A prominent figure in the civil rights movement believes Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election because she did not do enough to mobilize African American communities.
Reverend Al Sharpton explained his thoughts during an interview on BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith's podcast "NewsFeed with @BuzzFeedBen."
"Her mistake was she did not mobilize in the black community," Sharpton said. "Let me tell you why. You were there, we had one of the biggest gatherings of black ministers and all at the convention in Philadelphia. They're all there, Marc Morial is there from the Urban League, the head of the NAACP is there. How do you not have Mrs. Clinton come by?"
Sharpton then explained that they invited Clinton and she declined to attend.
"These are the people that get your vote out, that's your base. You lost Michigan by what, 15 to 20,000 votes? You could have got that if you mobilized two housing projects or three churches. Never touched them," Sharpton said.
"You never worked your own base. You took your base for granted," he later argued. "So, it's not that you need to go another way, you didn't identify with those in identity politics and that's why you had the lowest turnout you had around blacks in a long time."