downplayed the activists' disappointment with Sanders in particular, saying their confrontation of Sanders was less about Sanders himself than it was about the movement wanting to hold all candidates accountable.
"I think that the younger generation just wanted politicians across the board to be accountable," West said. "And they didn't know that much about brother Bernie Sanders. So he's one politician among others. And I agree, I think politicians ought to be accountable."
West has been an adviser to Black Lives Matter activists, and has participated in actions in protests.
"Sometimes politics are [about] disruption, in which you try to make them accountable and Bernie responded directly with a very powerful racial justice platform."
While Sanders has surged in both Iowa and New Hampshire, he is less well-known in South Carolina, where Clinton leads by 23 points according to the latest YouGov/CBS News poll. Sanders' campaign has committed resources to fixing the problem, but questions remain about whether there is enough time between now and February to increase his name identification with black voters. Once they know who he is, Sanders has to convince black voters that he, not Clinton or, potentially, Joe Biden, is the best candidate to advocate on their behalf.
West recently introduced Sanders at a rally at Benedict College, a historically black college in Columbia.
The interview is part of the "Chair Chats" interview series with Harrison, widely considered a rising star in the Democratic party. In addition to West, Harrison has interviewed Sanders himself, along with Hillary Clinton and Martin O'Malley.
West said the coalition building, as well as the hires Sanders is making, is why Sanders is primed for an upset. He added that the Clinton machine had lost its cache.
In South Carolina, Sanders' campaign has targeted areas with a high concentration of black voters. He hired Christale Spain, the SCDP's former deputy executive director, who began at Sanders' South Carolina headquarters in Charleston last week.
West said that Obama, with whom he's feuded publicly, had once lagged behind in the polls there, too.
"There's going to be a real upset in February," West said.