It's been interesting watching the mass media lately as they contemplate what they should do about Bernie Sanders. The panic and desperation are palpable. Do we assume that he's vulnerable enough that we should continue attacking him relentlessly to try to make sure he doesn't get elected? Or do we pretend "we knew it all along" [that he could win] and try to "get ahead of this thing" by running positive stories about him?
At times it's hard to tell the difference, but in general MSNBC leans a little more toward the right than CNN. While MSNBC maintains its penchant for reactionaries like Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews, CNN has brought in more diverse voices like Van Jones and, more recently, Andrew Yang. Both of those gentlemen are friendly to the Sanders cause, at least more so than the folks at MSNBC. On the other hand, in the debates with CNN moderators, Bernie has endured nonstop accusations from the likes of Wolf Blitzer and Chuck Todd, who only seem to know how to ask "Given that your plan is likely to destroy the country, tell us why we should believe you when you say it won't."
Now I definitely can't say I'm an expert on the national news media. Because MSNBC and CNN are only for those willing to pay astronomical cable bills, I only see their coverage through what free clips are available. And I don't usually watch network TV because I don't like cop shows or reality TV series. However, the media are so ever-present and pervasive that one accidentally consumes all sorts of content from many different sources without even realizing it. Also, I have watched almost all of the debates, and it's rare that I miss any story about Bernie, be it positive or negative.
So whether it's through osmosis or intentional consumption, I have actually noticed a subtle shift in coverage of the Sanders campaign. Up until recently, it was rare to see any positive stories from any news outlet that was less edgy than Rolling Stone, or Mother Jones, or Grist. (Yes, I know, calling those sources edgy is stretching the definition of the word.) But recently I've seen positive stories from USA Today, and even CNN just released one of the most touching articles about Bernie supporters that I've seen ('He understands us': Why his supporters are loyal to Bernie Sanders).
I think there's evidence, too, that the broadcast networks might be trying to pull ahead of CNN and MSNBC to be in the vanguard of the media that actually get it through their thick corporate skulls that the survey results are real, and the majority of people in the United States are actually politically progressive. When ABC sponsored the New Hampshire debate, George Stephanopoulos was remarkably even-handed in his treatment of the candidates. After the CBS-sponsored South Carolina debate, one of their post-game panels said almost nothing negative about Bernie, even featuring CBS post-debate poll results that showed Bernie Sanders at the top in nearly every category...and not declaring them illegitimate! I was a bit dumbfounded.
Well, maybe there's hope for MSNBC even. Chris Matthews actually apologized for comparing Bernie's campaign success to the nazi invasion of France--that took real humility. Perhaps some people/news outlets are realizing that if they keep following their outdated biases to the bitter end, they will end up being completely irrelevant. Much of their coverage is already seen as laughable by anyone who's Internet savvy, and the information is out there in plain sight to debunk pretty much any false claim they might try to make.
For more on this topic, also check out Waleed Shahid's opinion piece on BuzzFeed: "Why Pundits Can't Comprehend Bernie Sanders."
Thursday, February 27, 2020
Monday, February 3, 2020
Bernie Sanders Is Damn Electable
This election's democratic presidential race has been fraught with decision anxiety. With 27 candidates to choose from at one point, most of those interested in voting for a democrat have been offered at least a few candidates they'd consider, and probably one that came very close to matching their political preferences exactly. And with a cretinous miscreant as our current president, many of us have naturally thought that our main choice—or second or third choice—candidate was surely likeable enough to win the general election.
But the policies, behaviors, and fortunes of the candidates have been in a state of constant flux. Establishment candidates have started acting more progressive; progressive candidates have been adopting establishment policies; candidates have been announcing late or dropping out of the race early; and the racial, financial, and generational diversity of the candidates has been rapidly diminishing. So from one moment to the next, people have been saying "Wait a minute, I'm not sure I like so-and-so as much as I thought!" or "Well, I guess it's down to my fourth choice."
But, Really, Is That Candidate "Electable"?
In the meantime, just when you think you've finally settled on a candidate or two, the mass media, the pundits, and the democratic establishment in general feel they must constantly interject the question, "But is so-and-so candidate "electable"?" It's maddening. They act as if the ill-defined characteristic of "electability" is the only one that matters, and they insinuate that voters who consider anything other than electability in making their decision are betraying their party and their country, and are both stupid and naive. And one thing that this insistence implies is that the candidate with the best ideas logically can't also be the most electable—somehow the two are mutually exclusive.
So here voters are, stuck with the idea that "I like so-and-so, but I have to vote for this candidate I totally disagree with, or I'll be held personally responsible for destroying the country." This situation might not be so extreme and discordant, if it weren't for the fact that most of the mass media quite often is either misrepresenting or concealing the truth.
Ever Heard of Bernie Sanders?
One prime example of this deception is what is being called The Bernie Blackout. As Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff reported in their recent arcticle for Truthout entitled "The Bernie Blackout Is Real, and These Screenshots Prove It," with regard to the previous democratic presidential primary, "CNN, Washington Post and The New York Times tacitly admitted their reporting on the 2016 election was inadequate and flawed." Such behavior extended far beyond a refusal to give Bernie Sanders news coverage, even to helping Hilary Clinton cheat in a debate by providing her with the debate questions in advance and to Clinton campaign staff and members of the democratic party leadership actively telling news outlets to kill specific news stories and take or keep certain pundits off the air.
With more candidates in the mix, in some ways the situation has only gotten worse. Not only has Bernie Sanders received less coverage than other candidates, but he has been purposely removed from headlines and lists of top candidates, even when he has topped most or all of the candidates who are listed. For far more detail on the subject, and, believe me, it's downright insidious, I seriously recommend you read Higdon and Huff's article. The amount of misinformation that has occurred is mind-boggling.
The Media's Electability Bugaboo
In a situation that's part and parcel of the blackout I've mentioned, the criteria of "electability" that has been put on such a pedestal by the establishment and the media has been manipulated and even falsified. Throughout the 2016 election, poll after poll showed Bernie Sanders with a higher likelihood of beating Drumpf than Hilary Clinton, but news outlets insisted that it was Clinton who led in that respect.
The current primary has been panning out in a similar way. Up until quite recently, the party line was that Biden was by far the most electable of all the candidates versus the incumbent, and in the end, everyone would have to fall in line behind Biden and vote for him, regardless of his policy proposals and his record. The polls didn't disagree entirely, but they showed Biden as having not a wide margin but only a one or two percent advantage over his closest competitors, a number of whom, including Bernie Sanders in every case, were also projected to defeat Drumpf. Now, however, Biden is falling behind, and the latest poll from Newsweek shows Sanders on top. I haven't seen the response to this poll yet, but will it be accepted by other news outlets, or will they point to previous polls or invent their own polls to say that Sanders is definitely not the most electable?
And what is this vaunted "electability" that they talk about? Is it the nationwide popularity of a candidate and the likelihood that all different types of voters will vote for the candidate? By and large, no. "Electability" for the mass media is the amount of support a candidate will get from the democratic establishment in Washington and other strongholds, who the superdelegates would vote for, or who the DNC wouldn't try to undermine in the primary.
I don't know much about Vox, but based on their articles I've read in the past, I haven't considered them an establishment news outlet. However, in their three-article series on "the best case for each of the top Democratic contenders" in which they state "Vox does not endorse individual candidates," they seem to deal in the same sort of misdirection you might see on MSNBC. In their article "Joe Biden is the only candidate with a real shot at getting things done," Laura McGann gushes for page after page about Biden, sounding more like the president of the Joe Biden fan club than a journalist. In the course of that gushing, she cites endorsements by a number of democratic officeholders and opines that having these endorsements, and other support, in swing states gives Biden the best chance to win.
In stark contrast, one can only surmise from Matthew Yglesias's tepid Vox piece "Bernie Sanders can unify Democrats and beat Trump in 2020" that Yglesias picked the short straw, then reluctantly ground out a piece that contained a small percentage more positive comments than negative ones...though even that seems up for debate. Giving Vox the benefit of the doubt for a moment, beyond the writer's obvious lack of enthusiasm, perhaps one issue is that these articles were written in a series rather than all at once, and maybe that's why they're not comparable. Still, you'd think that in such a series, you'd have easy points of comparison between the articles to help readers compare the candidates (by the way, the second article in the series was on Elizabeth Warren), but in at least one major respect, that's not the case: Yglesias doesn't write a single word about Sanders' performance in the 2016 primary.
The media is always talking about the swing states and citing them as the key to winning an election against Drumpf. If they're so important, then Yglesias seriously dropped the ball. McGann, who also seems a bit culpable, claims "Biden [the current establishment democrat] consistently holds the highest margin in swing states" such as Michigan and Wisconsin, but she fails to mention the fact that Bernie Sanders (the progressive democrat) beat Hilary Clinton (the establishment democrat) in those two states, both of which Trump won when pitted against Clinton. Yglesias, on the other hand, doesn't even mention the concept of a swing state or any of Sanders' wins in 2016, despite the fact that he won the 2016 democratic primary in five of the swing states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.
I always approve of online articles when they include notes about revisions and corrections that were made based on new information that came to light—that bespeaks a certain amount of journalistic integrity. Given that the Vox series is supposed to provide direct comparison between what have been the top three candidates, I would think that the gushing in the Biden piece would prompt a similarly enthusiastic revision of the Sanders and Warren pieces. That hasn't happened. But, now playing devil's advocate, or perhaps just being realistic, with Biden falling in the polls, one might come to the conclusion that the excessive enthusiasm in the Biden article—and its timing just before the Iowa caucus—is there because the article is meant to boost his candidacy, rather than to objectively describe his chances in the election or his "electability."
Electability for the People
Ask the average person on the street what electability means, and their first answer is likely to be "whoever will beat Trump," given what they've been force-fed by the media, but if you allow them to continue, they're likely to talk about someone they can trust, someone they like, someone who has good policies, or someone who's looking out for them.
If we're to believe Hilary Clinton, no one likes Bernie Sanders, but if we're to believe the primary results from 2016, at least 13 million Americans who voted in that election might kinda like him...at least more than they like Hilary. Even right after the 2016 election, when some democrats were blaming Sanders for Hilary's losing, polling showed that Sanders was the most trusted politician in the country. All other polls on that topic since then have echoed that sentiment, such as the 2017 Harvard-Harris poll discussed in Mother Jones that "found almost 60 percent of Americans view the Vermont senator favorably. Among certain demographics, the progressive politician’s ratings are even higher: 80 percent of Democratic voters, 73 percent of registered black voters, and 68 percent of registered Hispanic voters view Sanders favorably.
At the same time, signature programs that Sanders is driving are supported by the majority of Americans. For example, a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation reaffirms its findings starting in 2016 that most Americans are in favor of Medicare For All. The poll shows that 56% overall are in favor, and, more importantly in this primary, 77% of democrats are in favor. Making public colleges free and eliminating student debt garnered 58% support overall in a Hill-Harris poll in September, and 72% of democrats were on board.
And what about the Green New Deal? It seems that people might kind of like that idea too, based on the poll discussed in the Grist article "Poll: The Green New Deal is as popular as legalizing weed." According to writer Zoya Teirstein, "The plan enjoys wide popularity among almost all demographics.... 63 percent of national adults think the climate proposal is a good idea, while 60 percent of registered voters (the folks who are capable of actually putting politicians in office who will make the green dream a reality) support it. A whopping 86 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Independents are in favor of the plan."
I don't know about you, but if a presidential candidate is the most trusted politician in the entire country, is viewed favorably by the majority of the people in the country, and has based their campaign on policies that are overwhelmingly popular with members of their political party, I would tend to think that candidate is pretty damn electable.
But the policies, behaviors, and fortunes of the candidates have been in a state of constant flux. Establishment candidates have started acting more progressive; progressive candidates have been adopting establishment policies; candidates have been announcing late or dropping out of the race early; and the racial, financial, and generational diversity of the candidates has been rapidly diminishing. So from one moment to the next, people have been saying "Wait a minute, I'm not sure I like so-and-so as much as I thought!" or "Well, I guess it's down to my fourth choice."
But, Really, Is That Candidate "Electable"?
In the meantime, just when you think you've finally settled on a candidate or two, the mass media, the pundits, and the democratic establishment in general feel they must constantly interject the question, "But is so-and-so candidate "electable"?" It's maddening. They act as if the ill-defined characteristic of "electability" is the only one that matters, and they insinuate that voters who consider anything other than electability in making their decision are betraying their party and their country, and are both stupid and naive. And one thing that this insistence implies is that the candidate with the best ideas logically can't also be the most electable—somehow the two are mutually exclusive.
So here voters are, stuck with the idea that "I like so-and-so, but I have to vote for this candidate I totally disagree with, or I'll be held personally responsible for destroying the country." This situation might not be so extreme and discordant, if it weren't for the fact that most of the mass media quite often is either misrepresenting or concealing the truth.
Ever Heard of Bernie Sanders?
One prime example of this deception is what is being called The Bernie Blackout. As Nolan Higdon and Mickey Huff reported in their recent arcticle for Truthout entitled "The Bernie Blackout Is Real, and These Screenshots Prove It," with regard to the previous democratic presidential primary, "CNN, Washington Post and The New York Times tacitly admitted their reporting on the 2016 election was inadequate and flawed." Such behavior extended far beyond a refusal to give Bernie Sanders news coverage, even to helping Hilary Clinton cheat in a debate by providing her with the debate questions in advance and to Clinton campaign staff and members of the democratic party leadership actively telling news outlets to kill specific news stories and take or keep certain pundits off the air.
With more candidates in the mix, in some ways the situation has only gotten worse. Not only has Bernie Sanders received less coverage than other candidates, but he has been purposely removed from headlines and lists of top candidates, even when he has topped most or all of the candidates who are listed. For far more detail on the subject, and, believe me, it's downright insidious, I seriously recommend you read Higdon and Huff's article. The amount of misinformation that has occurred is mind-boggling.
The Media's Electability Bugaboo
In a situation that's part and parcel of the blackout I've mentioned, the criteria of "electability" that has been put on such a pedestal by the establishment and the media has been manipulated and even falsified. Throughout the 2016 election, poll after poll showed Bernie Sanders with a higher likelihood of beating Drumpf than Hilary Clinton, but news outlets insisted that it was Clinton who led in that respect.
The current primary has been panning out in a similar way. Up until quite recently, the party line was that Biden was by far the most electable of all the candidates versus the incumbent, and in the end, everyone would have to fall in line behind Biden and vote for him, regardless of his policy proposals and his record. The polls didn't disagree entirely, but they showed Biden as having not a wide margin but only a one or two percent advantage over his closest competitors, a number of whom, including Bernie Sanders in every case, were also projected to defeat Drumpf. Now, however, Biden is falling behind, and the latest poll from Newsweek shows Sanders on top. I haven't seen the response to this poll yet, but will it be accepted by other news outlets, or will they point to previous polls or invent their own polls to say that Sanders is definitely not the most electable?
And what is this vaunted "electability" that they talk about? Is it the nationwide popularity of a candidate and the likelihood that all different types of voters will vote for the candidate? By and large, no. "Electability" for the mass media is the amount of support a candidate will get from the democratic establishment in Washington and other strongholds, who the superdelegates would vote for, or who the DNC wouldn't try to undermine in the primary.
I don't know much about Vox, but based on their articles I've read in the past, I haven't considered them an establishment news outlet. However, in their three-article series on "the best case for each of the top Democratic contenders" in which they state "Vox does not endorse individual candidates," they seem to deal in the same sort of misdirection you might see on MSNBC. In their article "Joe Biden is the only candidate with a real shot at getting things done," Laura McGann gushes for page after page about Biden, sounding more like the president of the Joe Biden fan club than a journalist. In the course of that gushing, she cites endorsements by a number of democratic officeholders and opines that having these endorsements, and other support, in swing states gives Biden the best chance to win.
In stark contrast, one can only surmise from Matthew Yglesias's tepid Vox piece "Bernie Sanders can unify Democrats and beat Trump in 2020" that Yglesias picked the short straw, then reluctantly ground out a piece that contained a small percentage more positive comments than negative ones...though even that seems up for debate. Giving Vox the benefit of the doubt for a moment, beyond the writer's obvious lack of enthusiasm, perhaps one issue is that these articles were written in a series rather than all at once, and maybe that's why they're not comparable. Still, you'd think that in such a series, you'd have easy points of comparison between the articles to help readers compare the candidates (by the way, the second article in the series was on Elizabeth Warren), but in at least one major respect, that's not the case: Yglesias doesn't write a single word about Sanders' performance in the 2016 primary.
The media is always talking about the swing states and citing them as the key to winning an election against Drumpf. If they're so important, then Yglesias seriously dropped the ball. McGann, who also seems a bit culpable, claims "Biden [the current establishment democrat] consistently holds the highest margin in swing states" such as Michigan and Wisconsin, but she fails to mention the fact that Bernie Sanders (the progressive democrat) beat Hilary Clinton (the establishment democrat) in those two states, both of which Trump won when pitted against Clinton. Yglesias, on the other hand, doesn't even mention the concept of a swing state or any of Sanders' wins in 2016, despite the fact that he won the 2016 democratic primary in five of the swing states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.
I always approve of online articles when they include notes about revisions and corrections that were made based on new information that came to light—that bespeaks a certain amount of journalistic integrity. Given that the Vox series is supposed to provide direct comparison between what have been the top three candidates, I would think that the gushing in the Biden piece would prompt a similarly enthusiastic revision of the Sanders and Warren pieces. That hasn't happened. But, now playing devil's advocate, or perhaps just being realistic, with Biden falling in the polls, one might come to the conclusion that the excessive enthusiasm in the Biden article—and its timing just before the Iowa caucus—is there because the article is meant to boost his candidacy, rather than to objectively describe his chances in the election or his "electability."
Electability for the People
Ask the average person on the street what electability means, and their first answer is likely to be "whoever will beat Trump," given what they've been force-fed by the media, but if you allow them to continue, they're likely to talk about someone they can trust, someone they like, someone who has good policies, or someone who's looking out for them.
If we're to believe Hilary Clinton, no one likes Bernie Sanders, but if we're to believe the primary results from 2016, at least 13 million Americans who voted in that election might kinda like him...at least more than they like Hilary. Even right after the 2016 election, when some democrats were blaming Sanders for Hilary's losing, polling showed that Sanders was the most trusted politician in the country. All other polls on that topic since then have echoed that sentiment, such as the 2017 Harvard-Harris poll discussed in Mother Jones that "found almost 60 percent of Americans view the Vermont senator favorably. Among certain demographics, the progressive politician’s ratings are even higher: 80 percent of Democratic voters, 73 percent of registered black voters, and 68 percent of registered Hispanic voters view Sanders favorably.
At the same time, signature programs that Sanders is driving are supported by the majority of Americans. For example, a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation reaffirms its findings starting in 2016 that most Americans are in favor of Medicare For All. The poll shows that 56% overall are in favor, and, more importantly in this primary, 77% of democrats are in favor. Making public colleges free and eliminating student debt garnered 58% support overall in a Hill-Harris poll in September, and 72% of democrats were on board.
And what about the Green New Deal? It seems that people might kind of like that idea too, based on the poll discussed in the Grist article "Poll: The Green New Deal is as popular as legalizing weed." According to writer Zoya Teirstein, "The plan enjoys wide popularity among almost all demographics.... 63 percent of national adults think the climate proposal is a good idea, while 60 percent of registered voters (the folks who are capable of actually putting politicians in office who will make the green dream a reality) support it. A whopping 86 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Independents are in favor of the plan."
I don't know about you, but if a presidential candidate is the most trusted politician in the entire country, is viewed favorably by the majority of the people in the country, and has based their campaign on policies that are overwhelmingly popular with members of their political party, I would tend to think that candidate is pretty damn electable.
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