In the 2016 primary, Bernie Sanders won Hawaii with a landslide 71.5 percent of the vote, despite endorsements for Hillary Clinton from three of Hawai‘i’s sitting members of Congress, former congressmen, former governors, and many of Hawai‘i’s major political institutions and unions. After the primary, takes on Bernie’s success flooded in from the continental United States

Perhaps, in line with the white male “Bernie Bro” thesis, it was due to Hawai’i’s relatively low population of black voters. Or perhaps it was because Hawai’i was one of the bluest states in the nation, with no elected Republicans at the federal or executive level and only a marginalized handful in the State House. Of course Hawai’i would be a bastion of radical, leftist politics, went this argument.

Yet Hawai‘i is a blue state in all the worst ways. Despite a rich history of struggle, the dominance of the Democratic Party and decimation of the Republican Party, and a veneer of multiculturalism, Hawai‘i suffers under the weight of neoliberalism and neocolonialism. This status quo is played out on occupied Hawaiian lands and at the expense of Native Hawaiian sovereignty.