When it came time to report these developments on Monday's Good Morning America, well, it's ABC--what can one say? Correspondent Tom Llamas opened by reporting that Sanders won Sunday's Maine caucus then immediately downplays this by adding, "but Clinton [is] still way ahead when it comes to delegates." There are clips from the Democratic debate--the coverage here is absent any real analysis and light on substance, as usual, but at least includes clips of the candidates hacking on one another and a funny Sanders line, which is a change of pace from the usual Clinton-centric selections. When Llamas turns to the Republican race, he describes the results as "a seismic weekend for the Republican field, Sen. Ted Cruz having a super Saturday, winning two states and taking the most delegates."
Here's the thing: in the weekend's Democratic contests, Bernie Sanders won the same two states as Cruz (Maine and Kansas). He won them by much larger margins than Cruz.[1] He also won Nebraska by a healthy 57.1%. Clinton beat Sanders pretty brutally in Louisiana--71.1% to Sanders' 23.2%--but Sanders took three of the weekend's four Democratic contests by huge margins and walked away with more delegates--67 to Clinton's 64. For ABC News, only the much less impressive Cruz results--winning 2 out of 5 contests--constitute a "seismic weekend," a "super Saturday." Other than the Maine results, which the report pooh-poohs, the Democratic contests--and Sanders wins--don't merit any mention, as if they never happened at all.
--j.
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[1] Cruz took Maine with 45.9% of the vote, Sanders won there with 62.3%; Cruz took Kansas by 48.2%, Sanders by 67.7%.
One hopes that perhaps the Press are merely inept, misled by their OWN lack of interest (in Bernie). Yet I can't escape the idea that their suppression of news about Bernie is actually deliberate, and therefore, hostile, malevolent, ill-intentioned.
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