Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has dropped out of the Democratic presidential race, clearing a path for the weak and uninspiring Joe Biden to clench the nomination and bumble his way into losing to Donald Trump in the general. What brought us to this? Well...
After the first 3 contests of this year's Democratic presidential race, Bernie Sanders was riding high, getting the most votes in Iowa, taking New Hampshire then managing a major blow-out win in Nevada. Then, within only a few days, the entire race suddenly shifted, at the break of a neck, to his major rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. It was an extraordinary on-a-dime turnaround the likes of which modern American politics had never seen.
Corporate press outlets began writing up explanations for it--post-mortems for Sanders while Sanders was still in the race. In "
How It All Came Apart for Bernie Sanders," the New York Times focused on "fateful decisions and internal divisions" within the Sanders campaign, particularly Sanders' refusal to make an aggressive case against Biden. The Huffington Post's version--"
Bernie Sanders Soared Back To Life. But He Couldn't Close the Deal"--covers most of the same ground. Sanders' unwillingness to go hard at his opponents--a courtesy they've never extended to him--has been a standing problem in both of his presidential campaigns. With "
The Establishment Didn't Destroy Bernie Sanders. He Destroyed Himself," Slate offered an even stronger Clintonite-right slant, arguing the direct opposite. Recalling Sanders losses, William Saletan asserts
"one reason for this pattern is Sanders' constant message of antagonism.
He has cultivated enemies instead of friends. Now he's paying the price... What Sanders fails to understand is the connection between his defeats
and his rhetoric. It wasn't the media or the Democratic National
Committee that turned Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and millions of voters
against him. It was Sanders. His relentless message of conflict, along
with his expanding list of putative enemies, attracted a fraction of the
electorate but alienated everybody else. As the primaries narrowed to a
two-man race, his base was no longer enough to win. The establishment
didn’t destroy Bernie Sanders. He destroyed himself."
Much of that article is sheer Clintonite-right fantasy. In that same vein falls the New York Times' "
How 'Never Bernie' Voters Threw In With Biden and Changed the Primary":
"[B]eyond ideology, race and turnout, a
chief reason for Mr. Biden’s success has little to do with his
candidacy. He became a vehicle for Democrats... who were
supporting other candidates but found the prospect of Mr. Sanders and
his calls for political revolution so distasteful that they put aside
misgivings about Mr. Biden and backed him instead.
"In
phone interviews, dozens of Democrats, mostly aged 50 and over, who
live in key March primary states like Massachusetts, Virginia, Michigan
and Florida, said that Mr. Biden’s appeal went beyond his case for
beating President Trump. It was his chances of overtaking Mr. Sanders,
the only candidate in the vast Democratic field they found objectionable
for reasons personal and political."
In reality, "Never Sanders" Democrats are like "Never Trump" Republicans--mostly a press-manufactured fairy-tale that takes what is, in reality, a microscopic portion of the electorate and tries to elevate it to a major force of great significance. The
Harvard CAPS/Harris poll has tracked Bernie Sanders' favorability more closely and for longer than any other pollster. Democrats with a "very unfavorable" opinion of Bernie Sanders have, over the past 4 years, floated at 4-7%--barely more than a margin-of-error faction. At the end of February--the
last poll before Sanders' Super Tuesday losses--it stood at 7%. Tracking with the other favorability polls throughout the current contest, Sanders' favorability among Democrats was, at the time, identical to Biden's; it has always been equivalent to or better than Biden's. Challenging this same Times piece, Olivia Riggio of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
points out:
"Such [Never Sanders] voters no doubt exist, but that they exist in numbers large enough
to swing the election is dubious. In the last Morning Consult poll
conducted prior to Super Tuesday (2/23–27/20),
74% of Democratic voters said they viewed Sanders favorably, vs. 22%
who saw him unfavorably. For Biden, it was 67% favorable, 27%
unfavorable. A month later (3/23–29/20),
no doubt boosted by media treating him as the nominee-apparent, Biden’s
numbers had improved to 76%/20%--but Sanders favorability was little
changed, at 72%/23%."
If news really is, as Alan Barth observed, "the first rough draft of history," future generations will find little real explanation inside these pre-post-mortems for what has happened. The fact that all of them were written while Sanders was still in the race does, however, point to what actually changed that race. David Karpf,
associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University,
provides some critical context:
"There are a few measurable activities that we generally associate with
strong campaigns. They identify supporters, raise money, make headlines,
frame the debate, knock on doors, make phone calls, and turn people out
to vote. Biden's did virtually none of those things. Mike Bloomberg
spent an unprecedented $500 million on advertising and field
campaigning; Biden's campaign was on the brink of running out of money.
Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar all had memorable
debate moments that seized public attention; Biden's debate performances
were cringe-inducing at worst, forgettable at best. Bernie Sanders
spent five years building a massive grassroots movement, and built
momentum with early victories; Biden barely had field offices in several
Super Tuesday states and won elections where he hadn’t bothered to
campaign."
Prior to his South Carolina win, Biden hadn't held
a single campaign event in a single
Super Tuesday state in over a month. This was sometimes attributed to a lack of funds but while that was no doubt a factor, Biden's handlers had mostly kept him off the campaign trail right from the beginning, likely out of a reasonable fear that too high a public profile would draw attention to his appalling record, expose his cognitive decline and sink his campaign. There's never been any real public enthusiasm for his candidacy. He was never able to draw significant crowds
and had been forced to hold his few campaign events in small venues, with
journalists often outnumbering non-journalist Biden supporters. His spending on campaign ads was minimal. He had no real policy platform. But while Biden didn't have much in the way of a traditional campaign organization or a traditional campaign, he had the one thing on his side that proved decisive. Arguably the most important factor in the outcome of the primary race is the
thing that is barely mentioned or entirely absent as a stated factor from all those press
explanations of what happened but
is, however, represented by them: the press itself.
Karpf gets this. Sort of. He writes:
"Biden came out on top because he captured the media narrative at just
the right time. A string of prominent endorsements fueled a tidal wave
of enthusiastic media coverage. That free media attention proved more
powerful than Sanders' legion of well-organized grassroots supporters or
Bloomberg's limitless checkbook."
While this is true, it's only a piece of a much larger story. Karpf is right about Biden's bad debate performances but something he doesn't bring up--and that points to the bigger picture here--is that after each of those, corporate press outlets widely declared Biden the
winner. Even his catastrophic performance in the September debate, which, like so many other things Biden has said and done, would have ended any other campaign on the spot, saw him
broadly praised as the victor. The reversal of Biden's fortunes wasn't just a consequence of that one extraordinary "tidal wave of enthusiastic media coverage."
The hatred shown by most corporate press outlets for progressives in general and Bernie Sanders in particular is a subject this author has covered at some length over the years. In the present campaign, as in 2016, much of the press has alternated between covering him as little as possible and, when covering him was necessary, doing so in a relentlessly negative way. The expression of this antipathy runs the gamut from visceral terms--MSNBC's Mimi Rocah
declared "Bernie Sanders makes my skin crawl"--to what seem more like petty, sophomoric pranks, like tv news programs working against Sanders by
manipulating on-screen graphics. The disproportionate focus in those pre-post-mortem analyses on dissension within the Sanders campaign is just the latest iteration of what has become a well-established press genre,
Sanders In Perpetual Crisis--press outlets have declared Sanders' campaign to be fading, in trouble, failing, dying, dead since before he officially entered the race.
The treatment of Sanders' Clintonite-right rivals makes for quite a vivid contrast. Designated as "moderates" and "centrists" and "center-left" candidates--designations that are, themselves, ideologically rather than factually based and intended to make these candidates sound more appealing--many of them went through periods when their candidacies were being promoted by the major press outlets. Beto O'Rourke's candidacy was a press invention. The intense focus on him that had goaded him into the race dried up once he entered it; his candidacy eventually followed. Elements of the press tried very hard--and ultimately unsuccessfully--to make both Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg into hot items. And, of course, Joe Biden--by any serious analysis a joke candidate--has not only been the focus of most press attention throughout the process but has been actively promoted through long periods of the race and has faced virtually no serious scrutiny, as the press has largely swept under the rug his profound shortcomings.
This is the background for the big 2020 primary-season turnaround.
It was during the weeks in which Sanders led the Democratic race--a time when, normally, the candidate in that kind of lead would be bolstered by positive press coverage because of his wins--that the hostility of the press to his candidacy reached its zenith. Instead of positive coverage, Sanders' every win was met with an array of narratives that dismissed, downplayed, explained them away, while, at the same time, treating them as outright disastrous and harbingers of coming disaster for Democrats. Faced with the prospect of a potential Sanders nomination and presidency, the corporate press broke out the hazmat suits and uncapped an 85-gallon drum of nuclear Smear and Fear, intent on drowning both Sanders and the progressive movement in it. What followed was a concentrated campaign of malicious defamation that escalated with every Sanders win. This author has described it as a gang-rape of Sanders, and the metaphor is appropriate. Once Sanders has been sufficiently maligned to completely kill his momentum and make him seem, to a Democratic electorate focused on defeating Trump, far too risky a general-election prospect, the press treated Biden's resulting win in conservative, deep-red South Carolina as a major turning-point in the race and lavished the former Vice President with glowingly positive coverage as dense as a neutron star leading into Super Tuesday and beyond, all the while continuing to pound Sanders and treating
his cause, once he fell behind, as lost. Sanders' own errors and failings as a candidate are many and varied (and will almost certainly be the subject of a subsequent article) but future historians looking to understand the sudden and radical shift in the 2020 race in those weeks must start with the press.
Corporate press antipathy toward progressives is, of course, nothing new. Even when their views are in line with most of the public, progressives are treated as some kind of kooky fringe, their ideas ridiculed, rejected as totally unrealistic or actively destructive and dismissed without any real hearing, usually by megaphoning the self-concerned objections to them by the entrenched business and financial interests whose bottom line they'd affect. A very long-running theme in political coverage is that "moderate" = "electable," with "moderate" defined as well to the right of both the Democratic base and the general public. Democrats are goaded into supporting candidates of that species, which are presented as the serious, pragmatic option, as opposed to those rigid, inflexible pie-in-the-sky lefties. When the candidate wins, it's chalked up to his "moderation." When the candidate fails, it's said to be because he was Too Liberal, and the advised solution is always the same: move (even further) right. In much of the corporate press, all of this is treated as Conventional Wisdom. Those with a little grey in the hair and who follow public affairs have heard it in an infinity of variations for decades. Progressive press critic Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, founded in 1986,
has documented it for the length of the org's existence.
In the current cycle, Joe Biden and the other Clintonite-right candidates plugged into this long-running narrative, arguing that they were more "electable" than Sanders. Biden, in fact, made this the major selling-point of his campaign. That's fair enough--it
is a presidential race, after all, and candidates are going to try to make the case that they're the best choice--but by continuing to perpetuate this narrative and refusing to interrogate it,[1] corporate press outlets were acting as a de facto arm of these campaigns. This was particularly the case with the Biden campaign, as the press was, in that case, directly promoting its
central theme at every opportunity but giving it a sheen of greater respectability than it may have had coming from the campaign itself (where it could be seen as self-serving). Many journalists have enthusiastically embraced this role. Polls showed Democratic voters prioritizing defeating Trump;[2] Sanders' opponents, both in the race and in the press, recognized that the way to defeat Sanders was to make him seem unelectable. The idea that he would lose to Trump, kill Democrats'
chances of winning the Senate, cost them the majority in the House of
Representatives and have a devastating impact on downballot races was, despite being an extreme doomsday scenario, unsupported by any real data and contradicted by both the available data on the question (which was never consulted) and much of the electoral history of the last few decades,
presented,
hour after hour across national media outlets,
as self-evident.[3] During the period under examination here, from mid-to-late-January forward, this theme was ubiquitous.[4]When it came to trying to stop Sanders in those weeks, nothing was considered too
extreme, too out-of-bounds. Major media figures felt entirely
comfortable going on nationwide television and comparing the success of
the Jewish Sanders to the rise of
Nazism. Historians won't recognize
the Third Reich in anything Sanders has said or done but they will find
something very familiar about press language during this same period
that compared Sanders to natural disasters and plague. Sanders was said to be the same as Trump--as vacuous a trope as was produced by a campaign not exactly noted for its intelligent consideration of substantive issues. He was presented as a candidate supported by the Russians, via their illicit scheming.
Sanders self-identifies as a democratic socialist. Polls show a large number of Americans, primarily older people, to be uncomfortable with the idea of "socialism." Those polls don't ask about democratic socialism though, and given the fact that polls also show overwhelming public support for most of the policies that make up Sanders' "democratic socialism," they arguably aren't even relevant to Sanders but the press, perceiving this as a Sanders weakness, sought to exploit it; efforts to portray him as some kind of would-be Bolshevik proliferated. Stories from Sanders' more radical younger days and of his past associations were trotted out and harped on, McCarthy style. In the wake of Sanders' Nevada win, the press went through a period of particularly intense focus on his decades-old praise of Cuba's post-revolution literacy program. Sanders was portrayed, more broadly, as an apologist for Marxist dictatorships.
It was suggested that if Sanders the socialist won, there may be executions of dissidents in New York's Central Park.
Sanders has attracted a large, enthusiastic grassroots following,
particularly among young voters, a constituency notoriously difficult to
mobilize. While entirely eschewing the corrupt, big-money fundraisers
that usually capitalize political campaigns, Sanders outraised every
other Democratic candidate with small donations from supporters. His
campaign events draw far larger crowds than any other Dem contender. All
of this should be cause for celebration, an indication of the
candidate's strengths, both obvious and potential.
Instead,
Sanders' supporters are persistently presented by the press as
problematic, as a cruel, sexist, racist, even dangerous white
male rabble, something akin to a cult. "Bernie Bros" whose enthusiasm
and strong defense of their candidate is presented as obsessive
fanaticism, they themselves as demented, radical thugs who take glee
in sadistically bullying women and people of color and whose existence
suggests something fundamentally wrong with Sanders, his campaign and
progressive in general. These are constant themes in the coverage of
Sanders. Sanders supporters alone are treated this way by the press and
Sanders alone has repeatedly faced demands that he condemn his own
supporters. Sanders' repeated and unconditional condemnation of
bullying, harassment and so on--things he did nothing to encourage in
the first place--only provoke further demands that he do more to shut up
progressives, coupled with the suggestion--or the insistence--that he
hasn't actually condemned such behavior anyway. "They're deplorable and he could stop them if he would but he won't."
The following timeline documents these and other themes--the major themes in Sanders' press coverage from mid-January until his exit from the presidential race--and examines their impact. It isn't comprehensive; it does effectively convey the flavor of that coverage.
We join the campaign already in progress. In "
The Orwellian Assault on Bernie Sanders," Branko Marcetic, writing in Jacobin, covers a few days in the middle of January, which nicely sets up where things then stood and what was to follow:
"Let's review what happened just this last week. First Politico succeeded in drumming up outrage
over an anodyne Sanders campaign script that instructed volunteers to
tell people they 'like Elizabeth Warren' and consider her their 'second
choice,' but that they had concerns about her more affluent,
well-educated voter base, a base that was originally described in another Politico report. This was roundly condemned as a vicious attack by the Sanders camp.
"Next, in one of the most finely orchestrated bits of political
theater in recent memory, CNN first reported Warren's allegation that
Sanders had told her in 2018 a woman couldn't win the presidency against
Trump, a contested claim her own campaign doesn't seem to be sure about. Then, during the following night's debate, a CNN moderator flatly treated
Warren’s version of events as fact, all but called Sanders a liar on
national TV when he denied it, and teed Warren up for a pre-prepared and
factually dubious
speech about the candidates' electoral histories. At a time of
extraordinary political division, the incident was notable for uniting
everyone from the National Review to NPR to Morning Joe to Hill.TV’s Rising in condemnation of the lack of professionalism involved.
"As footage circulated of a post-debate altercation between
Warren and Sanders, the surrounding discourse only became more unhinged.
The LA Times published a piece attacking Sanders's rejected outstretched hand as a master class in handling sexism, accusing Sanders of 'gaslighting' Warren. Sanders’s liberal enemies began weaponizing the language of sexual assault, insisting that Warren--a politician with a history of incorrect claims about her own past and currently trying to win an election--should be 'believed'
as we would an assault survivor. Even Bush-era apparatchiks could now
leverage their newfound feminist bona fides to join in the pile-on:
Matthew Dowd--who once helped run a campaign for a guy accused by several women of sexual harassment--seemed to suggest that the only way Sanders could now prove he wasn't sexist was to simply step aside and let Warren win the nomination.
"Meanwhile, MSNBC’s Joy Reid brought on a 'body language expert' who moonlights as an anti-vaccine conspiracist
to tell us how Sanders’s hand gestures and posture proved he was
definitely lying about the Warren allegation. At this rate, it won't be
long before Brian Williams invites a psychic to tell viewers that
Sanders’s parents actually oppose Medicare for All from beyond the
grave."
Marcetic writes that "somehow none of this even qualifies as the low point of the week," and goes on to make the case that said low-point was when the press decided to "condemn Sanders and his campaign for the crime of criticizing Biden for
his very real history of trying to cut entitlements like Social
Security," condemnations which included the straight-up lie that Sanders was being dishonest about that history.
Marcetic is prophetic:
"Why is this happening? The simple answer is that these quarters have
belatedly realized Sanders has a real shot at winning, and the
anti-Sanders attack machine is now revving up into overdrive to stop
him. From December onward, it started with bogus antisemitism accusations, dipped back into the well of misogyny accusations, and now the new line--for the moment, at least--is that Sanders is a Trump-like demagogue. Here’s former Republican aide and Breitbart spokesperson and sometime contributor Kurt Bardella--fresh off his own conveniently timed rebranding as a woke Democrat--solemnly warning that Trump's and Sanders's supporters share the same aggressive intolerance. Just yesterday, Hillary Clinton amplified these voices for the umpteenth time."
This was only the beginning...
Washington Post, 15 Jan.: "
Bernie Sanders's Agenda Makes Him the Definition of Unelectable":
"In
the lead-up to the Iowa caucuses, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is
arguing that he is the Democratic candidate most likely to beat
President Trump. He has touted his electability in speeches and interviews and on social media, and his campaign has said it welcomes a debate on electability.
"We
should have that debate, because the fact is that the United States has
never elected anyone as president who is as far left as Sanders. The
only modern Democratic nominees approaching Sanders's ideological views
were former vice president Walter Mondale in 1984 and then-Sen. George
McGovern in 1972. Together, they won a scant 30 electoral college votes
and lost the popular vote by a combined 35 million votes. Mondale's
wipe-out was the biggest electoral college loss in U.S. history.
"The
centerpiece of that agenda is Medicare-for-all, a politically toxic
proposal that represents the only way Democrats could fumble away their
health-care advantage over Trump. Democrats’ pledge to preserve and
expand on President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act was a decisive
factor in flipping the House from red to blue in 2018. Sanders would do
the opposite, ditching Obamacare in favor of his single-payer, government-run proposal. This plan has steadily lost popularity over the past year and fares particularly poorly in the make-or-break 'Blue Wall' states...Electability
matters down the ballot as well. If Sanders is the nominee, he will
face the spectacle of Democrats in swing states and districts running
from his agenda, not toward it... Let's be clear: Sanders is not only far less electable against Trump
than is Joe Biden, but he's also less electable than Sens. Elizabeth
Warren (Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), former mayors Pete Buttigieg
and Mike Bloomberg, and just about anyone else who qualifies for a
debate stage or is registering in national polls. Of course, loyal
Democrats, including us, would absolutely vote for Sanders against
Trump. But the Sanders agenda won’t stand up to scrutiny for a lot of
people who are open to ousting him. That's the definition of
unelectable."
Notes:
--A Kaiser Family Foundation poll from a few weeks prior to this article
showed that 74% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents favored the "politically toxic proposal" of Medicare For All.
--Walter Mondale wasn't "approaching Sanders' ideological views"; he was a lifelong moderate who won the 1984 nomination by defeating the progressive candidate (Jesse Jackson). Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were, when it came to domestic policy, very similar to Sanders; significantly to his left in many respects. But, of course, they won.
--The article insists Sanders is "less electable" than several candidates. It's interesting to compare that conclusion to the then-current head-to-head polling. The RealClearPolitics
database lists 4 Trump-vs.-Amy Klobuchar polls from January, when that article was written. In all four, Trump and Klobuchar were in a statistical tie. Mike Bloomberg was
statistically tied with Trump in 3 of the 5 polls that month and winning over the margin of error in two. In the 8
Trump-vs.-Buttigieg polls, Buttigieg was statistically tied with Trump in all but one. In the 8
Warren/Trump polls, Warren wins 3, loses to Trump in one and is tied in the others. The article asserts that Sanders is "far less electable" than Biden; in the 8
Biden/Trump polls, Biden was winning 4 and tied in 4. There were 8
Sanders/Trump polls, Sanders was winning 4 and tied in 4, matching Biden and outperforming every other candidate. This isn't, of course, a conclusive case that Sanders or Biden
are more electable than the others but that is the data available on the question and the commentary on the matter of "electability," as offered here and restated over and over again in the press during this period, is entirely disconnected from--and, more importantly, directly contradicted by--that data.
Politico, 16 Jan.: "
Bernie 'Will Play Dirty': Ex-Vermont Governor Slams Sanders":
"In an interview with POLITICO, Peter Shumlin--who has endorsed Joe
Biden for president in 2020 and served as Vermont's governor from 2011
to 2017, while Sanders represented the state in the Senate--warned that
Sanders, an independent and a self-described democratic socialist,
ultimately did not feel loyalty to Democrats.
"'What I've seen in Bernie's politics is he and his team feel they're
holier than the rest. In the end, they will play dirty because they
think that they pass a purity test that Republicans and most Democrats
don't pass,' said Shumlin. 'What you're seeing now is, in the end, even
if he considers you a friend, like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie will come
first. That's the pattern we've seen over the years in Vermont, and
that's what we are seeing now nationally'... Shumlin accused Sanders of trying to
'Hillarize' Warren, saying the senator had cast Hillary Clinton, too, as
an elitist, contributing to divisions in the Democratic electorate.
"'We should be weakening Donald Trump,
not each other,' Shumlin said. 'I'm concerned that we're seeing a replay
of the kind of dynamics that didn't allow Hillary to win.'"
Blaming Sanders for Clinton's loss--and, most hilariously, for the
perception of the insufferably elitist Clinton as an elitist--is Clintonite-right boilerplate nonsense,[5] as is the practice of pejoratively characterizing anyone with any basic standards, beyond party affiliation, in what they want from a candidate as holding to some entirely unreasonable "purity test." Bernie Sanders as some sort of "dirty" fighter--more Clinton garbage--is straightforward gaslighting; one of the things the less delusional of those press-authored pre-post-mortems get right is that a central failing of both of Sanders' presidential campaigns was his absolutely adamant refusal to attack his opponents. He allowed them to treat him as a punching bag and never really fought back.
NBC News, 19 Jan.: "
Trump's MAGA Supporters And Twitter Bernie Bros Have This Ugly Tactic In Common":
"Time and again, we see how backlash on social
media is used to bully people into submission and silence criticism... The attacks against Warren come from the same corners of social media that disparage Democrats (like myself) as being 'puppets,' 'centrist,' 'anti-Semitic, and 'ageist' for having the audacity to question or scrutinize their chosen leader. People of color and women who dare to disagree with Sanders' political assertions have often borne the brunt of this abuse.
"This hyper-vocal faction of Sanders supporters--colloquially know as 'Bernie Bros'--never went away after the 2016 presidential election. In my personal experience, these bros are almost overwhelmingly white
men. And they share, like Trump's ardent supporters, a desire to 'put me
in my place.' Disturbingly, there are times where you really can't distinguish between the tone and tactics of Trump's #MAGA nation and Sanders' 'Bros.'"
New York Times, 19 Jan.: "
The Democrats' Best Choices For President":
"Mr. Sanders would be 79 when he assumed office, and after an October
heart attack, his health is a serious concern. Then, there's how Mr.
Sanders approaches politics. He boasts
that compromise is anathema to him. Only his prescriptions can be the
right ones, even though most are overly rigid, untested and divisive. He
promises that once in office, a groundswell of support will emerge to
push through his agenda. Three years into the Trump administration, we
see little advantage to exchanging one over-promising, divisive figure
in Washington for another."
The Times offered, instead, a duel endorsement of Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren, neither of whom would win a single primary before dropping out of the race.
Buzzfeed, 20 Jan.: "
Joe Biden’s Powerful Weapon In His Fight With Bernie Sanders: Vulnerable House Democrats":
"[I]n some cases [Biden's endorsements by party insiders] reflects a growing concern among moderates that
Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from Vermont, remains a
frontrunner.
"Biden made that argument in a roundabout way during an interview posted Sunday by the State, a South Carolina newspaper.
"'I'm
just asking the rhetorical question,' Biden told the newspaper. '"Bernie's at the top of the ticket in North and South Carolina, or [Sen.
Elizabeth] Warren’s at the top of the ticket. How many Democrats down
the line do you think are going to win? It's just practical.'
"[Ami] Bera [of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee],
in a telephone interview with BuzzFeed News, was more explicit: 'I
think that if Bernie Sanders is our nominee, it'll make a lot of these
Trump districts that we picked up extremely competitive and probably
does put our House majority in jeopardy. If you nominate anyone else,
Bernie Sanders or even Sen. Warren, it’s going to be hard for me... I’ve
heard that multiple times, and I think other members in these
competitive districts are hearing that same thing'... Bera's remarks came days after Jim Messina--the manager of Barack
Obama and Biden's 2012 reelection campaign who recently attended a Biden
fundraiser but has not endorsed a 2020 candidate--raised concerns
about Sanders in an interview with Politico.
"'If
I were a campaign manager for Donald Trump and I look at the field, I
would very much want to run against Bernie Sanders,' Messina said. 'I
think the contrast is the best. He can say, "I'm a business guy, the
economy's good and this guy's a socialist." I think that contrast for
Trump is likely one that he'd be excited about in a way that he wouldn't
be as excited about Biden or potentially Mayor Pete [Buttigieg] or some
of the more Midwestern moderate candidates.'"
On 20 Jan., anti-corruption campaigner--and Sanders supporter--Zephyr Teachout authored
an article making the case that Biden's long history of corruption makes him a poor choice as a candidate to throw against Trump. Though nothing in this article was even alleged to be inaccurate and Teachout doesn't work for the Sanders campaign, Sanders repudiated the article and
apologized. "It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way," said Sanders. "And I'm sorry that that op-ed appeared." One of Sanders' longest-running themes is, of course, opposition to exactly the sort of corruption Teachout was targeting but Sanders has always insisted on criticizing the corrupt system, rather than personally criticizing those within it. This served him poorly in both 2016 and 2020.
It didn't earn him any courtesy in return; later on the same day Sanders had apologized, Biden was out with
an anti-Sanders attack ad accusing Sanders of lying for accurately reporting Biden's history of advocating cuts to "entitlements" like Social Security. The Sanders campaign had raised this issue repeatedly in the previous weeks. While the press was all too happy to repeat, ad infinitum, Biden's central campaign theme about Sanders' "electability," this was a stake aimed straight at the heart of the former Vice President's base of support--old people--and corporate press outlets were having none of it.
Other writers have covered at some length how the press handled this, fighting back, manufacturing and selling to the public a series of fake rationales for why Biden's plain words, captured on decades of videos, didn't say what they clearly said, insisting that what everyone who knew Biden's record knew to be true wasn't, condemning the Sanders campaigns' accurate criticism as false attacks. Sending Biden's history down a Memory Hole. Straight-up lying for Biden, and doing so under the rubric of "fact-checking" the Sanders campaign. By three weeks into January, Biden, emboldened by these fictions, was regularly citing them in insisting the Sanders camp was lying and that--embellishing further--it was circulating "doctored" video to support its criticism, a false claim that not even Biden's gaslighting press defenders had ever made. And his charges
were being privileged in headlines across the corporate press.
Hillary Clinton,
Hollywood Reporter, 21 Jan.:
"[I]t's not only him [Sanders], it's the culture around him. It's his leadership
team. It's his prominent supporters. It's his online Bernie Bros and
their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the
women. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it
should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture--not only
permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it. And I don't
think we want to go down that road again where you campaign by insult
and attack and maybe you try to get some distance from it, but you
either don't know what your campaign and supporters are doing or you're
just giving them a wink and you want them to go after Kamala [Harris] or
after Elizabeth [Warren]. I think that that's a pattern that people should take into account when they make their decisions."
ABC News, 21 Jan.: "
Hillary Clinton on Sen. Bernie Sanders: 'Nobody Likes Him'":
"Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton levied scathing attacks on Sen. Bernie Sanders in a new Hulu documentary and in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
"Clinton, who competed for the 2016 Democratic nomination against Sanders
and won, claimed that Sanders is unlikable and has been relatively
unaccomplished during his congressional tenure.
"'He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody
likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done,' Clinton
said in the documentary. 'He was a career politician. It's all just
baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.'
"Clinton would not pledge to support Sanders if he won the 2020
Democratic nomination citing the wide Democratic field and concerns
about Sanders’ online supporters, calling them 'Bernie Bros.'"
The Daily Beast, 22 Jan.: "
Bernie Bros Are Loud, Proud, and Toxic to Sanders' Campaign."
The Washington Post, 23 Jan.: "
Sanders Might Actually Be the Democratic Nominee. Nobody Knows If He's Electable."
In this op-ed, Paul Waldman is, as the headline suggests, fearmongering about Sanders' "electability," attacking Sanders on numerous fronts as some too-far-left radical, while--in what had become a common journalistic trope when dealing with Sanders--laundering the attack behind concern-trolling about what Trump and the Republicans would say about Sanders were he to become the Democratic candidate. This piece is notable because only 5 months earlier, the same writer, Waldman, had, in the same publication, the Washington Post, authored a pretty good article, "
Why Democratic Voters Need To Stop Thinking About 'Electability'," in which he made the case for just that. Waldman, in seems, was sweet on Elizabeth Warren's candidacy at the time but was dismayed by a New York Times story featuring
"a bunch of quotes from voters attesting to how much they love Warren but worry that other people
might not like her. And so we witness the vicious cycle of
'electability,' one almost immune to facts and experience, in which both
savvy journalists and ordinary voters convince themselves that general
elections are won by candidates who don’t turn off the mythical average
voter, achieving that majority appeal that can be heard when the
electorate cries as one, 'He’s okay, I guess. I mean, could be worse.'... [T]he entire enterprise of determining 'electability' and then voting
not for the person you prefer but the person you think other people
will prefer is a terrible mistake... Barack Obama was not electable by any of the standards we’re applying to
the 2020 candidates, but he won twice, and by substantial margins.
Donald Trump was not remotely electable, but he won, too... There's an assumption--again, on the part of both commentators and the voters
who get quoted in this kind of story--that when President Trump insults [Warren], it will have some kind of magical power to get people to vote
against her, but that assumption doesn’t carry over onto candidates like
Biden, at whom Trump is also already throwing personal insults. He’ll
do it to whomever the Democratic nominee is, and we have precisely zero
evidence that it makes any difference at all."So
if you're a Democratic primary voter, just vote for the candidate you
like! It might seem like a crazy idea, but it's pretty much the only
primary voting strategy that has been proven to work."
It took only 5 months and the possibility of Sanders becoming the Dem nominee for Waldman, who had derided and talked down Sanders in both the
2016 and
2020 cycles, to walk back all of this and begin darkly dwelling on Sanders' "electability."
Newsweek, 24 Jan.: "
Only 53% of Bernie Sanders Voters Will Definitely Support 2020 Democratic Nominee If He Doesn’t Win: Poll":
"Only a small majority of Bernie Sanders voters say they will
definitely support the eventual Democratic nominee at the 2020 election
if the independent Vermont senator does not win the race, according to a
poll.
"The National Emerson College Poll
of 1,128 registered voters between January 21 and January 23 found that
53 percent of Sanders supporters said 'yes' when asked if they would
support the Democratic nominee even if it is not their candidate.
"Another
31 percent of Sanders supporters said it depends on who the nominee is
and 16 percent flat-out said no. The poll, conducted via landline calls
and an online panel, has a 2.8 percentage point margin of error.
"The
poll suggests some Sanders supporters are out of step with their own
chosen candidate on the question of supporting the Democratic nominee
regardless of who it is.
"'Let me be clear: If any of the women on
this stage or any of the men on this stage win the nomination--I hope
that's not the case, I hope it's me--but if they do I will do everything
in my power to make sure that they are elected in order to defeat the
most dangerous president in the history of our country,' Sanders said at the recent Iowa debate.
"By
comparison to Sanders, 87 percent of former vice president Joe Biden's
supporters said yes to voting for whoever wins the nomination, 9 percent
it depends on the winning candidate, and 5 percent said no to anyone
that is not Biden.
"And
90 percent of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren's supporters said
they would vote for whoever is the nominee, while the remaining 10
percent said it depended on who won the nomination.
"None of Warren's supporters said they would not vote for the eventual nominee if she loses the Democratic race."
Here, as often happened, the fact that Sanders drew a broader base than his rivals and his supporters' greater loyalty to their candidate, both of which should be treated as indications of a candidate's strength, are, instead, presented as problematic, while the fact that the other candidates draw a less loyal base of almost entirely Dem die-hards who say they'd vote for any old Dem, no matter who it may be, isn't presented as a weakness for those campaigns but an ideal of which Sanders' voters fall short. This happened in the 2016 Democratic primaries as well, when polls showed Hillary Clinton's base to be almost entirely Dem die-hards who would have been just as happy to vote for Sanders in the general, whereas Sanders' base, which included not-normally-Dem-minded independents and even some Republicans, were less likely to say they'd support Clinton if she became the nominee. Dems went on, in that year's general, to lose voters they would have gotten had Sanders been the nominee. It further illustrates the fundamental bad faith of the "elctability" narrative as weaponized against Sanders in the 2020 race that the same corporate press obsessed with that matter couldn't resist also spinning this indication of Sanders'
greater "electability" into yet another opportunity to bash Sanders and his supporters. Almost as if bashing Sanders and his supporters, rather than offering any sort of reasoned or consistent analysis of the race, was the point.
Washington Examiner, 25 Jan.: "
Bernie Sanders Isn't A 'Democratic Socialist'--He's An All-Out Marxist."
"The senator's growing appeal ought to be disconcerting to us all,
because Sanders is not the nice, Nordic-style 'democratic socialist' he
claims to be. At his core, Sanders is almost certainly an all-out
Marxist."
Boston Herald, 26 Jan.: "
Democratic Attacks on Bernie Sanders Long Overdue":
"Bernie Sanders’ campaign recently stabbed Elizabeth Warren in the
back. She was the Vermont senator's comrade in arms. It also threw a
pack of lies at Joe Biden, tarring him as corrupt with zero evidence. As
former Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin told Politico, Sanders 'will play
dirty.' The Democrat added, 'I'm concerned that we’re seeing a replay of
the kind of dynamics that didn’t allow Hillary to win.'
"The difference between now and 2016, though, is that Sanders' targets
are finally hitting back. This outbreak of hostilities among Democrats
is not hurting the party. On the contrary. An airing of these grievances
is long overdue."
The Atlantic, 27 Jan.: "
Bernie Can't Win":
"Bernie Sanders is a fragile candidate. He has never fought a race in
which he had to face serious personal scrutiny. None of his Democratic
rivals is subjecting him to such scrutiny in 2020. Hillary Clinton
refrained from scrutinizing Sanders in 2016. It did not happen, either,
in his many races in Vermont... The Trump campaign will not steer clear. It will hit him with everything
it’s got. It will depict him as a Communist in the grip of twisted sexual fantasies, a useless career politician who oversaw a culture of sexual harassment in his 2016 campaign."
The notion that Sanders has never been properly "vetted" is another leftover bit of rubbish from the 2016 Clinton campaign, transformed into a genre in the press. FAIR's Adam Johnson
flattened it back then. A few days before that Atlantic piece, CNN had been flogging it ("
Bernie Sanders Isn't Facing Enough Scrutiny"). The New Republic, to its credit,
very forcefully countered this notion the day after that Atlantic piece. And, of course, this article speaks rather directly to the subject.
NBC News, 27 Jan.: "'
Oh my God, Sanders can win': Democrats grapple with Bernie surge in Iowa":
"[S]ome
Democrats are only just now, a week out from the first contest in the
2020 presidential primary season, beginning to come to grips with the
fact that he could actually win the nomination... A Sanders win would
turn the Democratic Party upside down, much as Donald Trump's victory
did for the GOP in 2016... Now, some moderate Democrats feel the need to
sound the alarm and try to
wake supporters up to the fact that Sanders is not a mere protest
candidate, but a real threat to win the nomination and, they argue,
potentially cost Democrats the election against Trump... [Amy] Klobuchar
suggested that nominating Sanders
could hurt down-ballot Democrats. 'I do not come from a state that is as
blue as Vermont,' she told reporters in Ames. 'I have been able to get
those votes and bring them in. And so I think a lot of people have
talking points about how they can do this. I actually have the
receipts.'
"'We
issued a warning a year ago that Sanders could win the nomination and
would likely lose to Trump. And we've been the only ones really taking
the fight to him,' Bennett said.
"'It's past
time for other Democrats to come off the sidelines and for the media to
start doing its job to vet a serious contender for the nomination,' he
added. 'We simply can't stand by while there's a threat that Democrats
could nominate a guy who would hand such nuclear-level ammunition to the
Trump campaign.'
"Voters at events for
moderate candidates this weekend expressed concern about Sanders'
potential nomination, though all said they would vote for him in the
general election."
A large SurveyUSA poll released only 5 days before this NBC article found that, in
the words of Newsweek, Sanders led Trump "by the widest margin
of all the candidates in the Democratic Party's 2020 race." Sanders had a 9-point lead over Trump. Amy Klobuchar, she with the "receipts," was losing to Trump by two points.
Washington Post, 27 Jan.: "
Bernie Sanders' Trump-Like Campaign Is A Disaster For Democrats":
"While
he has defended himself against attacks from Sen. Elizabeth Warren
(D-Mass.) and against the argument that he lacks age and maturity,
[Pete] Buttigieg has rarely gone negative on any opponent. That is
extraordinary in a primary as close and competitive as this one. He
understands at the end of the process, the bare minimum he must do is
unite the party before turning to every persuadable voter.
"The
polar opposite of this is Sanders and his fleet of Bernie Bros who
slash and burn, attack and smear other Democrats. The New York Times reports
on Sanders’s swarm of online supporters, who have waged vicious and
personal attacks on his critics, often focusing on feminist women... Sanders's own behavior sets the tone and belies the notion that he is
not responsible for the most divisive campaign in the primary."
New York Times, 27 Jan. - "
Bernie Sanders and His Internet Army":
This is an appalling rubbish-tip of an article that regurgitated the "Bernie Bros" narrative at some length. The Times offered nothing to establish that
Sanders' supporters are in any way more toxic or more prone to toxicity
than supporters of any other candidate. Its entire case is--as always--a
handful of scattered anecdotes about the behavior of random idiots on
the internet. The sort of language it uses:
"Some progressive activists who declined to back Mr. Sanders have begun
traveling with private security after incurring online harassment.
Several well-known feminist writers said they had received death
threats. A state party chairwoman changed her phone number. A Portland
lawyer saw her business rating tumble on an online review site after
tussling with Sanders supporters on Twitter... For some perceived Sanders critics, there has been mail sent to home
addresses--or the home addresses of relatives. The contents were
unremarkable: news articles about the political perils of centrism. The
message seemed clear: We know where you live."
The "Portland lawyer" mentioned there was Candice Aiston, to which the article returns a little later:
"Candice Aiston, a lawyer who supported Ms. Harris before she left the
primary, sparred with Sanders supporters last year and found herself
targeted beyond Twitter: Some condemned her in Google reviews of her law
practice and reported her to the Oregon state bar association, which
dismissed the complaints."
Entirely unmentioned is
the fact that Aiston is, herself, a notoriously toxic Twitter troll;
the platform has, in fact, repeatedly suspended her account for her
inappropriate and harassing behavior.
Someone who knew
the subject could, of course, have pointed out that fact, except the
Times mostly excluded anyone with any contrary point of view. Nina
Turner, Sanders' campaign co-chair and one of the only exceptions, was
quoted pointing out that "the same folks who want to complain that
Sanders supporters are more
vicious than anybody else never come out to chastise the supporters of
other candidates," but the Times only included her in order to
immediately dismiss her:
"But many political veterans outside the Sanders operation fault the campaign's handling of the vitriol."
The
Times fixes the blame for the behavior of the "Bernie Bros" firmly on
Sanders himself, dragging the political corpses of Hillary Clinton and
her advisors out of the grave to parrot this line:
"Peggy Huppert, an Iowa activist who
consulted for the 2016 Sanders campaign, said she had decided to support
Mr. Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., in 2020 'in large
part because of the way he conducts himself.' She praised Mr. Sanders’s
letter to supporters after his announcement but said that this message
had plainly failed to resonate.
"'Obama
set the tone for his campaign: "You are positive, you are respectful,
you are civil,"' Ms. Huppert said. 'I guess Bernie hasn't.'... And last
week, Mrs. Clinton resurfaced to revisit old wounds, telling The
Hollywood Reporter that Mr. Sanders was to blame for permitting and
'very much supporting' a toxic campaign culture."
And so on.
New York Magazine, 28 Jan.: "
Running Bernie Sanders Against Trump Would Be an Act of Insanity."
"[T]he totality of the evidence suggests Sanders is an extremely, perhaps
uniquely, risky nominee. His vulnerabilities are enormous and untested.
No party nomination, with the possible exception of Barry Goldwater in
1964, has put forth a presidential nominee with the level of downside
risk exposure as a Sanders-led ticket would bring. To nominate Sanders
would be insane."
Slate, 28 Jan.: "
Bernie Is the Opponent Trump Wants."
Two days before this article, former Trump henchman Lev Parnas released a recording of a conversation with Trump in which
Trump said that, in 2016, he'd feared Hillary Clinton would choose Bernie Sanders as her running-mate, a ticket Trump thought would have been "tougher." While, in fact, the press turned into a recurring narrative the notion that Sanders was the opponent against whom Trump really wanted to run, the Parnas revelation was just one of several behind-the-scenes reports--completely ignored, as usual--that Trump was
afraid of, even
"obsessed" with, Bernie Sanders' popularity and thought Sanders would be a very tough opponent.
USA Today, 29 Jan.: "
Democrats Court Doom By Backing Bernie Sanders. His Ideas Are Toxic Outside Blue America."
"If Democratic voters, hungry for a winner, buy into that myth and
believe that Sanders is the most 'electable' candidate, they will be
making a grave mistake that could hand the presidency back to Donald
Trump."
NBC News, 29 Jan.: "
New Iowa Ad Questions Bernie Sanders' Electability, Questions His Heart Attack":
"A Democratic pro-Israel group will start running a television ad here
Wednesday hitting Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders that
references his heart attack and argues the Vermont independent senator
is unelectable against President Donald Trump.
"The almost $700,000 advertising campaign, from the PAC associated with the group Democratic Majority for Israel, comes as
Sanders has surged in Iowa days before Monday's first-in-the-nation caucuses... Democratic Majority for Israel’s president and
CEO, longtime Democratic pollster Mark Mellman, told NBC News that the
group is concerned both with Sanders' ability to beat Trump and his
views on Israel. Mellman is a longtime Democratic Party pollster who has
worked for a variety of lawmakers, including former Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
"'We looked at
the data and saw that he did have a possibility of getting the
nomination and we thought that would be a big mistake,' Mellman said of
Sanders. 'It's vitally important to defeat Donald Trump and we think
Bernie Sanders is not equipped to do that.'"
Chicago Sun-Times, 30 Jan.: "
Bernie Sanders Supporters Can't See the Forest For the Tree."
Politico, 31 Jan., "
DNC Members Discuss Rules Change To Stop Sanders At Convention":
"A small group of Democratic National
Committee members has privately begun gauging support for a plan to
potentially weaken Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and head off a
brokered convention.
"In conversations on the sidelines of a
DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in
recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility
of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on
the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would
increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top
party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have
their say if the convention is contested... [T]he talks reveal the extent of angst that many establishment Democrats are feeling on the eve of the Iowa caucuses."
Throughout 2019 and 2020, Democratic elites openly discussed derailing democracy in order to stop Sanders and rather than treating it as a major scandal, the press covered it respectfully.
New York Times, 31 Jan.: "
Bernie Sanders Can't Win":
"[Sanders] cannot beat Donald Trump, for the same reason people do not
translate their hatred of the odious rich into pitchfork brigades
against walled estates.
"The
United States has never been a socialist country, even when it most
likely should have been one, during the robber baron tyranny of the
Gilded Age or the desperation of the Great Depression, and it never will
be... The next month presents the last chance for serious scrutiny of Sanders,
who is leading in both Iowa and New Hampshire. After that, Republicans
will rip the bark off him. When they're done, you will not recognize the
aging, mouth-frothing, business-destroying commie from Ben and Jerry’s
dystopian dairy."
The Hill, 31 Jan.: "
Republicans: Want To Reelect Trump? Vote For Bernie":
"Here's what Republican and independent supporters in Iowa can do to reelect Donald Trump: Re-register as Democrats and vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-Vt.) in the February 3 caucuses... Supporters of Donald
Trump--Republicans and independents--should
change their registrations and head to those caucuses to talk up
Bernie... Why should Republicans back Bernie? Because he has a real
chance of
securing the nomination and exactly zero chance of winning the election
in November. Democratic leaders know that, which is why they have been
targeting him these past few weeks... Many senior Democrats, supposedly
including former President Barack Obama, do not think
Bernie can beat Trump. They think his policies are too radical and that
he will not win over the majority of voters; they are correct."
New York Times, 31 Jan.: "
Bernie's Angry Bros."
"...no
other Democratic candidate has so many venomous followers--no Biden
Brothers or Warren Sisters to return fire with fire. The only real
analog in U.S. politics today to the Bernie nasties are the Trump
nasties. They resemble each other in ways neither side cares to admit.
The most obvious resemblance is the adulation they bestow on their
respective champions, whom they treat less as normal politicians than as
saviors who deserve uncritical and uncompromising support."
The Hill, 2 Feb.: "
Trump: I Think Sanders Is A Communist":
"Fox News host Sean Hannity
asked Trump in an interview that aired prior to Super Bowl LIV for
quick reactions to a number of Democratic presidential candidates,
including Sanders.
"'I think he's a communist. I mean, you know,
look, I think of communism when I think of Bernie,' Trump told Fox News
host Sean Hannity."
Axios, 2 Feb.: "
Biden Surrogates Test Electability Argument Ahead of Iowa Clash with Sanders":
"Former Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), a friend and top surrogate for Joe
Biden, said Sunday that if Bernie Sanders were the Democratic nominee,
he'd have a 'very difficult time' beating President Trump and pose a 'serious' threat to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's ability to retain control of
the House... Dodd said many of Sanders' views are 'not mainstream views of Democrats' and that Medicare for All is 'a great mistake'... Trump would have a 'field day' running against socialism, and that would
have repercussions down the ballot, Dodd said. 'Nancy Pelosi does not
want to become the minority leader in the House again,' he said, adding
that 'in the long run, you've got to win on Nov. 3.'"
It's worth noting here, even if Axios didn't, that a
Kaiser poll released only three days before Dodd made these comments showed that 77% of Democrats favored the Medicare For All healthcare plan Dodd insisted was not a mainstream view among Democrats. Most Americans--56%--support it as well. This is consistent with all of the serious polling on that issue.
The day before Dodd spoke, NBC News released
a poll that matched both Biden and "Very Difficult Time" Sanders against Trump and showed that both were beating him by statistically-identical numbers. But among the 70% of Democrats who cited beating Trump as a top priority, Biden had a huge 11% lead over Sanders. Same poll, same respondents.
Like every other, February was a month of Sanders The Unelectable as a central theme of both Sanders' opponents and of the press and like every other month, the data was never referenced when the claim was made. There are 9
Sanders-vs.-Trump polls in the RealCelarPolitics database for the month. Sanders was beating Trump in every one of them, though 3 were statistical ties. There were 9
Biden-vs.-Trump polls, and Biden was winning 8 and losing 1, with 2 of the wins being statistical ties.
Time, 3 Feb.: "
Joe Biden Positions Himself as the Anti-Bernie Sanders in Iowa and Beyond":
"In the days and hours before tonight's caucuses in Iowa, Joe Biden's campaign appears to be making a nuanced, but strategic,
pivot. The former Vice President’s team seems no longer to be running
against Donald Trump or the rest of the Democratic field, but against
one opponent in particular: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
"Democrats must rally around Biden, his campaign
argues repeatedly. It's the only way to prevent Sanders from securing to
the nomination and Trump winning a second term.
"'We cannot nominate Bernie. If he’s the nominee, it’s a disaster,' said Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat who endorsed Biden after dropping out of the presidential race himself last year. 'Socialism is not popular and would sink us.'"
On 3rd February, Sanders landed the most votes in the Iowa caucus. Though his count was thousands of votes more than that of his closest rival Pete Buttigieg, the befuddling rules of the caucus awarded more delegates to Buttigieg, who had poured a fortune into the state to artificially inflate his numbers. "Mr. Electability" Joe Biden finished in a distant 4th place. Biden had run for president 3 times over 33 years and this was the first contest in all of that in which he'd ever won a single delegate (he took only 6).
Unfortunately, the
complete mess the Iowa Democratic party made of the caucus--riddled
with errors, questionable judgment and shady dealing--took many days to
untangle (and was, in fact, never entirely resolved) and
that, rather than the results that eventually emerged, became the major story.
Buttigieg, meanwhile, declared himself the winner and was allowed to take a multi-day victory-lap in the press. The New York Times: "
How Pete Buttigieg Became the Surprise of the Iowa Caucuses" ("Now, as the focus turns to New Hampshire and its primary next Tuesday,
Mr. Buttigieg has emerged as a formidable top-tier contender, harnessing
the momentum from Iowa and campaigning with confidence and a large dose
of swagger."). The New York Daily News: "
Buttigieg Rides Major #Pete-mentum Surge in New Hampshire Polls As Primary Looms" (#Pete-mentum is no joke."). CNN: "
How Pete Buttigieg Rose To the Top" ("Pete Buttigieg knew he had pulled off a feat that, a year ago, was unthinkable"). And so on.
Biden's poor showing, which, if given proper attention by the press, could have had a devastating impact on his campaign, led to a
handful of
critical stories but was basically ignored. Perhaps the most bizarre take on it came from the Washington Post's Dan Balz, who
wrote "Biden has been a lackluster advocate for his own candidacy, and the
weakness of that advocacy was an unwelcome element of his campaign," as if Biden and his campaign and potential presidency were somehow entirely separate things. And, of course, any momentum Sanders may have gained from getting the most votes was lost.
Then, the next day, it was back to business as usual re:Sanders.
Wall Street Journal, 4 Feb.: "
Stop Bernie Sanders Now":
"The socialist senator's extreme positions will lead to Democratic disaster in November."
Laurinburg Exchange, 5 Feb.: "
Sanders Would Hurt State Democrats":
"[Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy] Cooper has amassed an impressive war chest and enjoys early polling
leads against his likely GOP challenger, Lt. Gov. Dan Forest. Other
Democratic candidates for state and local offices have high hopes, as
well, fueled primarily by the polarizing presidency of Donald Trump.
"But if Bernie Sanders--headed from a strong performance in Iowa to a
likely win in New Hampshire--ends up at the top of the ticket, all
bets will be off. North Carolina Republicans couldn’t ask for a bigger
favor.
"Sanders isn’t a garden-variety Democrat. He isn’t even the kind of
progressive Democrat who can now find a secure political home in urban
counties such as Wake, Mecklenburg, and Guilford. Sanders is a
self-professed socialist. In fact, he is a barely reconstructed
apologist for communist dictators.
"I use the term advisedly. In his early days as an activist and local
politician, Sanders championed the Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro and
the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. He honeymooned in the Soviet
Union."
Washington Post, 7 Feb.: "
Is Sanders An Election-Year Disaster Waiting To Happen?":
"The
bleakest assessment came from Marshall Matz, a policy adviser for Sen.
George McGovern's 1972 presidential bid, who said that if Sanders is
nominated, Democrats should expect the sort of landslide loss that
McGovern suffered to President Richard M. Nixon. 'He would not just lose but would lose badly,' Matz told the Stamford Advocate.
"And Republicans, he cautioned, 'are really good at making elections about who's at the top of the ticket.'
"Other
establishment Democrats also fear Trump will barnstorm battleground
states that Democrats need to keep control of the House and regain the
Senate, loudly branding Sanders a socialist--a label many voters find
hard to swallow. Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who led Senate Democrats' campaign arm in 2016, told the Associated
Press, 'I come from a state that's pretty damn red. There is no doubt
that having "socialist" ahead of "Democrat" is not a positive thing in
the state of Montana.' And Republicans, he cautioned, 'are really good at making elections about who’s at the top of the ticket'... So, yes, establishment Democrats are worried, and for good reason... Vulnerable congressional Republicans--as well as Trump--are no doubt
rooting for a Sanders Democratic victory. Some are even trying to make
it happen. There are GOP leaders in South Carolina calling on Republican voters to cast their ballots for Sanders in South Carolina's Feb. 29 open primary."
On 7 Feb., the Democratic candidates held a
debate in New Hampshire and the first 12 minutes were devoted to the question of whether Democrats would be taking a risk by nominating a socialist. Moderator George Stephanopoulos recounted Joe Biden's assertion that Sanders was a risky candidate, quoted Trump's attacks on Sanders' socialism ("Those hits are going to keep coming if you’re the nominee. Why shouldn’t Democrats be worried?") and then sent the matter around the stage, giving each candidate the opportunity to criticize Sanders' alleged lack of electability. Some did, some passed.
Sanders' socialism and its purported negative impact on his electability was rather tiresomely raised as a subject at nearly every Democratic debate in the 2020 cycle, both the moderators and the other candidates making sure to make a front-and-center issue of it, always discussing it (despite Sanders' efforts to add meat to the matter) as a nebulous abstraction separate from the (actually very popular) policies which Sanders defines as the substance of his socialism.
On MSNBC's post-debate coverage (7 Feb.), Chris Matthews went on a fear-mongering
rant against socialism, suggesting that if Sanders won, there could be executions of dissidents in Central Park.
"I have my own views about the word 'socialist'... They go back to the early 1950s. I have an
attitude about them. I remember the Cold War... I believe if Castro and the
Reds had won the Cold War there would have been executions in Central
Park and I might have been one of the ones getting executed. And certain
other people would be there cheering, okay?... I don’t know
what [Sanders] means by socialist."
CNN, 7 Feb.: "
What It's Like To Be Swarmed by Sanders Supporters":
"Two victims of this tell CNN they were so afraid of the online attacks they faced, they don't even want us to describe the circumstances for fear it would start up again."
CNN, 9 Feb.: "
The 'Swarm': How a Subset of Sanders Supporters Use Hostile Tactics to Drown Out Critics":
"More than a dozen social media users spoke to CNN about their experiences with bullying by Sanders supporters.
"They
described threats against family members, the creation of imposter
accounts that resembled their own and what some described as being
'swarmed,' where barrages of vitriol filled their Twitter feeds and
inboxes for days after they posted something critical of Sanders...
Multiple staffers of rival Democratic campaigns--none of whom were
authorized by their campaigns to speak on the record--argue that
trends of bullying within Sanders' online base spring not only from the
scale of his social media following but also the tone of his campaign."
CNN
quotes former Clinton consultant Peter Daou, who, after years of online
hostility to progressives, had a come-to-Jesus moment and became a
Sanders supporter:
"'You're taking one group of obnoxious people online and you're
tarnishing an entire campaign,' said Daou, who said he has also faced
personal attacks for his pro-Sanders opinions."
Without
any sense of self-awareness re:the article's own headline-stated
thesis, CNN stuck that quote (and another by Sanders supporter Laura
Moser) toward the end of the piece, totally overwhelmed by the tales of
Sanders supporters' sadism--in perhaps the 10,000th article devoted to
tales of Sanders supporters' sadism.
"Every candidate has a handful of supporters who are conspiracy loons,
turds, and mentally unwell people. But within the Bernie Sanders
movement, these loons are consistently speaking the most loudly on his
behalf--and Bernie does nothing to stop it. It’s been about
twenty hours since Bernie's goons began disrupting Democrats' speeches
in New Hampshire, and Bernie has yet to disavow it. He's there in the
state. He and his campaign are well aware of what’s going on. They're
just rolling with it. At this point it's clear that either Bernie
approves of this behavior because he thinks it helps him, or that even
Bernie is afraid of how deranged his own goons are. Either way, his
silence is enough to disqualify him as a candidate. If he doesn't have
the strength to take on his own most toxic and deranged supporters, he
sure as hell isn’t fit to be president... When Larry David portrayed
Bernie Sanders on Saturday Night Live last night, he made a point of
calling out the 'Bernie Bros' for their psychotic trolling--and he also
called out Bernie for refusing to call off the dogs."
ABC News, 9 Feb. "
Biden Doubles Down on Warning of Sanders Nomination, Concedes New Hampshire an 'Uphill Battle'":
"Following a debate that featured numerous confrontations between Biden
and Sanders over health care, foreign policy and electability, Biden
again warned that nominating the self-avowed socialist is too risky.
"'I think it's gonna be incredibly more difficult. I'm not gonna say we--look, if I don't get the nomination and Bernie gets it, I'm gonna
work like hell for him. But I tell you what, it's a bigger uphill climb,
running as a senator or a congressperson or as a governor on a ticket
that calls itself a Democratic socialist ticket,' Biden told
Stephanopoulos.
"Biden, as he has done during recent stump speeches, argued that
nominating Sanders would force Democrats up and down the ballot to cope
with the potential downside of being associated with 'a socialist,' a
label President Donald Trump could attack and exploit.
"'It's gonna go all the way down the line. That's what's gonna happen.
You gonna win in North Carolina? You gonna win in Pennsylvania? You
gonna win in those states? In the Midwest?' Biden continued. 'I didn't
put the label on Bernie. Bernie calls himself a Democratic socialist.'"
The same day Biden spoke, Quinnipiac wrapped up a
new poll in which Sanders was beating Trump by 8 points, Biden by 7.
On 10 Feb., Sanders overtook Biden in the RealClearPolitics national
polling average to become the leader of the Democratic field.
CBS News, 10 Feb.: "
Amy Klobuchar 'Troubled' By Having Democratic Socialist Sanders Atop Ticket."
The Bulwark, 10 Feb.: "
Bernie Bros and the Internet of Beefs":
"I was reading the 417th piece about how Bernie supporters form online
mobs that are basically the mirror-image of Twitter MAGA world... An army of people (or bots or Russians or whoever) hounding
opponents, enforcing discipline, quashing any sort of dissent--and trying
to preempt anyone else from taking sides against the Dear Leader.
"Whether or not Bernie is personally coordinating this effort makes absolutely no difference to the facts on the ground.
"No other candidate has anything like this sort of digital brownshirt brigade. I mean, except for Donald Trump."
MSNBC, 10 Feb.: During a panel-discussion that, as usual, featured no Sanders supporters, Chuck Todd
approvingly read that Bulwark column that referred to Sanders' supporters as a "digital brownshirt brigade." Andrea Mitchell fretted that there are no party "elders" to stop Sanders. Todd compared Sanders' movement to Trumpism:
"I know everybody's freaking out it but you saw the MAGA rally that's
prepared around here there are people that are coming from three or four
states. That is real. This is like Bernie."
Rather than being chastised for these comments, Todd was rewarded by being chosen as the moderator of the next Democratic debate.
Miami Herald, 10 Feb.: "
Anxiety of a Bernie Sanders Democrat Ticket Begins To Spread Down the Ballot in Miami."
On 11 Feb., Sanders won the New Hampshire primary. Joe "Mr. Electability" Biden finished in a distant 5th place, earning zero delegates.
On Fox News that night, Laura Ingraham
called Sanders a "monster of radicalism" and offered advice to "moderate" Democrats:
"So the Democrats, think about this, they created this monster of
radicalism by tolerating for a long time now, this anti-free market,
anti-business, anti- law enforcement, anti-borders and some people think
anti-American strain in some quarters of their party. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost... [F]or you moderates... you need to pick one [candidate] at this point... If you want to beat Sanders... you have to form a coalition now. Not that you'll take my advice but I think the moderate should coalesce behind one person."
Ingraham had a suggestion as to who this should be as well:
"Now if I had to pick someone who would perhaps have appeal beyond just
New England and a few college town, it would be Amy Klobuchar."
Klobuchar only managed a 3rd place finish in New Hampshire, but in a bizarre twist, she was the candidate treated to a winner's positive press, while the negative coverage of 1st-place Sanders continued. The day began with Vox writing "
Klobmentum could be happening in New Hampshire." Later in the evening, Vox returned to insist "
Amy Klobuchar's Electability Case Is Strong After New Hampshire," a piece that said she was "the thinking moderate Democrat's electability candidate." Trip Gabriel of the New York Times
tweeted that the "No. 1 story of the night" was Amy Klobuchar, and that Sanders had emerged "
as a relatively weak front runner."There was plenty of data available on this, and all of it refuted the notion that voters could be easily divided into blocs along these ideological lines but the notion that a "moderate" bloc was outpacing a progressive bloc provided a way of negatively framing Sanders' win, so various press outlets simply ignored the data entirely--as usual--and ran with it in the days that followed.
Fox News, 17 Feb.: "
Bloomberg Scorches Sanders With Video On 'Bernie Bros' Threats."
Commentary, 17 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders Vicious Fans Become A Campaign Issue."
Boston Herald, 17 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders Doesn't Have the Goods To Beat Trump."
USA Today, 17 Feb.: "
Why Some Democrats Are Worried Sanders Could Be Unstoppable For the 2020 Nomination":
"[Sanders' lead] causes consternation among some Democrats who
say Sanders wouldn't be as strong a general election candidate against
President Donald Trump [as a 'moderate' candidate]. There are also fears that a Sanders nomination
could make it harder for the
Democrats defending the swing congressional districts that won the party the House majority in 2018.
"'I
know that there's a panic among some quarters of the Democratic Party
about Bernie Sanders because he has a base and he has the resources to
go on,' veteran Democratic strategist David Axelrod said on
his podcast Wednesday."
Forbes, 18 Feb.: "
Leon Cooperman Says 'Communist' Bernie Sanders Is A 'Bigger Threat' Than Coronavirus":
"Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman said in an interview with CNBC on
Tuesday that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a 'bigger threat' to the
stock market than the coronavirus, while also accusing the Vermont
senator of 'misrepresenting himself' as a socialist rather than a
communist... 'I look at Bernie Sanders as a bigger threat than the
coronavirus,' Cooperman said, while also adding that Mike Bloomberg is
the only candidate he thinks can beat President Trump in the 2020
election... The billionaire investor and founder of Omega Advisors
accused Sanders of 'misrepresenting' himself to voters: 'He's not a
socialist. He is, rather, a communist.'"
Los Angeles Times, 18 Feb.: "
With Sanders At the Top of the Ticket, Will Democrats Keep the House Seats They Won in Moderate Districts?"
MSNBC, 18 Feb.: Hardball host Chris Matthews
raged against the other Democratic candidates for their alleged failure to challenge Sanders and urged them to do so:
"I hope the candidates who have been telegraphing punches against Sanders
are going to deliver them. I hope they actually do what they promised
to do. Are they going after him about the bad behavior of Bernie
Sanders' supporters or not?... [Sanders] said he can't control them [his supporters] but I think he'll be called to account by
the other candidates because they have a hesitancy or a fear of going
after his ideology, going after his self-declared socialism, or about
the doability of all the things he's going to do and in a Congress that
is split right now. Everybody knows half of the U.S. Senate is run by
Republicans and run by half Republicans next time and it takes 60 votes
to get this through.
"Nobody just says the obvious: 'Bernie, you're full of it. None of this
is going to get passed. You're going to be a miserable president,
frustrated from the first day because you're not going to get Medicare
for All. You're not going to get free college tuition for public
universities. You're not going to get payoffs of all student loans. None
of this is going to happen, and you're just going to sit there and stew
in it,' so, why don't they bring that up? I do not understand why they
don't bring that up... They're just pandering to the Bernie people, and you know what pandering
gets you? Nothing. They've got to get out there and say, 'I disagree
with socialism. I believe in the markets. I think he's wrong. I think
he'll never get it done, and this country will never go that direction,
and, by the way, we'll lose 49 states.'"
NBC News, 18 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders Isn't the Frontrunner In the Democratic Race: The Moderates Are."
"[T]he rush to crown Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and
self-proclaimed democratic socialist, as the heir apparent to the
Democratic nomination overlooks a central dynamic. Sanders is topping
the polls as Biden’s support has eroded and the moderate lane has
completely fractured. Yet the combined backing for progressive
candidates is much lower than it was in the fall--in fact, it now
trails the combined support for moderates considerably."
On 18 Feb., pollster YouGov carried out an
interesting experiment, matching the Democratic presidential hopefuls against one another in theoretical one-on-one races. The results were another stake through the heart of the narrative that Sanders was only winning because the "moderate" vote was divided:
"A Yahoo News/YouGov poll released on Thursday shows that Sanders would
effectively defeat other strong, moderate Democratic candidates... Former Vice President Joe Biden narrowly loses to Sanders (44% to 48%). The Vermont Senator boasted the strongest victory over former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (37% to 54%), who beat him for the most delegates in Iowa, and Minnesota Amy Klobuchar (33% to 54%), who delivered a third-place performance in the New Hampshire primary last week."
Biden fared poorly in these match-ups; he "only wins a clear margin of victory over Bloomberg (47% to 34%). He
loses by eight points against Warren in a head-to-head (49% to 41%) and
loses by four points to Sanders (44% to 48%)."
ABC's THE VIEW, 19 Feb.: Co-host Meghan McCain, interviewing Sanders surrogate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, went on a an
unhinged rant against Bernie Sanders' supporters.
"The one thing that connects women on the left and women on the
right I have found... is the abuse that we have all been subjected to
by Bernie Bros. It is by far, of anything
I've ever seen in my entire life, the most violent, the most
misogynistic, the most sexist, the most harmful... He has a real problem, and I don't think he is doing enough to
tamp it down... How do you feel that
he's attached to this deeply misogynistic--and I would go so far as to
say violent--sector of people?"
Politico, 19 Feb.: "
Democrats Criticize Sanders For Online Behavior of His Supporters."
Los Angeles Times, 19 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders Faces Questions Over Supporters' Online Behavior."
Dallas Morning News, 19 Feb.: "
What Do Democrats Have To Fear About Bernie Sanders? Plenty."
The Week, 19 Feb.: "
The Historical Argument Against Bernie Sanders."
"Heading into tonight's debate and Saturday's Nevada caucuses, Bernie
Sanders is the frontrunner in the topsy-turvy Democratic primary. That's
the worst nightmare for many Democrats, who fear not only that he will
lose to Donald Trump, but that Sanders will damage Democrats
down-ballot, even potentially costing them the House.
These fears are well founded..."
The day that article appeared, a new
ABC News/Washington Post poll was published showing Sanders beating Trump by 6 points.
That evening, at the
Democratic debate
in Las Vegas, Pete Buttigieg denounced Sanders as "a socialist
who thinks that capitalism is the root of all evil," who isn't a
Democrat, who "wants to burn this party down" and "wants to burn the
house down." Mike Bloomberg
attacked Sanders' plan to make it possible for workers to own a piece of the corporations for which they work:
"I
can't think of a ways that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get
re-elected than listening to this conversation. This is ridiculous!
We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried that--other countries
tried that. It was called communism and it just didn't work."
As usual, the moderators--Chuck Todd, in this case--had to suggest Sanders' socialism made him unelectable.
"Senator Sanders, our latest NBC News, Wall Street Journal poll released
yesterday. Two thirds of all voters said they were uncomfortable with a
socialist candidate for President. What do you say to those voters, sir?"
Sanders
pointed out that the same poll had him leading the Democratic field by a
substantial margin. Todd would later go after Buttigieg for, 20 years
earlier, writing an article in which he praised Sanders "for embracing
socialism."
MSNBC, 20 Feb.: On Morning Joe, Donny Deutsch
goes on a rant about Sanders:
"[I]s anybody panicked beside me in that it does look like Sanders is
rolling and 2/3 of the country thinks we're going in the right
direction, and a guy who wants to burn it down? I don't see him having
any shot in a general election, and I'm panicked. I am absolutely
panicked."
Philadelphia Inquirer, 20 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders' 2020 Rise Prompts Fear In PA. Swing Districts."
"[A]s self-described democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders roars ahead
in the presidential primary, winning Nevada's caucuses Saturday to
establish himself as the clear Democratic front-runner, some party
officials in Pennsylvania and New Jersey worry that if he becomes the
nominee, he could cost them hard-won gains."
The Federalist, 20 Feb.: "
After Nearly Dying At The Hand Of A ‘Bernie Bro,’ Steve Scalise Attests To Their Violence."
Bloomberg, 20 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders Supporters Driven By Outrage."
"Bernie Sanders has said that he will support the Democratic
Party's presidential nominee, no matter who he or she is. But some
Democrats worry that a lot of his supporters will not work or even vote
for any other candidate, whereas the backers of his Democratic rivals
will enthusiastically work or vote for anyone the party nominates,
including Sanders.
"It
is too soon to know whether this worry is justified. But we do know
that in 2016, many of Sanders’s supporters were extremely angry that
Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination, and they refused to
support her... If past is prologue, then many Sanders supporters would
feel and act the same way in 2020, if he does not get the nomination."
Washington Post, 21 Feb.: "
Russia Trying To Help Bernie Sanders' Campaign, According To Briefing From U.S. Officials":
"U.S.
officials have told Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to
help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with
the Democratic contest, according to people familiar with the matter.
"President
Trump and lawmakers on Capitol Hill also have been informed about the
Russian assistance to the Vermont senator, those people said, speaking
on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.
"It
is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken. U.S.
prosecutors found a Russian effort in 2016 to use social media to boost
Sanders’s campaign against Hillary Clinton, part of a broader effort to
hurt Clinton, sow dissension in the American electorate and ultimately
help elect Donald Trump."
For two years, the Clintonite-right-aligned elements of the press engaged in an hysteria regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and U.S. politics, suggesting, among other things, that this interference had determined the 2016 election, that Donald Trump was a puppet of Russian leader Vladimir Putin and that this would inevitably
end Trump's presidency. The Clinton cult particularly relished harping on alleged Russian efforts to aid the 2016 Sanders campaign, though no significant effort to do so was ever documented. The Clinton campaign and ultimately the Democratic Establishment found in the Russian interference narrative a scapegoat that allowed them to avoid taking any responsibility for the 2016 disaster.[7] In the end, it
amounted to nothing--other than yet another black eye for American journalism.
With Sanders leading the 2020 Democratic race, it was resurrected from the dead. Sources saying Russia was somehow aiding Sanders' campaign but no one could say who, no one could say how and no one would even go on record.
That isn't even a story but in the midst of the Democratic primary contest Sanders was leading (and only a day before the Nevada caucus), it was splashed all over the press (
here,
here,
here,
here,
here,
here here,
here,
here and on into infinity). Alan Macleod of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting,
writing about this a few days later:
"Commenting on Sanders' blowout in Nevada, former Clinton strategist James Carville told MSNBC (2/22/20):
'The happiest person right now? It's about 1.15 a.m. Moscow time. This
thing is going very well for Vladimir Putin.' Host Nicole Wallace backed
him up: 'That's absolutely right,' she replied. Why is Putin happy?
Obama’s White House Communications Director, Dan Pfeiffer, explained to MSNBC's Meet the Press (2/23/20) that the Russians 'are trying to give Trump the opponent that Trump wants'... Despite this, the poorly sourced, evidence-free and quickly walked-back report became the basis for endless stories linking Russia and Sanders. GQ (2/23/20), for example, asked its readers 'why exactly does Putin love Bernie?' Vox (2/22/20) claimed that Sanders' 'chaos' was good for Russia and Trump. Meanwhile, the New York Times (2/24/20), disregarding all polling data, stated categorically: 'Sanders would be Trump's weakest opponent.'"
Positioning Sanders as a candidate being backed by some kind of illicit Russian activity is a McCarthy-style attack. It aims to inflicts harm on Sanders' campaign but because there's no substance to the story, there's nothing to address, nothing to investigate further, no way for Sanders to even respond. The only big question raised by it: who, exactly, wants to circulate this kind of story? Faced with a potential political scandal, with Sanders' political opponents in both the Trump administration and congress as the suspects, the press never asked, and opted, instead, to act as an arm of whatever Sanders enemy wanted it in circulation.
San Francisco Chronicle, 21 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders Backers Unleash Fury on Union Opposing His Medicare For All Plan."
Politico, 21 Feb.: "
Down-ballot Republicans Watch With Glee As Sanders Gains Steam."
McClatchey, 21 Feb.: "
Republicans Against Trump Open To Voting For a Moderate Democrat--Just Not Sanders."
Reuters, 21 Feb.: "
Sanders 'Trump-Like Rhetoric' Encouraged Vandals, Bloomberg Camp Says":
"Michael Bloomberg's presidential campaign on Friday alleged that rival
Bernie Sanders' 'Trump-like rhetoric' encouraged supporters to vandalize
a Bloomberg campaign office in Tennessee and others across the country... 'We don’t know who is responsible for this vandalism, but we do know
it echoes language from the Sanders campaign and its supporters,'
Bloomberg campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said in a statement.
"'We
call on Bernie Sanders to immediately condemn these attacks and for his
campaign to end the Trump-like rhetoric that is clearly encouraging his
supporters to engage in behavior that has no place in our politics,'
Sheekey said."
On 22 Feb., Sanders won a massive victory in the Nevada caucus, capturing nearly half the vote in a contest with six other candidates. Joe Biden finished in 2nd place, with less than half of Sanders' vote, his 3rd failure in a row. As the results were coming in, MSNBC's Chris Matthews
compared Sanders' victory in Nevada to the Nazi conquest of France in 1940:
"I was reading last night about the fall of France in the summer of 1940,
and the general, Reynaud, calls up Churchill and says, 'It's over.' And
Churchill says 'How can it be? You've got the greatest army in Europe.
How can it be over?' He said, 'It's over.'"
It was a sign of things to come. Anti-Sanders stories had been ramping up in advance of Sanders' anticipated Nevada win and hit peak density in this period, as, increasingly unable to muddle the matter of a frontrunner, corporate press outlets became wall-to-wall attacks on his candidacy.
USA Today, 22 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders' Nevada Win Forces Democrats To Reckon With Potential Impact of His Nomination":
"More moderate candidates were already fighting about who should step
aside to allow one person to try to consolidate the vote against [Sanders].
"In combative remarks Saturday night, Pete Buttigieg
said the only way Democrats can deliver on the progressive changes the
party wants is with a nominee 'who actually gives a damn about the
effect you are having' on races from the top of the ticket to the
competitive House and Senate races Democrats must win.
"Buttigieg
accused Sanders of ignoring, dismissing and even attacking 'the very
Democrats that we absolutely must send to Capitol Hill.'
"'Let's
listen to what they are telling us and support them from the top of the
ticket,' said Buttigieg, who won more delegates than Sanders in Iowa
and collected the same amount as Sanders did in New Hampshire. 'It is
too important.'"
Third Way, 22 Feb.: "
Stand Up To Bernie Or You--And We--All Lose."
Axios, 22 Feb.: "
Centrist Democrats Beseech 2020 Candidates: 'Stand up to Bernie' or Trump Wins."
Washington Post, 22 Feb.: "
As Bernie Sanders's Momentum Builds, Down-ballot Democrats Move To Distance Themselves."
Fox News, 22 Feb.: "
Some Democrats Are Freaking Out At Prospects That Sanders Could Win Nomination."
MSNBC, 23 Feb.: Former Bill Clinton political strategist James
Carville
reacts to Sanders' win in Nevada:
"[Sanders'] entire theory that by expanding the electorate is a--increasing
turnout so you can win an election is similar to a climate denial. When
people say that, they're as stupid to a political scientist as a climate
denier is to an atmospheric scientist.
"If you want to vote for Bernie Sanders because you feel good about his
program, you don't like the banks on Wall Street or you don't like
pharmaceuticals, that's legitimate, I understand that. If you're voting
for him because you think he'll win the election, politically, you're a
fool. And that's just a fact. It's no denying it, there's so much
political science, so much research on this that it is not even a
debatable question."
The Hill, 23 Feb.: "
Sanders Is A Risk, Not A Winner."
Politico, 23 Feb.: "
Sanders Sends Democratic Establishment Into Panic Mode":
"Moderate Democrats watched in horror as Bernie Sanders soared to a landslide victory in Nevada.
"It wasn't the win that was surprising--it was the walloping Sanders gave his opponents, his ability to
dominate among Latino voters, and the momentum he gained moving into
South Carolina and Super Tuesday. The performance sent already worried
Democrats into a full-blown panic.
"'In
30-plus years of politics, I’ve never seen this level of doom. I’ve
never had a day with so many people texting, emailing, calling me with
so much doom and gloom,' said Matt Bennett of the center-left group
Third Way after Sanders' win in Nevada.
"Bennett said moderates firmly believe a
Sanders primary win would seal Donald Trump’s reelection. 'It's this
incredible sense that we’re hurtling to the abyss. I also think we could
lose the House. And if we do, there would be absolutely no way to stop
[Trump]. Today is the most depressed I’ve ever been in politics.'"
Note: Third Way is a conservative, not "center-left," think tank. Funded by
corporate interests,
Wall Street and
the Republicans, it exists to work against progressives from within the Democratic party.
Breitbart, 23 Feb.: "
Democratic Party Establishment Freakout After Bernie Sanders Wins Nevada":
"Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who finished third in Nevada, warned
fellow Democrats that the 'democratic socialist' from Vermont is
unelectable: 'Senator Sanders believes in an inflexible,
ideological revolution that leaves out most Democrats, not to mention
most Americans.'"
Associated Press, 23 Feb.: "
Biden Says Sanders Could Hurt Down-ballot."
Washington Times, 23 Feb.: "
James Clyburn: Bernie Would Bring 'Extra Burden' For Down-ballot Dems."
On 23 Feb., Sanders was featured in a segment on CBS News' 60 Minutes and was asked about things he'd said about the Castro regime decades earlier.
Sanders:
"We're very opposed to the authoritarian nature of Cuba, but y'know, it's unfair to simply say everything is bad. Y'know, when Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing, even though Fidel Castro did it?"
This set off yet another firestorm of anti-Sanders coverage.
American politics doesn't really do nuance, particularly in the era of Trump, but while what Sanders actually said here is entirely defensible, there's a tone-deafness in it that, in this writer's view, is not. It's even more prevalent--and even less defensible--in some of his other long-ago comments about Cuba that didn't get as much attention. To be perfectly pedantic in pointing out the obvious, Castro's Cuba was an authoritarian Bolshevist state where freedom was smothered and dissent landed one in prison or dead. That's the context for anything the Cuban regime may have done. A thing isn't bad just because the Castro regime did it but one should take great care never to sound sympathetic to such a regime.
In the face of the press feeding-frenzy that followed, some left writers have argued Sanders' comments weren't even a legitimate issue. Sanders, they argue, wasn't talking about Cuba on the campaign trail, most of his comments were from decades earlier and Sanders obviously doesn't support constructing an authoritarian Bolshevist state in the U.S.. All of that is true but I disagree with these writers' conclusion. Someone who presents himself for an elected office in a liberal democracy should, by the logic of liberal democracy (insert laugh-track here), have his record examined. In this case, it's a question of judgment, a not-at-all-unimportant quality in a presidential candidate.
Those writers are, however, entirely correct to object to the use the press often made of Sanders' comments. Headlines blared that Sanders had "defended" and even "praised" the Castro regime. The story was used to feed a narrative of Sanders as some kind of crazy radical, himself a Bolshevik and--that old saw again--unelectable. It's true as well--and pointed out by Sanders--that in 2016, then-President Obama had, without any accompanying outrage, said
substantially the same things about the Cuban regime. It's also difficult to argue that Sanders' long-ago record should be so scrutinized when no other candidate was ever subjected to that kind of sustained dissection. Joe Biden's success--and, indeed, his presence in the presidential race for more than 30 seconds--was entirely dependent on the refusal of the press to cover his record, which would have almost certainly damned him with Democratic voters.
Fox News, 23 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders Defends Fidel Castro's Socialist Cuba: 'Unfair To Simply Say Everything Is Bad'".
New York Times, 24 Feb.: "
Sanders’s Comments on Fidel Castro Provoke Anger in Florida":
"Comments
from Senator Bernie Sanders praising aspects of the Communist Cuban
revolution drew a forceful rebuke on Monday from Cuban-Americans,
Florida Democrats and several of Mr. Sanders's opponents, who cast him
as too extreme in his views to represent the party as its presidential
nominee.
"'I'm
totally disgusted and insulted,' said Lourdes Diaz, the president of
the Democratic Hispanic Caucus in Broward County, who is Cuban-American.
'Maybe this will open people's eyes to how super, super liberal and
radical Bernie is. I’m not going to defend him anymore. I'm over it'... Mr. Sanders, a Vermont senator, has cast himself as a democratic
socialist in the vein of social democrats in Europe. But though as a
candidate he likes to compare his policies to those of Denmark, in the
past he has expressed praise not only for Mr. Castro in Cuba but also
support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua--troubling stances in Florida, a magnet for Latin Americans fleeing political unrest in Managua, Havana and Caracas."
In a practice that would become all too common, the Times hilariously tried to draw, well,
some kind of distinction between Obama's 2016 comments on Cuba and those of Sanders:
"Mr.
Sanders’s campaign said his views have remained the same and argued
that President Barack Obama made a similar allusion to Cuba’s
educational gains in a 2016 speech in Havana... But
Mr. Obama, who praised Cuba's 'enormous achievements in education and
in health care,' had made a historic policy overture and was not in the
middle of a primary campaign."
...which is, of course, completely irrelevant to the fact that Obama said almost exactly the same thing as had Sanders.
Daily Beast, 24 Feb.: "
Bernie Staffer Mocked [Elizabeth]Warren’s Looks, Pete’s [Buttigieg] Sexuality on Private Twitter Account":
"During the most recent presidential primary debate in Las Vegas, Sen.
Bernie Sanders (I-VT) suggested that critiques of some of his most
antagonistic online supporters are largely unfounded and unfair,
proposing that some of the worst offenders might actually be Russian trolls on a mission to sow disunity in the field.
"But
the private Twitter account of a newly promoted campaign staffer
indicates that despite his condemnation of online harassment, at least
some of the Vermont senator's most toxic support is coming from inside
the house.
"Using the account @perma_ben, Ben Mora, a regional field director for Sanders’ campaign based in
Michigan, has attacked other Democrats in the field--as well as their
family members, surrogates, journalists, and politically active
celebrities--in deeply personal terms, mocking their physical appearance,
gender, and sexuality, among other things... Mora, the Sanders campaign confirmed, has been fired."
Washington Post, 24 Feb.: "
A Vote For Bernie Sanders Equals A Vote For Donald Trump":
"Watching Bernie Sanders roll through the Democratic primaries--he won the
Nevada caucuses
on Saturday by more than 25 points over his nearest rival--gives me
the same sinking feeling, the same combination of dread and despair,
that I felt watching Donald Trump roll through the Republican primaries
four years ago. This is actually worse in some ways, because back in
2016 I naively imagined that Hillary Clinton, a sane centrist, would
save America from the horror of a Trump presidency. Now, by contrast,
barring a Super Tuesday miracle, there is little hope for anything but a
Sanders vs. Trump election in which there is no good outcome... Sanders divides Americans nearly as much as Trump--not along
racial-ethnic lines but along class lines. He is an ideologue who
denounces 'billionaires' as often as Trump denounces undocumented
immigrants... The '1 percent' are for
Sanders what 'illegal aliens' are for Trump: objects of hatred who are
unfairly blamed for all the ills of modern America while their
contributions are totally ignored... Sanders is
no Trump...
but there are certain uncomfortable parallels. Like Trump, Sanders has a
tendency toward anti-media paranoia: He hinted
that The Post was pursuing a vendetta against him by reporting Russian
support for his campaign. He is almost as secretive as Trump--this
78-year-old candidate who had a heart attack last year refuses to release his health records.
"And,
like Trump, Sanders has attracted an army of abusive and obnoxious true
believers who are determined to destroy any doubters. Bakari Sellers, a
former South Carolina state legislator who supported Sen. Kamala D.
Harris (D-Calif.), told the New York Times:
'You have to be very cognizant when you say anything critical of Bernie
online. You might have to put your phone down. There's going to be a
blowback, and it could be sexist, racist and vile.' Sellers, who is
African American, had some Sanderistas calling him an 'Uncle Tom' and
wishing him brain cancer."
New York Times, 24 Feb.: "
Why Swing-District Democrats Don't Want Bernie Sanders as the Nominee."
"Swing-district House Democrats don’t
agree on which candidate they want to lead them on the ticket this year,
but they do seem to agree on which candidate they don’t: Bernie
Sanders.
"Of the 46 Democratic
representatives who hold districts classified by Sabato's Crystal Ball
House ratings as at least marginally competitive, not one has endorsed
Mr. Sanders, the Vermont senator who won a decisive victory in the
Nevada caucus over the weekend.
"Some have actually gone further, actively distancing themselves from Mr. Sanders."
Breitbart, 24 Feb.: "
Politico: Democrat Establishment in 'Panic Mode' Over Bernie Sanders."
Miami Herald, 24 Feb.: "
Sanders Praised Cuba, Spurned Israel Group. If He's the Nominee, He Just Lost Florida":
"Democratic front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders' latest remarks about
Cuba and Israel are so offensive to many moderate Democrats and
independent voters that they would almost guarantee a Donald Trump
victory in Florida if Sanders becomes the Democratic nominee for
president.
"Worse, Sanders’ statement about Cuba in a Sunday
interview with CBS' '60 Minutes,' as well a tweet explaining why he will
boycott a meeting of the pro-Israel AIPAC lobbying group, may cost
Democrats key congressional seats--and perhaps cause the Democrats to
lose the House of Representatives."
Colorado Springs Gazette, 24 Feb.: "
Democrats Are Headed For A Disaster":
"A Sanders nomination gives voters the choice between: A. an offensive
socialist with plans to raise middle-class taxes, deprive Americans of
private health insurance and other frightening threats; or B. an
offensive capitalist with a message of 'America first,' lower taxes and
hope for the future. Sanders pollutes the Democratic well."
Wall Street Journal, 24 Feb.: "
Bernie's Cuba Illiteracy."
Fox Business, 24 Feb.: "
Varney on why Democrats believe Bernie Sanders will lose to Trump."
"Fox
Business' Stuart Varney, in his latest 'My Take,' argues that a Bernie
Sanders nomination would ultimately be a 'nightmare for all Democrats'
and his lead is causing a great divide in the party...Varney
said the 'knock' on Sanders is that he can’t win the election, causing
other Democrats 'further down on the ballot' to lose too. And a House
and Senate controlled by Republicans, plus re-election for President
Trump, would be a real nightmare for Democrats, he said."
Breitbart, 24 Feb.: "
Democrats Condemn Bernie Sanders’ Praise of Fidel Castro: 'Absolutely Unacceptable'":
"Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL) on Monday decried Democrat primary frontrunner Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) for praising aspects of communist dictator Fidel Castro’s revolution in Cuba.
"'As the first South American immigrant member of Congress who proudly represents thousands of Cuban Americans, I find Senator Bernie Sanders’ comments on Castro's Cuba absolutely unacceptable,' Mucarsel-Powell wrote on Twitter 'The Castro regime murdered and jailed dissidents, and caused unspeakable harm to too many South Florida families. To this day, it remains an authoritarian regime that oppresses its people, subverts the free press, and stifles a free society'... In addition to Mucarsel-Powell, Sanders was met with condemnation
from Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL), who tweeted that she hopes 'in the
future, Senator Sanders will take time to speak to some of my
constituents before he decides to sing the praises of a murderous tyrant
like Fidel Castro.'"
Los Angeles Times, 24 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders Takes Heat For Praising Communist Cuba's Literacy Rates":
The Independent, 24 Feb.: "
Inside the Troubled Bernie Sanders Campaign, From Russian Bots to American Trolls":
"...[A] number of Democratic activists,
strategists, and campaign insiders who know how Sanders operates say his
protestations ring more than a bit hollow.
"Instead, these insiders describe a
campaign that has dispensed with the largely positive tone which
characterized Sanders' 2016 presidential run in favor of a combative,
grievance-driven one. They say it is led by a team of 'true believers'
who have little experience with presidential campaigns, are too
enthralled by Sanders to question or challenge him, and who knowingly
wield swarms of angry, harassment-happy pro-Sanders social media users
like any other tool in the campaign toolbox for a candidate who, despite
claims to the contrary, is perfectly fine with it."
Daily Wire, 24 Feb.: "
REPORT: Bernie Bros Are Taking Their Marching Orders From Sanders' Staff, Sanders Knows 'Exactly What‘s Happening'":
"...the Independent reports that not only does Sanders know exactly what
the Bernie Bros are doing online, some of his senior staff have been
instrumental in targeting the Bernie Bros’ attacks.
"'Bernie knows
exactly what's happening,' one Democratic activist claimed to the
outlet. 'And his campaign is in the loop about this coordinated
viciousness.'"
Washington Post, 24 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders' 60 Minutes Interview Renews Concerns Over Communist Country Trips and How They Shaped His Politics."
USA Today, 24 Feb.: "
Sanders Praises Cuba, Angers Many Republicans, Democrats in Florida."
CNN, 25 Feb.: "
Sanders Defends Comments Praising Castro's Cuba: 'The Truth is the Truth'":
Washington Post, 25 Feb.: "
Why Bernie Sanders's Repeating Cuban Propaganda Rankles So Many Latinos."
New York Times, 25 Feb.: "
Imagine Bernie Sanders in the Oval Office."
"[If the election is Sanders vs. Trump], it's like asking me to choose between a slow-growing malignant cancer (Trump) and a sudden brain hemorrhage (Sanders)... I'm like the guy who is being offered two poisoned vials..."
Washington Examiner, 25 Feb.: "
The Bernie Bros Are Toxic."
Vanity Fair, 25 Feb.: "
Journalists Face the Wrath of Bernie Sanders Supporters."
Miami Herald, 25, Feb.: "
Ava DuVernay Gets Death Threats From Sanders Supporters."
"You'd have thought she had thrown Bernie Sanders to his death from a tower of million-dollar bills.
"Actually, what film director Ava DuVernay tweeted on Saturday was just a mild rebuke: 'I'm undecided. But I know this isn’t what I want.' She was responding to a Sanders tweet warning the Democratic and Republican establishments that, 'They can't stop us.'
"In response to her response, a digital mob numbering in the thousands descended upon DuVernay. Many contented themselves with noting how 'surprised' and 'disappointed' they were at her failure to appreciate the senator's wonderfulness. Others went below and beyond, calling her 'bitch' and, more insulting, 'right winger.' There were isolated death threats."
Politico, 25 Feb.: "
NRCC Chairman: House Will Flip With Sanders Atop Dem Ticket."
"The chairman of House Republicans’ campaign arm reveled on Tuesday in Democratic panic
over Sen. Bernie Sanders’ frontrunning campaign for the party's
presidential nomination, expressing confidence that the GOP would be a
shoo-in to retake control of the House with a self-described democratic
socialist atop the opposite ticket."
Politico, 25 Feb.: "
Bloomberg Internal Poll Claims Bernie Would Sink Downballot Dems."
The Hill, 25 Feb.: "
The Bernie Sanders Problem":
"If Sanders were the Democratic nominee,
it would spell disaster for the party, as purists seldom win national
elections. Capitalism and the free market system elevated the idea that
the United States is where all can come and succeed. Republicans would
love to see Sanders nominated since his progressive rhetoric combined
with a strong economy grant Donald Trump reasons for optimism."
CNN, 25 Feb.: "
Pete Buttigieg Warns That Bernie Sanders Will Hurt Down-ballot Democrats."
Texas Tribune, 25 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders stokes question for Texas Democrats: How would his nomination affect their down-ballot plans?"
The Atlantic, 25 Feb.: "
The Price of a Sanders Nomination."
Vox, 25 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders Looks Electable in Surveys--But It Could Be a Mirage":
"Bernie Sanders, the most left-wing candidate in the Democratic primary,
polls as well against Trump as his more moderate competitors in
surveys. Democratic voters have appeared to take these polls to heart,
as a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that Democrats believe
Sanders has the best chance of beating Trump.
Why does Sanders look similarly electable to leading moderates in polls
against Trump?
We fielded a 40,000-person survey in early 2020 that helps us look into this question with more precision... Our data (
laid out in an academic working paper here)
also found what polls show: that Sanders is similarly electable to more
moderate candidates. But, on closer inspection, it shows that this
finding relies on some remarkable assumptions about youth turnout that
past elections suggest are questionable... [F]or Sanders to do as well as a moderate Democrat against Trump in
November by stimulating youth turnout, his nomination would need to
boost turnout of young left-leaning voters enormously--according to our
data, one in six left-leaning young people who otherwise wouldn't vote
would need to turn out because Sanders was nominated. There are good
reasons to doubt that Sanders’s nomination would produce a youth turnout
surge this large... The case that Bernie Sanders is just as electable as the
more moderate candidates thus appears to rest on a leap of faith: that
youth voter turnout would surge in the general election by double digits
if and only if Bernie Sanders is nominated, compensating for the voters
his nomination pushes to Trump among the rest of the electorate.
"There are reasons to doubt a Sanders-driven youth turnout surge of this size would materialize."
This--a "study" by academics David Broockman and Joshua Kalla that
purports to show Sanders was virtually unelectable--became a source of
multiple press stories in the days after its appearance.
"In a new paper, David Broockman and Joshua Kalla use the detailed
results of a huge new survey and conclude that Sanders can indeed do as
well against Trump as more moderate candidates, but only if he makes up
for lost votes among older voters by motivating young voters to turn out
in unprecedented numbers... [T]o have a chance in the general election
he’d need youth turnout to be
well over 50 percent. That’s never happened in recent history."
That evening, the Democratic candidates debated in Charleston, South Carolina.
Daily Mail, 25 Feb.: "
Democrats Shout At Each Other...":
"Democratic
presidential candidates got into a series of angry and personal
exchanges at Tuesday night's debate in Charleston... Proving to be the
night's punching bag, Sanders was slammed and accused of being backed by
Putin, unelectable and divisive."
"Vladimir Putin thinks that Donald Trump should be President of the
United States,"
asserted Mike Bloomberg. "And that's why Russia is helping you [Sanders] get elected, so you
lose to him." Pete Buttigieg:
"...if you think the last four years has been chaotic, divisive, toxic,
exhausting, imagine spending the better part of 2020 with Bernie Sanders
versus Donald Trump. Think about what that will be like for this
country!"
This, Mayor Pete insisted, is what the Russians want. Amy Klobuchar recalled how, at a previous debate, she'd said she "had a problem with a socialist leading the ticket." Moderator Margaret Brennan to Sanders:
"You've praised the Chinese Communist Party for lifting more people out
of extreme poverty than any other country. You also have a track record
of expressing sympathy for socialist governments in Cuba and in
Nicaragua. Can Americans trust that a Democratic Socialist president
will not give authoritarians a free pass?"
While both his opponents and the moderators--no daylight between them--tried to tear Sanders to pieces, the debate offers a perfect example of the impunity granted Joe Biden by the press. Biden asserted that his "entire career has been wrapped up in dealing with civil rights and civil liberties," but no moderator pointed out his horrendous record on civil liberties or asked about his past work with segregationists (which had been briefly raised by Kamala Harris at a debate earlier in the campaign) or his
repeatedly lying--very ornately lying--about his involvement in the civil rights movement. Democrats participated in 11 debates in the 2020 cycle and, as with most of Biden's problematic record, Biden was never asked about the latter in
any of them.
Perhaps most egregiously--because it had just played out--Biden had spent the days leading up to this debate trying to ingratiate himself with the state's black voters by repeatedly claiming he'd been arrested in Apartheid South Africa in the 1970s for attempting to visit the then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela. The story was detailed--it even involved Mandela visiting Biden years later and praising him for getting arrested--and it turned out to be completely false. Prior to the debate, the
New York Times and the
Washington Post had already exposed this as an outrageous lie. Hot-off-the-presses material but Biden was never asked a single question about it. The matter was never even raised. Sanders, in perhaps a bit of cheek, favorably quoted Nelson Mandela on an unrelated matter in his closing statement.
Miami Herald, 25 Feb.: "
Fidel Castro Again Haunts a Presidential Debate as Rivals Blast Sanders' Cuba Views":
"During Tuesday night’s presidential primary debate in South Carolina, Sanders, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, was blasted by his rivals over comments he made in a '60 Minutes' interview that aired Sunday praising literacy rates on the Caribbean island following Castro’s 1959 Cuban revolution.
"Pressed by CBS moderators on his past 'sympathies' for socialist regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua, Sanders defended himself, saying he's condemned authoritarian regimes across the world. He said he was repeating talking points used by former President Barack Obama during a 2016 appearance in Havana.
"'Of course you have a dictatorship in Cuba. What I said is what Barack Obama said in terms of Cuba, that Cuba made progress in terms of education,' Sanders said, drawing boos from the audience... Sanders' controversial remarks about Cuba... have given his opponents an opening to attack him as the
self-described Democratic socialist threatens to pull away from the
field.
"'We are certainly not going to win by reliving the Cold War,' Pete Buttigieg said, warning that a Sanders nomination would doom down-ballot Democrats
and hand unilateral control of the federal government to the Republican
Party. 'And we are not going to win these critical, critical House and
Senate races if people in those races have to explain why the nominee of
the Democratic Party is telling people to look at the bright side of
the Castro regime.'"
CNBC, 26 Feb.: "
Democratic Megadonor Urges Pelosi and Schumer To Pick A Candidate in a Bid To Stop Bernie Sanders":
"Democratic megadonor Bernard Schwartz has started reaching out to
party leaders, particularly House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate
Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, to encourage them to back a candidate for
president in order to stop the surge of Sen. Bernie Sanders.
"Schwartz,
the CEO of BLS Investments, told CNBC that in recent days he's been
trying to speak with Pelosi and Schumer about making a pick, in the hope
that voters will follow their lead and end up denying Sanders the
party's presidential nomination.
"'We
should know who is the best person to beat Donald Trump, and with all
due respect, Bernie Sanders cannot beat Trump,' he explained, describing
the message he has relayed to the two Democratic leaders.
"Schwartz
noted he has yet to hear back from them but insisted that, with Super
Tuesday under a week away, party leaders have to take a stand now
before Sanders captures the nomination--and, in his view, takes down
the party."
This rubbish runs under the above headline, is written up entirely seriously as if it's news and its six paragraphs into the story before the article's writer finally reveals that Bernard Schwartz is backing Joe Biden.
Yahoo News, 26 Feb.: "
Sanders surge spreads fear among House and Senate Democrats."
Fox News, 26 Feb.: "
Congressional Dems Echo Concerns About Down-ballot Consequences of Bernie Nomination."
Charleston City Paper, 26 Feb.: "
In South Carolina, Concerns Over Down-ballot Democrats Pitched As One Reason To Look For Moderate Nominee."
"State
Rep. JA Moore (D-Berkeley) says a potential Sanders nomination '100
percent' influenced his decision to endorse Buttigieg after
initially backing Kamala Harris.
"'I'm very concerned with Bernie Sanders at the top of the
ticket, I think it puts in jeopardy my dear friend Joe Cunningham, I
think it puts in jeopardy my race, I think it puts in jeopardy Krystle
Matthews' race. I think it's important that whoever's at the top of the
ticket can bring together the entire country,' Moore says."
CNN, 26 Feb.: "
Can Bernie Sanders Beat Donald Trump? Here's the Reality."
"Bernie Sanders has built a movement and he has momentum. But there are
plenty of rational reasons to think that nominating a democratic
socialist in a center-right country is a real risk--and could deliver
Donald Trump a second term."
Third Way, 26 Feb.: "
What A Sanders Nomination Would Mean For Tennessee Democrats."
Fox News, 26 Feb.: "
Ben Shapiro: Bernie Sanders is Not a Social Democrat, He's a Lifelong Communist. Dems Have No Gatekeepers":
"Sanders isn't a European social democrat, warm toward Denmark and
Norway. He's a lifelong communist--a man who declared himself fully on
board with the nationalization of nearly every major American industry
in the 1970s--and an advocate for anti-Americanism abroad."
Washington Post, 26 Feb.: "
Five More Years of Populism Would Be A Disaster for America":
"Capitalism
isn't broken, but populism may be on the verge of breaking it. If
Democratic Party front-runner Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) ends up
securing the presidential nomination, the Oval Office will be occupied
by a populist for the next five years--regardless of who wins in
November. This is a chilling prospect.
"The United States faces no problem today to which populism offers the best solution... President Trump’s brand of populism has made the United States worse off... The Sanders agenda would be worse for the country. An analysis
by Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute concludes that if Sanders had
his way with Medicare-for-all, free college tuition, and other
entitlements and guarantees, the federal government would double in
size, half the U.S. workforce would be government employees and the
deficit would rise to more than one-third of gross domestic product,
despite his many tax increases. This would be a disaster, and the fact
that Sanders would never get more than a fraction of his agenda enacted
offers little comfort."
Fox News, 26 Feb.: "
Sen. Rubio: Bernie Sanders Isn't A Socialist, He's A Marxist."
New York Times, 27 Feb.: "
No, Not Sanders, Not Ever."
Time, 27 Feb.: "
Big-Money Democratic Donors Are Trying to Stop Bernie Sanders. But Even They Worry It Could Be Too Late":
"As Bernie Sanders's lead in the Democratic presidential primary has solidified this
month, some major Democratic donors have started funneling their money
into an effort to thwart the rise of the self-described democratic
socialist. But even some of the donors involved in the attempt to stop
Sanders concede it may be too late.
"Major donors and strategists worry the fractured
field of Democratic candidates going into Super Tuesday will split up
the delegates and funding necessary to block Sanders from running away
with the nomination... In the aftermath of the New Hampshire primary, more than half a dozen
donors turned to Jonathan Kott, a former longtime aide to West Virginia
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. 'A lot of Democrats were surprised that
Bernie Sanders had been able to avoid the scrutiny of a front runner,'
Kott says, 'and they decided to act and make sure voters had all the
information about his radical views before they voted.'
"Kott formed the Big Tent Project, a group which, as
a 501(c)4 nonprofit, does not have to disclose its donors. Within days
the group received more than $1 million, which it poured into ads in
Nevada and South Carolina to sow doubt about Sanders’ ability to deliver
on his policy platform. 'Socialist Bernie Sanders promises the world,' stated one ad that aired in both states. 'But at what cost? $60 trillion.'"
Washington Examiner, 27 Feb.: "
'Highest Levels' of Democrats Trying To Prevent 'Down-ballot Massacre of Bernie Sanders-Led Ticket: Columnist."
Washington Times, 27 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders' Brand of Socialism Is Communism":
"Bernie Sanders is a communist.
"Those aren't my words (although I believe it to
be true). These are the words of Democratic pundit James Carville. For
those of you too young to remember, he was the mastermind of Bill
Clinton's surprise win in 1992.
"After the results of last week’s Nevada caucuses, it looks more and more like the Democrats are going to nominate a communist."
New York Times, 27 Feb.: "
Democratic Leaders Willing To Risk Party Damage To Stop Bernie Sanders":
"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator
Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, hear constant warnings from allies
about congressional losses in November if the party nominates Bernie
Sanders for president. Democratic House members share their Sanders
fears on text-messaging chains. Bill Clinton, in calls with old friends,
vents about the party getting wiped out in the general election.
"And officials in the national and state parties are increasingly anxious about splintered
primaries on Super Tuesday and beyond, where the liberal Mr. Sanders, of Vermont, edges out moderate candidates who collectively win more votes.
"Dozens
of interviews with Democratic establishment leaders this week show that
they are not just worried about Mr. Sanders's candidacy, but are also
willing to risk intraparty damage to stop his nomination at the national
convention in July if they get the chance. Since
Mr. Sanders’s victory in Nevada's caucuses on Saturday,
The Times has interviewed 93 party officials--all of them
superdelegates, who could have a say on the nominee at the convention--and found overwhelming opposition to handing the Vermont senator the
nomination if he arrived with the most delegates but
fell short of a majority... From California to the Carolinas, and North Dakota to Ohio, the party leaders say they worry that Mr. Sanders,
a democratic socialist with passionate but limited support so far, will lose to President Trump, and drag down moderate House and Senate candidates in swing states with
his left-wing agenda of 'Medicare for all' and free four-year public college."
The Hill, 27 Feb.: "
Bernie Sanders Didn't Mention the Dark Side of Education in Castro's Cuba":
"Plain ignorance is the most charitable explanation for the misleading defense of communist Cuba offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-Vt.) on CBS News' '60 Minutes.' While saying he was opposed to
Cuba's 'authoritarian nature,' Sanders insisted that 'it's unfair to
simply say everything is bad. You know? When Fidel Castro came into office, you know what he did? He had a massive literacy program. Is that a bad thing?'
"Sanders
correctly stated that education became universal in Castro's Cuba, but
he ignored the deeply Orwellian nature of the educational
system. Literacy was not sought by the Cuban regime just for the sake of
literacy. From the outset, the regime viewed education, as two experts
on Cuba explained in The Atlantic, as the 'key to the revolution taking hold and creating a literate population loyal to the government.'"
New York Times, 27 Feb.: "
Two Reasons Bernie Sanders Should Terrify Democrats: Florida and Pennsylvania."
"National Democratic leaders are worried that nominating Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) could cost them the White House and imperil their hold
on the House. A close look at two swing states, Florida and
Pennsylvania, shows why those fears are justified."
Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, 28 Feb.: "
Could a Bernie Sanders nomination be a death knell for down-ballot Texas Democrats?"
"Some fear that Sanders at the top of the ticket would pave an easy path
for President Donald Trump’s re-election and hamper the fight to reclaim
a majority in the Texas House of Republicans. That might be why some
Republicans reportedly are voting in the Democratic primary, to throw
their vote to Sanders.
"'They want him to do well,' said Bill Miller, an Austin-based
political consultant. 'They view him as the godsend of opponents' for
Trump.
"'And he will not have any coattails. You have a
candidate who is not a Democrat. He's a socialist and he's running in
the Democratic primary. That’s so far afield for what is acceptable. And
it’s a death knell for any down-ballot Democrat.'"
Washington Post, 28 Feb.: "
Does Socialist Label Make Bernie Sanders Unelectable?"
"While Biden, Buttigieg and other Democrats also have not faced the same
level of scrutiny of their records as a presidential nominee would get,
polling is crystal clear about Americans' negativity toward socialism."
The polling was still crystal-clear about where the race stood as well. The day before this ran, a new
Fox News poll showed Sanders beating Trump by 7 points, Biden by 8--statistically identical margins.
CNN, 28 Feb.: "
Rep. Jim Clyburn Says Democrats Are Concerned About 'Down-ballot Carnage'"
Fox News' Dan Bongino, 28 Feb.: "
Top Dem Warns: Party is Concerned that a Sanders Nomination will Cause 'Down-Ballot Carnage'."
Real Clear Politics, 28 Feb.: "
Dems Can't Wait Until the Convention to Stop Sanders."
"Everyone is afraid of Sanders and unwilling to try to block him, despite
the fact that he isn't a Democrat, a socialist can't win a general
election, and he is fraudulently selling his voters an agenda he knows
will not, and cannot, become reality... [A] Sanders down-ballot slaughter would sting for far longer than the next decade."
Wall Street Journal, 28 Feb.: "
Some Southern Democrats Say Sanders Nomination Would Hurt Down-Ballot Candidates."
"Some Democrats in Southern states from North Carolina to Florida are
anxious about Bernie Sanders winning the Democratic presidential
nomination, saying it could jeopardize a closely-won governor’s seat,
reverse recent gains in state legislatures and turn what might be
competitive congressional races into GOP landslides."
Kansas City Star, 28 Feb.: "
KC Area Democrats Weigh Down-Ballot Effects of Bernie Sanders."
ABC News, 29 Feb.: "
Moderate Democrats Turn To Down Ballot Races in Bid to Blunt Sanders' Momentum."
"[Bernie Sanders is] the newly-minted Democratic front-runner, whose more moderate rivals
argue will hurt the party's chances of holding their majority in the
U.S. House and winning back power in the U.S. Senate, and blunt any
chance of passing the progressive agenda they have been preaching for
over a year on the campaign trail.
"That anxiety, described by one of former Vice President Joe Biden's top surrogates as 'down ballot carnage' has only increased as Sanders took an early lead in the delegate race."
CNN, 29 Feb.: CNN host Michael Smerconish does a segment in which he
compares Sanders to the coronavirus, by then a global outbreak.
CNN, 29 Feb.: "
It Would Be A Disaster For Us To Have To Choose Between Sanders and Trump":
"In this volatile primary race, Bernie Sanders, a candidate leading in the national polls among
a plurality of Democratic voters, may be poised to garner an
insurmountable delegate lead, provided he doesn't stumble badly Saturday
in South Carolina and next week's all-important Super Tuesday.
"But as Sanders surges ahead, 2020 for
Democrats looks a lot like 2016 did for Republicans. And it will yield a
similar result: nominating an unacceptable candidate that so many smart
people thought could never win a general election, let alone a major
party primary contest. In today's politics, never say what will never
happen because it may actually happen. Hey, can you say President Donald
Trump?
"The
bottom line is that the Democratic primary will deliver a contest that
many Americans may fear most in 2020: Trump versus Sanders. Both
represent two sides of the same coin. They both appeal to anger. They
scream that the system is rigged, you're a victim, and that they can
give you your country back if only you follow them. At least, that's
their tale... A choice between a know-nothing nativist and unapologetic 'democratic
socialist'--from the old school--is really no choice at all for a
broad swath of the American public. It's akin to Mutually Assured
Destruction (MAD)--a military strategy developed during the Cold War in
which opposing sides use the threat of full-scale nuclear war,
resulting in destruction of both sides."
On 29 Feb., Joe Biden won the South Carolina primary in a major wipe-out, accruing 48.6% of the vote, while Sanders, the #2 finisher, drew just shy of 20%.
The exit-polling on the contest pointed to the kind of effect this coverage seemed to be having. A plurality of South Carolina voters--49%--said they supported Medicare For All, but nearly half of those voted for Joe Biden, who is entirely opposed to it. Joe Biden was running on a return to pre-Trump "normalcy"--a Democratic version of Trump's own Make America Great Again--and had flatly stated, earlier in the campaign, that "nothing would fundamentally change" under his rule, comments the press largely ignored. South Carolina voters were asked, "Do you think
the economic system in the United States works well enough as is, needs
minor changes or needs a complete overhaul?" A majority--53%--chose "complete overhaul," but half those voters went to Biden.
Why?
The pollsters seemed to find the answer: "Would you rather nominate a candidate who agrees with you on major issues or can beat Donald Trump?" Most--53%--said they preferred a candidate who can beat Trump and over half of those--52%--voted for Biden. Sanders got only 17% of the votes of this contingent. It's also the case that 43% of voters prioritized a candidate who agrees with them but by far the biggest portion of those--43%--also voted for Biden who, by the relatively sparse issues data provided by the exit-polls, entirely disagrees with them.
The inference is that Biden's South Carolina win was driven by low-information voters, particularly those who were buying into the empty "electability" narrative being drilled into them by the press, to the extent that they thought a candidate who had very badly lost all of the first 3 contests was more "electable" then the guy who had won them. A remarkable 37% of South Carolina voters said they only decided who they'd support
in the last few days before voting.
The campaign had been ongoing for over a year by this time; deciding so
late suggests an
extreme detachment from public affairs but it
also means this segment of voters were making their decision while
viewing the campaign through the press environment covered by this
article. Half of those late deciders cast their vote for Biden. Nationally, Sanders had always led the race among younger voters while Biden dominated among the elderly--those who rely on and are most susceptible to the messaging of the traditional corporate press. In South Carolina, a whopping 71% of those who went to the polls were over the age of 45 and they broke very heavily for Biden.[8] This pattern repeated throughout the contests to come.
In subsequent commentary, much weight--excessive weight--has been given to SC congressman Jim Clyburn's
endorsement of Biden on 26 Feb. as something that played a major role in the vote--Clyburn is popular with black voters in the state. That analysis is superficial. Polling showed Sanders consistently gaining in SC while Biden almost as consistently collapsed. On 7 Jan, Biden was, by
the 538 average, in a comfortable lead with 38.7% support, with Sanders at less than half that. As he lost contest after contest, Biden's lead collapsed, hitting its low of 23.4% on 21 Feb., while Sanders had risen to the point that multiple polls showed he was within the polling margin of error. Sanders won Nevada and instead of reaping the benefit of positive press coverage any other campaign would have enjoyed, Sanders was met, at that point, with a corporate press that doubled and tripled its efforts to drive him from the race. Over the week that followed, his numbers collapsed, while Biden's soared, hitting, just before the vote, their highest point since October 2019. At the time of the Clyburn endorsement, Biden had already rebounded to 31.1%, a nearly 8% jump. Clyburn, as a representative of the Democratic Establishment, may, by his endorsement, have given some who look to party Establishment types for such guidance permission to vote for Biden but the race had already turned by then, and that relentlessly hostile press environment--the thing that makes people turn to such Establishment types for guidance--is the context for his endorsement.
 |
| 538 Polling Average |
South Carolina is a deep-red state, one that will overwhelmingly vote for Trump in the Fall no matter what happens, but the press reaction to Biden's win there was sheer ecstasy; it was treated as a major turnaround in the race, Biden as a conquering hero. In the 3 days after South Carolina, the press lavished
over $100 million in free positive press coverage on his campaign leading into Super Tuesday. To put that in perspective,
that's more, in only 3 days, than all super PACs combined had spent in the entire 2020 cycle up to that point.
Sanders, on the other hand, continued to get the same treatment he always had:
The Hill, 1 March: "
Biden Says Sanders Would Lose To Trump."
"Former Vice President Joe Biden said on Sunday that President Trump would beat Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a general election.
"Asked
by NBC's Chuck Todd on 'Meet the Press' if Sanders would lose to the
Republican incumbent in the fall, Biden said, 'I do.'
"'I
think Bernie Sanders's positions on a number of issues, even in the
Democratic Party, are very controversial,' Biden said, noting the hefty
price tag of the senator's signature 'Medicare for All' proposal."
A
Harvard/Harris poll, released a day earlier, showed Sanders beating Trump by 8 points, Biden beating Trump by 10--another statistical tie.
NBC News, 1 March: "
After South Carolina Win, Biden Takes Aim at Sanders' 'Very Controversial' Ideas":
"Former Vice President Joe Biden took aim at
Bernie Sanders on Sunday's 'Meet the Press,' arguing that the Vermont
senator's policies are 'very controversial' and that Sanders would lose
to President Donald Trump if he were to be the Democratic party’s
presidential nominee.
"'They are not looking
for revolution, they are looking for results, they’re looking for
change, they’re looking for movement forward,' Biden said of the
American people.
"When asked if he thought Sanders would lose to Trump, Biden replied: 'I do.'
"'I
think Bernie Sanders’ positions on a number of issues, even in the
Democratic Party, are very controversial,' pointing to the price tag for
Sanders’ Medicare for All health care plan."
ABC News, 1 March: "
Joe Biden Says Democrats Could Have 'Great Trouble' With Bernie Sanders At the Top of the Ticket":
"Former Vice President Joe Biden said on ABC's 'This Week' that Sen. Bernie Sanders could have difficulty helping down-ballot candidates in the 2020 election, when asked if the
Democratic Party could 'lose big' with Sanders at the top of the ticket.
"'Well I think he's gonna have--he'll have great trouble bringing along
other senators, keeping the House of Representatives, winning back the
Senate and down-ballot initiatives. So I think--I think it is a stark
choice and it's not about whether or not we restore the soul of the
Democratic Party. It's about restoring the soul and unite this country,
the whole country,' Biden told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. 'And I think--I think I can do that.'"
On 1 March, Pete Buttigieg
dropped out of the presidential race. Showing the same lack of class that had helped kill his campaign, he used his exit speech to attack Sanders.
"In his final weeks as a candidate, Buttigieg repeatedly
criticized
Sanders, warning against the Vermont senator's 'revolution with a tenor
of combat, division and polarization.' He started airing attack ads
against Sanders in South Carolina that said 'instead of polarization,
progress.'
"And Buttigieg used his dropout speech
in South Bend to call for 'a broad-based agenda that can truly deliver
for the American people, not one that gets lost in ideology.'"
On 2 March, Amy Klobuchar followed suit. That same day, she and
Beto O'Rourke traveled to Texas to appear with and
endorse Biden, an event that may have been partially engineered by former President Obama.[9]
The press continued its orgasmic Triumph over Biden's win in a single insignificant state but for Sanders, the story remained the same:
Stamford Advocate, 2 March: "
Democratic Fears That Bernie Sanders Would Hurt Down-ballot Candidates Influence Suburban Voters."
Newsweek, 2 March: "
True, Polls Have Bernie Beating Trump. But The Republicans Haven't Even Started on Him Yet."
New York Times, 2 March: "
Bernie Sanders Can't Count on New Voters":
"According
to Broockman and Kalla's figures, Sanders loses a significant number of
swing votes to Trump, but he makes up for them in support from young
people who say they won't vote, or will vote third party, unless Sanders
is the nominee... But
if Broockman and Kalla are right, by nominating Sanders, Democrats
would be trading some of the electorate’s most reliable voters for some
of its least. To prevail, Democrats would need unheard-of rates of youth
turnout."
Washington Post, 3 March, "
Despite His Promised Turnout Surge, Sanders Is Getting Fewer Votes Than He Did In 2016."
"In the four states that have voted in 2020... Sanders is not exactly demonstrating that he can spur a surge in turnout.
"In
all four states, he has earned a smaller share of the vote than he did
four years ago. There are three states in which we can compare actual
vote totals with 2016. In two, he received fewer votes than he did then.
In the other, he saw a small increase in votes--but the vote total in
the state grew four times as large."
Boston Globe, 3 March: "
For Democrats Concerned With Electability, Bernie Sanders Is An Unlikely Answer."
Politico Magazine, 3 March: "
'The Worst Possible Scenario': Never Trumpers Wonder What to Do About Bernie."
"[W]ith the Democrats quite possibly heading toward nominating an avowed
socialist for president, horrified Never Trumpers are facing yet another
crisis beyond their imaginings... Heading into Super Tuesday, the
delegate leader in the 2020 Democratic field--and, depending on what
happens in California and elsewhere, the potential runaway
frontrunner--is Bernie Sanders, the most left-wing major-party candidate
in modern American history. The prospect of choosing between Sanders and
Trump is, for this group of influencers who were once regarded as major
players in the Republican Party, a looming civic crisis. 'It's sort of
like choosing between death by hanging versus death by gunshot,' Sykes
told me.
"'The worst possible scenario' were
McMullin’s words. Wilson--a famously foul-mouthed GOP
strategist--described a potential Sanders-Trump race as 'the fucking
apocalypse.'"
New York Daily News, 3 March: ""
Bernie Sanders Could Imperil Democrats' Downballot Races."
"Over
the last week, two former mayors articulated the potential consequences
of a Bernie Sanders nomination. Super Tuesday voters should take their
warnings to heart.
"As
Pete Buttigieg put it: 'The time has come for us to stop acting like
the presidency is the only office that matters. Not only is this a way
to get Donald Trump reelected, we got a House to worry about. We got a
Senate to worry about.'
"Mike
Bloomberg argued that putting Sanders atop the ticket would lead to a
down-ballot bloodbath, including 'a lot of gerrymandering down-ballot in
states, which will hurt the country for a long time. But worse, at the
federal level, you will have a whole bunch of judges--probably even two
Supreme Court justices--that the Republicans will appoint.'
"Amen."
Breitbart, 3 March: "
Former Biden Adviser on Bernie Sanders: 'We Cannot Let This Man Be the Nominee'":
"Democrats must not select Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as their presidential nominee, warned Moe Vela, former senior adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and president of the Vela Group, on Monday's edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight with host Rebecca Mansour and special guest host John Hayward.
"'[Bernie Sanders] will be disastrous for down-ballot races,' said Vela of a possible Democrat presidential nomination for the Vermont senator. 'From sheriff to school board to mayor, all the way up to the U.S. Senate and the House, he will be absolutely disastrous for down-ballot Democratic races.'
"Vela continued, 'We cannot let this man be the nominee of the Democratic
Party,' adding, 'It would be like giving Donald Trump a gift with a bow
on it, and Republicans would be jumping up and down if Bernie Sanders
was the nominee because they know, as we say in Texas, you can just open
up a can of whoop-ass.'"
Super Tuesday on 3 March saw 14 contests across the U.S.. Bolstered by that tidal wave of positive press--and with the press having beaten down his primary rival as best it could--Biden won 10 of them, and
shot past Sanders in the national RCP polling average to again assume the position of frontrunner in the Democratic field.
The exit-polling showed the same trends as in South Carolina. As this author
wrote at the time:
"In Maine,
a state Biden won by 1.1%, wholly 47% of voters were late deciders, the
vast bulk of them going to Biden; 69% supported M4A but 24% of
that--16.6% of the total state vote--went to Biden. In Massachusetts,
11.5% of total voters supported M4A yet voted for Biden; Biden won the
state by a hair under 7%. M4A had the support of 62% of Minnesota
Democrats but 16.2% of total voters supported it but cast their ballots
for Biden; he won there by a little over 8%. In Tennessee, 53%
supported M4A; 17% of the state's voters supported M4A but voted for
Biden; 17.04% were late-deciders who voted for Biden; Biden won by just
under 17%. In Michigan,
just under 21% supported M4A but voted for Biden; 18.5% thought the
economic system needed a complete overhaul but voted for Biden; Biden
won the state by 16%. In Texas,
53% said they'd only decided for whom to vote in the past month and the
largest chunk of those went to Biden; 63% said they supported M4A but
just under a quarter of those--15% of total voters--voted Biden; Biden
won the state by 4.5% of the vote. And so on."
The polling across these contests suggested Biden was winning because large numbers of voters, particularly elderly voters (whose turnout was surging everywhere), had bought into the press "electability" narrative and were voting for Biden based on it, even though his policy views--if one can abuse a phrase--don't align with their own. This contingent was larger than Biden's margin of victory everywhere he won.
Detroit News, 4 March: "
How Can Bernie Sanders Happen in America?":
"Pundits have recently argued that
younger voters, especially those under 30, are less inclined to be
bothered when they hear the word “socialism,” since they have no
firsthand memory of the Cold War.
"To
some extent, this must be true. Those who weren't alive during
socialism’s cruelest catastrophes--or even its many banal failures--will be less put off by the idea. Then again, if a presidential
candidate were praising the excellent public transportation system of
the Third Reich or going on about some alleged benefit to American
slavery, they would rightly be chased from the public square forever
even though the vast majority of voters have no firsthand knowledge of
the Holocaust or slavery. Anti-Semitism and racism haven’t disappeared,
and neither has Marx, sadly.
"It’s true that Bernie
Sanders' fans aren't acquainted with socialism (and, incidentally, this
is true only if we ignore the existence of Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea,
China, etc.)... [L]ike millions of other saps over the past century-plus, they’ve been
enticed by the collectivist 'ethic'--its revolutionary appeal, its
religiosity and its quixotic promises... No, Sanders isn’t Stalin. He claims to be a democratic socialist. I get it. But there's an array of good reasons no one says, 'Hey, let's give
democratic fascism a shot.' There are just as many good reasons not to
normalize socialism. At their core, both ideologies are authoritarian.
The only difference is that academics and our cultural stewards have
whitewashed one of them."
Boston Globe, 4 March: "
The Intractable Bernie Bros and What They Might Mean For the Sanders Campaign."
"The socialist emperor of Vermont has no clothes.
"The feverish anti-establishment antipathy that’s helped
fuel Bernie Sanders’ presidential ambitions over the past few years has
relied on a belief that the system (what system? every system) has been
rigged against him.
"From Wall Street to drug companies, from the Democratic
Party to corporate America, these powerful institutions were aligning to
rob him of what was rightfully his, what 'the people' wanted... Sanders himself rang the alarms this week about the
coming coup: 'Look, it's no secret,' he told reporters. 'The Washington
Post has 16 articles a day on this--there’s a massive effort to stop
Bernie Sanders... The corporate establishment is coming together, the
political establishment is coming together, and they will do anything
and everything.' That, presumably, gets his supporters riled up and
ready for battle, and there's likely some truth to the idea that
mainstream Democrats are concerned Sanders' socialism will get Trump
reelected. (They're not wrong.)
"But what happened on Super Tuesday totally dismantled the
Sanders conspiracy theory that, if only 'the establishment' would get
out of voters’ way, this would be his for the taking... The truth is, despite having run once before, accruing
potent name ID and running a sophisticated grassroots campaign, Sanders
is simply not a national candidate. He has a vocal, very aggressive base
of support, but it's localized and it's not representative of a
majority of Democratic voters. His candidacy has a very real ceiling,
and Biden just found it.
"The truth is the establishment isn’t standing in Sanders' way. Voters are."
Chicago Sun-Times, 4 March: "
The Establishment Isn't Standing in Bernie Sanders' Way. Voters Are":
NPR, 5 March: "
Russian Media Aims To Help Bernie Sanders Campaign Get the Democratic Nomination":
"It's 2016 all over again--at least from Russia's perspective.
"Russia's state-sponsored messaging about Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign was more neutral in the fall.
"But
over the past six weeks, this coverage has shifted to mirror
pro-Sanders talking points first used in the last presidential campaign,
said Clint Watts of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, who has been
monitoring Russian interference continuously.
"'What's really
come on strong just in the last 30 to 45 days are very similar
narratives that we saw in 2016 about Sanders,' Watts told NPR... It isn't clear precisely how much Russia is doing to help Sanders via
the anonymity of cyberspace, but national security officials warned on Monday that social media agitation and disinformation have continued through this year's presidential race."
New York Times, 5 March: "
As Bernie Sanders Pushed for Closer Ties, Soviet Union Spotted Opportunity":
"Previously unseen documents from a Soviet archive show how hard Mr. Sanders worked to find a sister city in Russia when he was a mayor in the 1980s. Moscow saw a chance for propaganda."
Newsweek, 6 March: "
Bernie Sanders Is Receiving 7 Times As Much Positive Russian Media Coverage As Joe Biden, Analysis Shows":
"Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders has received the
most positive coverage of any contender from Russian state-backed news
agencies, according to new research from a foreign policy think tank.
"Russia
is believed to be trying to boost Sanders' primary campaign while also
helping President Donald Trump. New analysis from the Foreign Policy Research Institute revealed that Sanders received the most positive coverage of any candidate from Russia's Sputnik and RT news services."
Daily Mail, 6 March: "
Elizabeth
Warren Slams 'Bernie Bros' For 'Online Bullying' Sanders' Rivals and
Insists Candidates Are 'Responsible' For the 'Threatening, Ugly,
Dangerous Things' Their Supporters Do:"
"Elizabeth
Warren has accused some Bernie Sanders’ supporters of doxxing and
threatening women who backed her failed presidential campaign.
"The
senator from Massachusetts accused the 'Bernie Bros'--a nickname given
to hardcore supporters of the Democratic candidate who are active on
social media--of 'some really ugly stuff,' including an 'onslaught of
online threats.'"
Lowell Sun, 7 March: "
Beware the Bernie Bros."
Salt Lake Tribune, 9 March: "
Bernie Sanders As Presidential Nominee Could Hurt Vulnerable Democrats Like Utah’s Ben McAdams."
NBC News, 10 March: "
Clyburn Calls For Democrats To 'Shut this Primary Down' If Biden Has Big Night":
"[Biden supporter] Rep. Jim Clyburn... says the Democrat National Committee should 'shut this primary down' to help the former vice president's chances in November.
"''I
think when the night is over, Joe Biden will be the prohibitive
favorite to win the Democratic nomination, and quite frankly, if the
night ends the way it has begun, I think it is time for us to shut this
primary down, it is time for us to cancel the rest of these debates--because you don't do anything but get yourself in trouble if you
continue in this contest when it's obvious that the numbers will not
shake out for you,' Clyburn
told NPR.
"Pressed on the issue, Clyburn, the House Democratic whip, said a clean
sweep would make Biden the 'prohibitive nominee,' and he added that the
DNC should 'step in, make an assessment and determine whether they ought
to have any more debates.'"
On 10 March, Biden--still flying high on positive press coverage--won 5 of the 6 Democratic contests.
By this time, the Covid-19 pandemic was beginning to get serious, with 13 states declaring public health emergencies. Sanders and later Biden
canceled their scheduled post-primary rallies, and the virus brought a halt to traditional campaigning. This proved a boon to Biden, who had barely been campaigning in the prior 11 months anyway. His "campaign" retreated to his basement in Delaware, where access to the candidate was more tightly controlled than ever, as he interacted with the world via video feeds and could "answer" questions by reading cue-cards prepared by his staff. Sanders, meanwhile, was taken off the campaign trail where he excelled, while, with over half the U.S. (26 of the 50 states) having not yet voted, the Democratic party Establishment and the corporate press ramped up efforts to get him to quit the race.
The New Yorker, 10 March: "
Bernie Sanders Electability Argument Falls Apart In Michigan."
A
YouGov poll that wrapped on this same day showed both Biden and Sanders beating Trump by identical 4% margins.
Politico, 10 March: "
Democrats Weigh How To Nudge Sanders Out After Tuesday Losses":
"Even before Joe Biden romped in
another big primary night on Tuesday, Democrats were already talking
about the next move: how to get Bernie Sanders out of the race.
"More than two dozen political operatives and delegate experts agreed
in interviews that a walloping in Michigan and Mississippi and a tight
finish in Washington state would all but close Sanders’ path to the
nomination... Now Democrats, trying to avoid a prolonged primary that they say would
only help Donald Trump's reelection efforts, are conferring over when--or even whether--to prod Sanders to clear the way for Biden. Democrats
agree they want to avoid a repeat of 2016's protracted race and risk
turning over a bloodied and bruised nominee to face off against
President Donald Trump. Singed by the devastating general election loss
four years ago, some Democrats say they refuse to go down that road
again."
Washington Examiner, 10 March: "
Bernie Sanders's Time To Drop Out Has Come."
U.S. News & World Report, 10 March: "
Say Goodbye, Bernie":
"Just two weeks ago, Sen. Bernie Sanders appeared on an unstoppable path to the nomination, and pressure was mounting on Joe Biden to get out of the race so another moderate candidate could take on the Vermont lawmaker one on one.
"After Tuesday
nights results--which had the former vice president taking the big
prize of Michigan, along with Mississippi and Missouri--the tables have
turned 180 degrees, and it is Sanders who will be facing pressure to
move aside so the party can rally around Biden and build a coalition to
achieve their central goal: to oust President Donald Trump.
"Before
polls had even closed in Idaho, Washington state and North Dakota, the
primary narrative was written in ink, with leading political forces
declaring Biden as the near-certain choice to face Trump in November.
"'The
math is now clear. Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee for
President and @prioritiesUSA is going to do everything we can to help
him defeat Donald Trump in November. I hope others will join us in the
fight,' tweeted Guy Cecil, chairman of the Democratic SuperPAC
Priorities USA."
Fox Business, 10 March: "
Varney: Bernie Sanders Is Done."
The Atlantic, 11 March: "
It's Over For Bernie."
Reuters, 11 March: "
The Revolution That Wasn't: Bernie Sanders' Second Presidential Bid Falls To Earth."
"State after state, voters by roughly 2 to 1 said they would rather
pick a candidate who can beat Trump than one they agree with on major
issues, according to Edison Research exit polls in the states that voted
on Tuesday as well as last week’s Super Tuesday contests.
"The
overwhelming majority of these voters who cited beating Trump as the top
priority - 61% in Michigan, 67% in Missouri, and 82% in Mississippi -
voted for Biden, the polls show... Wall Street investors fearful of a government takeover of healthcare
dumped shares in health insurers, while Democratic Party insiders
sounded the alarm that the self-described democratic socialist would not
only lose to Trump in November but would also hurt the party’s chances
down ballot."
Politico, 11 March: "
Bernie Sanders Is All But Done":
"The night was so debilitating for
Bernie Sanders that after retreating to his home state of Vermont on
Tuesday, he didn't even make a speech.
"In every way, other than mathematically, his presidential campaign is done.
"It wasn't just the results of the primaries on Tuesday that spelled the
end, though they were miserable for Sanders. It was the realization
that, for the first time, Sanders' campaign had no excuse--and nothing
better to look forward to."
Washington Post, 11 March: "
‘Let's Shut This Puppy Down': James Carville Says It's Time To End Democratic primary After Biden's Big Night":
"Carville, the longtime Democratic strategist and MSNBC analyst, urged
Sanders on Tuesday night to drop out of the race and allow former vice
president Joe Biden to focus on a general election matchup with
President Trump. Biden seized control of the Democratic presidential
contest with four more decisive wins, including Michigan, the night's biggest prize.
"'Let's shut this puppy down, and let’s move on and worry about
November,' Carville said. 'This thing is decided. There’s no reason to
keep it going, not even a day longer.'"
The Atlantic, 11 March: "
The Best Thing Bernie Sanders Can Do Is Drop Out":
"Sanders now faces a crucial choice. He could respond creatively to the
political and medical news. He could return to the Senate, and there use
his high profile and his massive mailing list to lead the fight for a
generous response to the epidemic--achieving, at last, the big
legislative legacy that has until now eluded him.
"Or he could do as President Donald Trump is urging him to do, not to
mention Jill Stein and thousands of bots on Twitter: Continue his doomed
campaign for the nomination, not with a view to winning, but with a
view to inflicting as much damage as possible on Joe Biden. In 2016,
Sanders played an important role in legitimating Trumpist attacks on
Hillary Clinton: She was bought and paid for by Goldman Sachs; she’d
plunge us into World War III over Syria. In the end, a large group of
Sanders voters—perhaps as many as 12 percent—crossed lines to vote for
Trump. Unknown numbers of others dropped out of the political process
altogether. Trump slavers for a repeat of that performance in 2020."
The Independent, 11 March: "
Bernie Sanders Needs To Step Aside To Let Biden Defeat Trump."
Slate, 11 March: "
The Establishment Didn't Destroy Bernie Sanders. He Destroyed Himself."
Chicago Sun-Times, 12 March: "
Bernie Sanders Should Drop Out Now and Give Joe Biden Clean Win Amid Coronavirus Fears."
Washington Post, 13 March: "
Sanders Supporters May Not Vote For Biden If He Wins the Democratic Nomination."
NBC News, 14 March: "
Sanders Had Some Vulnerable Democrats Worried. Biden's Surge is Easing Their Minds."
New York Post, 14 March: "
Bernie Bros Warn of 'Massive Exodus' If Democrats Nominate Joe Biden":
"As the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders continues to crash and burn, the socialist's most hard-core supporters are vowing they will never
vote for Joe Biden at the ballot box--even if that means handing Trump a
second term.
"'We will never--NEVER boost or support Joe Biden or defend his
abysmal record and terrible policy positions,' Henry Williams, executive
director of The Gravel Institute, told The Post. 'We will tell people,
as we always have, to vote their conscience and to make decisions based
on the interests of all the world's oppressed people… I do expect a
massive exodus from the Democratic Party'... The grumbling from Sanders die-hards is no idle threat. A whopping
12% of them voted for Trump in 2016, according to an analysis by
Cooperative Congressional Election Study. That added up to roughly
216,000 voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, exit polls
showed. Trump’s combined margin of victory in those states was 77,744.
"An untold number of additional Sanders fans almost certainly stayed
home or voted third party in 2016 in an election plagued by low turnout
on both sides. Green Party candidate Jill Stein earned more votes in
each rust-belt battleground than the margin separating Trump from
Hillary Clinton."
Washington Examiner, 15 March: "
Sanders Supporters Warn of 'Massive Exodus' From Democratic Party If Biden Wins Nomination":
"The socialist Vermont senator’s most vocal supporters, including 'Bernie Bros,' could give President Trump and Republicans a boost if their preferred candidate does not make it to the general election, according to a New York Post report."
Back in January, this writer
debunked, at length, the Clintonite notion that Sanders voters were responsible for Clinton's 2016 defeat.
On 15 March, the
last Democratic debate was held in Washington D.C., Joe Biden vs. Bernie Sanders. In his most mendacious performance of the entire primary campaign, Biden was allowed to
walk away from his entire history without pushback from or correction by any of the moderators. From the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention act, which put the screws to creditors on behalf of the financial services industry that bankrolled his senate career, to the Iraq war--Biden had constructed all manner of falsehoods about his role in bringing about the conflict and continuing it--Biden was allowed to deny, deflect, obfuscate and walk back most of the high-points--the low-points--of his career. When Bernie Sanders pointed out Biden had repeatedly advocated cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Biden was not only allowed to lie and deny this but moderator Dana Bash took an old Sanders article out of context to falsely suggest Sanders himself had advocated such cuts.
Washington Post, 17 March: "
It's Over. Biden is the Presumptive Nominee":
"There is near-universal recognition on the Democratic side, from Biden
supporters and those who favored other candidates, as well as pollsters
and operatives, that the Democratic primary is effectively over. Biden's
lead is insurmountable, and there is no conceivable mechanism by which
Sanders might turn the tide."
Newsweek, 17 March: "
Bernie Sanders Supporters Are Not As Loyal To Joe Biden As The Average Democrat, Poll Shows":
"Democratic supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders are less likely than
the average member of their party to commit to backing Joe Biden in a
match-up against President Donald Trump should the former vice president
clinch the nomination, a new poll showed.
"While 90 percent of
Democrats would commit themselves to support Biden in a head-to-head
match-up against Trump, 82 percent of Sanders supporters would do the
same, the survey from Morning Consult found."
While Newsweek chose this spin on the poll in question, here's another of its findings reported in the same story:
"Eighty-five percent of Biden supporters said they would be inclined to
back Sanders over Trump, a mere three-point improvement over Sanders'
numbers."
A 3% difference means a statistical tie between Sanders and Biden supporters--no difference at all--but Biden didn't get a story proclaiming his supporters are less loyal than that fabricated "average member of the party," despite the fact that Biden supporters
were also less likely than that "average" Dem to say they'd support the other candidate. Note, also, how the purported inferior loyalty of Biden's supporters to their man is characterized as an "improvement." And, of course, Biden is treated as inevitable:
"Tracking where Sanders' voters will go is significant because
Biden is poised to clinch the nomination and will need to maintain a
coalition that includes disaffected Sanders supporters in order to
ensure a general election victory. The latest FiveThirtyEight primary
forecast calls Biden's nomination a near-certainty."
New York Magazine, 17 March: "
Why Is Bernie Sanders Still Running For President?"
"It's
not clear what [Sanders] has to gain by devoting that movement and its
resources to the cause of losing a long series of primaries. Deepening
the association of Bernie-ism with a failure to accept political reality
and disinterest in the Democratic Party's greater good seems
counterproductive to its long-term goals.
"What possible reason does he have to continue?"
On 17 March, Illinois, Florida and Arizona held their Democratic contests, and Biden won all three. Exit pollsters used a slightly different slate of questions than had been the case in prior contests but the same trend was still evident: Biden was winning via the votes of older people and those with whom his politics don't align because he was regarded as the most "electable."[10]
New York Times, 18 March: "
Bernie Sanders Has No Realistic Chance to Win. Some Democrats Say, 'It's Over.'":
"Some
Democrats said that with the delegate outlook so bleak, and with a
deadly pandemic gripping an anxious nation, Mr. Sanders risks appearing
self-centered and out of step if he insists on pressing ahead.
"'Bernie
is getting beat by 30 and 40 points--it's over,' said Representative
Don Beyer of Virginia, who has endorsed Mr. Biden. 'This is the adult
thing to do--knowing when it is time to disappear.'"
With 23 of the 50 states having not yet voted, this article flatly asserted that "a crushing round of primary losses" had "left [Sanders] with no realistic path to the Democratic nomination" and that Joe Biden "has now amassed a nearly insurmountable lead."
The Week, 18 March: "
It's Over For Bernie Sanders":
"Whether or not Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders suspends his campaign for
president in the coming days, he is not going to be the Democratic
nominee for president in 2020... Sanders' most fervent followers won't want to accept it. They'll say
that the race is far from over. That plenty more states still need to
vote. That even after Tuesday night's delegates are allocated, Biden
will be hundreds away from clinching the nomination. That Sanders will
only be a couple hundred or so behind.
"All of that will be true, but none of it will matter. That's because
Bernie failed to win the nomination in 2016 while running a far more
electorally formidable campaign than he has this time around. When we
compare his performance in these two cycles, we see a straightforward
story of electoral decline and diminishing political momentum... In state after state, Sanders has underperformed in comparison with 2016."
New York Post, 18 March: "
Biden Just Made Bernie Nothing More Than a Two-Time Loser":
"Now the big, the dramatic, the breathless question is: Will Sanders drop out?
"Who cares?
"Yeah, he pushed his party to the left. Yeah, a Sandernista will
probably take over the Democratic Party if Biden is defeated in
November.
"But Bernie--Bernie the Fidel Fanboy, Bernie the Jewish Jew-Basher--is a two-time loser.
"Leave now or leave later, you're leaving either way."
New York Daily News, 18 March: "
It's Time For Bernie Sanders To Do What's Right For America":
"Democrats were also sounding the alarm to pull the plug on Bernie Sanders' life support campaign.
"'I think the conversation is going to quickly turn to how and when does
Bernie Sanders unite the Democratic Party,' said former Missouri
Senator Claire McCaskill said on MSNBC... [E]ven
before COVID-19 crippled the country with fear, Sanders was
underperforming in counties and states that he won in 2016. Fewer
Americans are feeling the Bern, and that math isn't changing as the
electoral map gets even harder for Sanders.
"Sanders' race is also hurting the Democratic party. While he says he’s
attempting to nudge Biden to the far-left so that his voters can feel
they have permission to vote for him, Sanders' supporters have been
attacking the Democratic frontrunner and certain nominee in ways that
could seriously injure him with the general electorate, going after
Biden’s mental health and his capacity to do the job of president."
Washington Post, 19 March: "
Bernie Sanders Has Some Nerve":
"In what
universe should Biden be making concessions to someone who has done so
poorly in the race and who, the Democratic voters decided, holds views
that make him unelectable? When a candidate wins based on voters’
perception, he is the most electable. He should not have to concede to the loser.
"The Sanders gang might argue that Biden needs the Sanders people to win in November. Perhaps... Here’s an idea: Ignore Sanders. There are no more debates scheduled.
When the primaries come along, Biden will rack up more delegates.
Sanders can stay or go, but Biden should be treated as the presumptive
nominee, which is effectively what he is."
New York Times, 21 March: "
How It All Came Apart for Bernie Sanders."
Hartford Courant, 21 March: "
Bernie Sanders, It's Time To Go":
"...Joe
Biden has a lead in delegates that cannot be overcome short of a
miracle. We already have seen one miracle--the resurgence of Joe Biden.
It's not going to happen twice in the same presidential campaign.
"After the Tuesday blowout, Biden has increased his delegate lead so
that Sanders should recognize that he is just satisfying his ego by
staying in the race and possibly irreparably hurting the Democratic
Party.
"Sanders was a major factor in Hillary Clinton losing to Trump. Bernie
claims that Joe Biden is his friend and that they just differ on ideas.
Well, now is the time to give up the ego contest, face up to reality and
do the right thing by withdrawing from the race for president."
Sioux City Journal, 22 March, "
Our Opinion: Sanders should concede race to Biden":
"[T]his race is over. Democrats have decided who they wish to represent them in the general election versus President Trump.
"Not
only does continuation of this race through the spring serve no
practical purpose, but it raises concerns related to coronavirus. If
holding additional competitive primaries won't affect the final outcome,
why put the health of more voters at risk?"
Despite being self-evidently false, the idea that Sanders was selfishly putting voters in danger by failing to exit the race, thus insuring they would have to participate in primaries during the Covid-19 outbreak, became a persistent anti-Sanders theme in the press. All of the states that had yet to vote had extensive primaries for other offices; Sanders presence or exit wouldn't have affected the primary calendar at all.
Simultaneously--yet never mentioned when playing out that theme--it was the DNC
pressuring states not to postpone their primaries due to the virus, out of concern that this would make for a protracted primary battle. The DNC suggested states adopt mail-in ballots but made
very clear that however they opted to hold the contests, delegates from states who delayed their primaries would be punished. On 15 March, Sanders was the one who
suggested upcoming primary contests should be postponed because of the virus. Biden not only
declined to do the same but, instead,
urged voters to go to the polls.
"If you are feeling healthy, not showing symptoms, and not at risk of being exposed to COVID-19: please vote on Tuesday."
But, of course, by going to the polls and being around large numbers of people doing the same, these voters
would be putting themselves at risk of being exposed to the virus. At the time, progressive journalist Ryan Grim called Biden's refusal to call for a delay "despicable" and "irresponsible," but press pundits were soon megaphoning the notion that it was Sanders endangering the public.
National Review, 23 March: "
Bernie Sanders: Marxist."
On 24 March, a former Biden staffer named Tara Reade came forward and publicly accused Joe Biden of sexually assaulting her back in 1993. She
told her story to Ryan Grim of the Intercept and on the
Katie Halper Show podcast. The corporate press is ordinarily quite enthusiastic about such stories, even dubious and thinly-sourced ones, but this one, a potential threat to Biden's candidacy, was simply made to disappear. In Commentary (15 June), Christine Rosen
wrote about what happened next.
"For several weeks, no major newspaper mentioned the allegations, even
though information about them was circulating widely on social media and
in conservative publications. Biden continued to give television
interviews to reporters who never once asked him about Tara Reade. It
was almost three weeks later when the New York Times finally published a story about it..."
Rosen doesn't mention it but that coverage, which began three weeks after the allegation was made, only happened after Bernie Sanders dropped out of the primary contest, leaving Biden unchallenged for the Democratic nomination. Biden wasn't even asked about the allegations until 1 May.
There were, as it developed, serious problems with Reade's story. Maybe it was all just nonsense. One could make an argument that exercising some journalistic restraint on something that had the potential to significantly impact a presidential race was a responsible course but it seems pretty unlikely journalists suddenly became afflicted, in this matter, with a sense of responsibility nowhere in evidence in any other aspect of their coverage of this campaign. While, speaking personally, this writer isn't at all interested in allegations like this if they suddenly emerge years after the alleged events and in the middle of a political campaign, that opinion certainly doesn't at all reflect the appetite of the corporate press. About that, Ryan Grim is quite correct when he said "typically, in a situation like this, media outlets would be competing intensely for the first major on-camera interview" with the accuser. In this MeToo era rife with loud, public reckonings over sexual improprieties, the reader will have to draw his own conclusion as to why this was kept from public view until a few days after Sanders left the race.
Washington Post, 25 March: "
Bernie Sanders Clings To A Fantasy Campaign":
"[Biden] is, for all intents and purposes, the presumptive nominee, and yet
Sanders announces he is going to stay in the race through New York's
April 28 primary (unless it is moved to June 2 along with others?). He
also declares he is ready for the next debate! (There is no next debate
scheduled, and the chances the Democratic National Committee would
countenance such a ludicrous affair are slim to none.)
"Matt Bennett, head of the moderate Democratic group Third Way, tweeted:
'This is selfish, stupid, unforgivable. The primary is over, and we are
in the midst of a world-historic catastrophe. The president is creating
new disasters every day. What the hell is @BernieSanders doing?'
"Well, in
one sense what he is 'doing' is proving his critics right, namely
showing himself to be a self-absorbed crank. He wouldn’t get off the
stage in 2016, precluding the party's unification behind Hillary
Clinton; he is doing the same now with regard to Biden... What was vaguely pathetic--a defeated candidate unable to give up the stage--now seems a bit unhinged. He lost, doesn't he know? He needs even more loses to get the hint he will not be the nominee? The longer he stays in, the more feckless he and his 'movement' looks..."
Washington Post, 30 March: "
Bernie Sanders Says He’s Staying in the Presidential Race. Many Democrats Fear a Reprise of Their 2016 Defeat."
"Four years later, with the senator still running against former vice
president Joe Biden despite almost impossible odds of victory, some
party leaders are increasingly worried about a reprise of the bitter
divisions that many Democrats blame for Hillary Clinton's loss.
"'It's the equivalent of a World War II kamikaze pilot,' said Philippe
Reines, a longtime adviser to Clinton. 'They have no better option than
to plow into USS Biden.'... 'I just think it's a terrible decision for him to make because he looks
very selfish,' said former Democratic senator Barbara Boxer of
California, who backs Biden."
Washington Post, 31 March: "
The Benefit of the Democrats Denouncing Sanders's Selfishness":
"If you are in the search for silver linings, one benefit of Sen. Bernie
Sanders (I-Vt.) pointlessly continuing his losing campaign is the
freedom for Democrats to denounce him and his anti-party escapades.
After years of humoring him, the vast majority of Democrats, from
super-progressives to moderates, can now say out loud what they've said
quietly: It has always been about Bernie. It’s not a movement, but rather a vanity project... The problem, according to many Democrats, remains that 15 percent of
Sanders supporters say in polling that they would vote for President
Trump over Biden. This nugget actually makes the opposite argument:
There is nothing that would satisfy some faction of the Sanders
coalition that would rather blow up our democracy and reelect Trump.
With people so irrational, the best response is to ignore them. They,
like the MAGA-hat crowd, are unreachable and cannot be bargained with
(e.g., more New Green Deal
talk!). So do not try. No more outreach to Sanders, no more promised
policy modifications, no more speaking slot at the convention. Enough."
NBC News, 1 April: "
Donald Trump is the Only Real Winner If Bernie Sanders Remains in the Democratic Primary":
"At a time when voters are scared for their health and fear going to the
polls for the primary contests, it would be smart of Sanders to read the
moment and recognize that it's just not his... [I]t would
behoove Sanders and the party he supposedly seeks to serve to recognize
this unique moment we're in is bigger than his ego and bow out."
Orlando Sentinel, 2 April: "
Bernie Sanders Must Drop Out--Now--and Clear the Way for Joe Biden's Nomination":
"The reason for Biden's success in Florida and around the country wasn't
all that complicated: Democrats want a candidate who can beat Donald
Trump, a person singularly unsuited to serve as president of these
United States... Beating the virus, saving lives and preserving our economy are the
nation' top priorities at this moment. Come this November, the priority
is ensuring Trump does not have a second term.
"That's why Sanders needs to drop out of the Democratic primary. Not later. Not after Congress has acted on the present crisis.
"Now.
"Nothing is gained from Sanders staying in the race. Nothing. His
chances of overtaking Biden are infinitesimal, even more so now with
America facing years of recovery from the economic, societal and
psychological damage of coronavirus.
"Fewer and fewer people are in the mood for the kind of upheaval Sanders
trades on. We're undergoing an upheaval now, and people already are
exhausted from it. And we still face long weeks or maybe months of
isolation, disruption and uncertainty.
"The nation's going to need someone who can heal, and Bernie--with all
his anger, resentment and white-hot revolutionary rhetoric--isn't that
someone."
Boston Globe, 3 April: "
Dear Bernie Sanders: Enough Already."
And so on.
On 8 April, Sanders left the presidential race.
The format for this timeline is one I've used before. The articles referenced here come from a wide range of sources, from the biggest news outlets in the U.S. to local papers to various interest-groups. When I've done this in the past, I've gotten some cries of "foul" for including editorials, which are intended to express an opinion, alongside straight news stories but as I hope this has made clear, there is no real division in
this coverage between news and editorial. It's
all editorial. This is what the press was choosing to put before the public day after day. Everyone from Clintonite-right outlets like MSNBC to the white nationalists of Breitbart were, throughout these months, telling exactly the
same story. As in any political campaign, Sanders' opponents wanted to defeat him but here, there was no daylight between what they were saying about him in their self-concerned efforts to take him out and what the press was "reporting."
And it is "reporting," not reporting. Note that nothing covered here is about policy, that thing that is theoretically supposed to be a (if not the) central focus of political reporting. Sanders
was subject to press criticism based on policy, some of it serious, much of it outlandish, but it was never more than a drop in the bucket of the total coverage and I've excluded it, on the principle that even if individual critiques of a certain policy are wrong, stupid or indefensible, policy critiques are appropriate in a political contest. The 2020 primary coverage wasn't about policy; it was just the press coming up with one story after another aimed at attacking, dismissing, diminishing, demonizing, belittling, sidelining--defeating--Sanders, day after days, month after month (while promoting--or covering for--the more conservative candidates).
While they were repeated into infinity, none of the premises of the major anti-Sanders/anti-progressive narratives covered here were ever seriously interrogated in any sustained way, nor could they withstand that scrutiny had they ever been subjected to it.
The Broockman/Kalla paper purporting to
show Sanders is virtually unelectable, for example, traveled far and wide but Jim Naureckas of Fairness &
Accuracy In Reporting showed that, in reality, youth turnout has, in
recent elections, regularly jumped by larger margins than those the
paper's authors presented as extremely unlikely--that particular "extremely unlikely" being the basis for their headline conclusion. Writing in Jacobin, Seth
Ackerman later offered a more detailed dissection of the
paper ("
A Study Last Week Claimed to Prove That Bernie Is Unelectable. It Turns Out the Study Is Bunk."), showing its headline conclusion was built on a string of basic errors and completely unsupportable assumptions.
The "Bernie Bros" narrative was a smear-campaign launched during the
2016 cycle by Hillary Clinton supporters. It wasn't original to that
campaign; it was simply a repackaging of a smear from 2008. When, that year, Barack
Obama had challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential
nomination, the Clintonites tarred Obama's supporters as "
Obama Boys,"
attributing to them all of the same negative characteristics they'd later attribute to Sanders' supporters. Given
that one of the key claims of those pimping the "Bernie Bros" line is
that Sanders' supporters are uniquely toxic, one would think the press
commentary on it would be informed by the fact that it was really just a
recycled version of a cynical libel of supporters of an entirely different candidate from a few years earlier. Outside
left outlets who debunk the notion though, it never has been. "Bernie Bros"
is just an empty, bad-faith smear offered to try to harm Sanders and
silence his supporters, and that's all it has ever been. The Intercept's
Glenn Greenwald
rather brutally dismantled
it back in early 2016 and that should have been the end of the matter.
Instead, it was lovingly nurtured by the Clinton personality cult
and their Cult Queen in the years since and, of course, roared back to
life with a vengeance during the current cycle.
Keith Spencer, writing in Salon, was virtually alone in seriously examining this narrative during the months covered here. "
Why does the 'Bernie Bro' myth persist?", Spencer asked (9 Feb.). "Because pundits don't understand how the internet works." His premise: "A misunderstanding of social media is driving media elites to keep pushing an easily disprovable stereotype." On 9 March, he returned with another, even more important piece, "
There is hard data that shows 'Bernie Bros' are a myth":
"Jeff Winchell, a computational social scientist and graduate student
at Harvard University, crunched the numbers on tweet data and found that
Sanders' supporters online behave the same as everyone else.
Winchell used what is called a sentiment analysis, a technique used both
in the digital humanities and in e-commerce, to gauge emotional intent
from social media data.
"'Bernie followers act pretty much the same on Twitter as any other
follower,' Winchell says of his results. 'There is one key difference
that Twitter users and media don't seem to be aware of.... Bernie has a
lot more Twitter followers than Twitter followers of other Democrat's
campaigns,' he added, noting that this may be partly what helps
perpetuate the myth."
In these months, this was the only hard data on this subject but while the press was turning out anti-"Bernie Bro" stories into infinity, it was, beyond Spencer's story, largely ignored.
The "electability" narrative--both overtly stated and the implication at the heart of everything else covered here--
was simply a manifestation of an ideological preference for the more conservative candidates, not any sort of reasoned argument. When it was offered--and offered and offered and offered--it was spun as self-evidently true and implanted in media consumers by mere repetition, without reference to the extensive contemporaneous data on the question, which showed that, in reality, Sanders performed as well as or better than Biden against Trump. The even more extensive polling of public opinion, extending back several years, also disproves the oft-repeated notion that Sanders' progressive agenda is toxic to voters; most of his headline policy items have the support of a majority--often an overwhelming majority--of the public. Those policies are the substance of Sanders' democratic socialism, yet polls showing public distaste for "socialism"--polls that never asked about democratic socialism--were used to make Sanders appear a risky choice, without reference to what people think of Sanders' "socialist" policies. The "electability" case is also contradicted by much of the electoral history of the last few decades.
Bill
Clinton won the presidency in 1992 with 43% of the vote but his embrace
of Republican priorities was toxic to Democratic enthusiasm and the
party lost ground every cycle he was in office. In 2000, near the end of
Clinton's presidency, columnist Jeff Cohen noted the Democratic carnage Clinton's reign had left in its wake:
"When Clinton entered the White House [in 1993], his party dominated the
U.S. Senate, 57–43; the U.S. House, 258–176; the country’s
governorships, 30–18, and a large majority of state legislatures. Today,
Republicans control the Senate, 55–45; the House, 222–211;
governorships, 30–18, and almost half of state legislatures."
In
2000 and 2004, Democrats backed more conservative "moderate" presidential candidates Al
Gore and John Kerry and lost. In 2008, Barack Obama won the presidency
by running as an unabashed progressive and far from being wiped out, Democrats rode his coattails to massive
wins across the U.S.. Obama's shift to the
Clintonite right, which began shortly after his election, cost the
Democratic party over 1,000 offices nationwide, reducing
it to one of its weakest points in its long history. This was capped off
by the 2016 fiasco, when choosing a
weak, Clintonite-right candidate led directly to the election of
Trump. None of these facts were allowed to make a dent in the corporate
press "electability" narrative. The need to repeat 2016 and hope for a
different outcome was treated as wisdom.
On 10 March, when it became a major theme to portray the race as already over, 26 states--most of the U.S. (and Guam, Puerto Rico, the Northern Mariana Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Washington D.C., who also participate in primaries)--had yet to vote. Biden, who was treated as the inevitable nominee in those stories had, at that time, 983 delegates--less than half of the 1,991 delegates needed to win the nomination.
And so on.
The bases of these narratives--the narratives that cumulatively sank Sanders' campaign and made Joe Biden the Democratic nominee--are ideological, not factual. The narratives were editorial. The decision to so relentlessly drill them into voters' heads was editorial. The refusal, during all that drilling, to interrogate them was editorial. It's
all editorial. And the exit-polling suggests it worked.
Starting with those pre-post-mortems, major news media
outlets are now constructing a history of that period, from late January
forward, that significantly downplays or, more often, entirely excludes
their own contribution to what happened. In a jaw-dropping
article from 15 April, CNN's Chris Cillizza--one of the many persistent anti-Sanders pundits--allows that "there were, without doubt, opinion
commentators at some major media outlets who wrote pieces deeply
skeptical of Sanders' chances of beating President Donald Trump," but
insists "evidence of some sort of broad-scale effort by the media to
keep
Sanders from winning? There's not much of that to be had."[11]
A correction is clearly needed. I submit this article as an effort to begin that process.
--j.
---
[1] Biden's ability to even make an argument for his greater "electability" without being laughed off the stage was, from the beginning, entirely dependent upon the press refusing to report on who he is. As this author
has written in the past,
"From abortion to desegregation to trade to criminal justice issues to
putting the screws to creditors on behalf of the financial services
industry, Biden has, at some point in his career, been on the wrong side
of nearly every major issue near and dear to the progressive base of
the Democratic party. He is, for those seeking--or desperate for--policy
substance, essentially a blank, someone who publicly disdains policy,
who, historically, blows with the wind and who, in the present campaign,
offers for policy only a string of thin, half-baked and generally very
bad ideas slapped together by his underlings that he may say he has something and that are clearly as much a mystery to him as to everyone else. He is a half-wit, profoundly corrupt,
a congenital liar whose big idea for ingratiating himself with black
voters in South Carolina was to fabricate a personal history wherein he
attended an historically black college (he never did), was involved with the civil rights movement (he wasn't) and claim he was arrested in the '70s while trying to see the then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela in Apartheid South Africa (he wasn't).
He has, for both his own self-advancement and for the big checks given
to him over the decades by his well-heeled donors, spent his entire
career pushing government actions that harm wide swathes of his fellow
Americans, from gleefully helping generate the mass-incarceration
epidemic to helping create the student debt crisis to pimping Bush's
Iraq war. At the moment, he's suffering what appears to be significant cognitive impairment. At his worst, he can barely form coherent words, can barely marshal the words he can
manage into coherent sentences and doesn't even seem to know where he
is. He can talk for extended periods without it being at all clear
what he's trying to say or even what he's even talking about. He's
thin-skinned and ill-tempered; in at least half a dozen incidents in the
last few months, he's blown his top in conversations with voters,
becoming instantly dismissive of their concerns, telling them to vote
for someone else, even physically invading their space and putting hands
on them. Earlier this week, he got into a confrontation with a Detroit
auto-worker; while visiting the man's place of employment, Biden said he
was 'full of shit,' a 'horse's ass' and threatened to 'go outside with your ass.'
Democratic voters haven't even been informed of most of this.
Neither has most of the wider public. Biden's record has plenty to turn
off wide swathes of the Democratic coalition, while, in a general, he'd
be taking on an incumbent president who has the fanatical support of his
own base. His policy-free campaign that merely opposes most of the
major items in the progressive agenda leaves him without anything
Democrats can positively support. At the same time, he nullifies most of
the big weapons Democrats could use against Trump; Joe Biden certainly
isn't someone who can trash Trump as a compulsive liar, a dimwit, an
authoritarian or a hundred other things policy-related and otherwise.
His cognitive impairment could potentially convince millions of people
who would ordinarily never consider voting for Trump that Trump was the
safer, even more responsible choice."
The press may have sufficiently covered for Biden to make him the nominee, but when it comes to addressing all of this, Trump and the Republicans will not exercise such forbearance.
[2] Even that polling was corrupted by the anti-progressive premises of
the press. Throughout the campaign, press outlets have ubiquitously
commissioned polls in
which respondents are asked if they prefer a candidate (like Sanders)
who agrees with
them on the issues or one who can beat Donald Trump, as if the two are
self-evidently irreconcilable polar opposites. This is
push-polling--"polling" aimed at generating a particular result rather
than gauging public opinion.
[3] While Biden and his surrogates were, on a daily basis, hitting those notes, Sanders himself insisted on calling Biden "my friend" and
repeatedly saying he thought Biden could defeat Trump. Given Trump's persistent unpopularity, it's impossible to say with 100% certainty that Biden--or
anyone--couldn't beat him and Sanders was, in that respect, being entirely reasonable but in an election in which voters are prioritizing defeating Trump and in which his headline opponent, who presents
him as unelectable, is, in fact, a weak candidate far less likely to accomplish that end, Sanders declined to forcefully make a case that he was a winner.
[4] Stories that pushed back against this narrative were all but non-existent. Only three significant examples turned up in the research for this article one from USA Today ("
Face Facts, Bernie Sanders Is Electable"), a second from the Hill ("
Why Bernie Sanders Is Electable") and a third in the New York Times ("
Bernie Sanders Can Beat Trump. Here's the Math").
[5] This author has addressed the libel that Sanders was responsible for Clinton's loss at some length ("
Setting the Record Straight on 'Sanders Voters Elected Trump!'"). Given that the Clintons
made $240 million in 15 years and have been
living fat from
cashing in on their pubic service at every opportunity (Hillary's
speaking-fee, by 2016, was $225,000), treating Sanders as responsible for the perception of Hillary as an "elitist" is, well, you get the idea.
[6] All of the non-Sanders name-brand candidates went through periods in which they were heavily promoted by the press, many of them more than once. The immediate aftermath of New Hampshire wasn't Klobuchar's first. The Kamala Harris and, in particular, Beto O'Rourke campaigns were virutally press inventions. O'Rourke was practically dragged into a race he definitely didn't seem to want to enter by fawning press outlets talking him up as the next JFK. His potential candidacy was so hyped that it managed, in Dec. 2018, to spark a very fierce progressive-vs.-Clintonite battle, the progressives critically examining O'Rourke's record, the Clintonites raging against them. When he threw his hat into the ring though, the press just seemed to lose interest in him and he never gained any traction. Corporate press outlets have tried to make Harris a thing since 2017 and were still hyping her as a top contender until Dec., when she dropped out two months before a single contest, by then in 7th place and averaging 3.4% support. This writer covered all of this, plus the negative reaction to Sanders' entrance into the race and a lot more in a pair of articles last year. [7] In "Shattered," Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes--two journalists sympathetic to Hillary Clinton--write about what became the origin of the Russia hysteria in the years that followed:
"In other calls with advisers and political surrogates in the days after the election, Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss. 'She’s not being particularly self-reflective,' said one longtime ally who was on calls with her shortly after the election. Instead, Hillary kept pointing her finger at Comey and Russia. 'She wants to make sure all these narratives get spun the right way,' this person said."
Clinton's communications team assembled within hours of her concession to Trump to cook up the spin they'd put on the election outcome. The "centerpiece" of their everyone's-fault-but-hers narrative was Russian interference.
"Hillary wasn't in the room that day. But in private conversations with top aides in the immediate days following her loss, she struggled with the question of why Obama hadn't done more to apprise the public that the Russians had gone way beyond what had been reported. She wondered why the president hadn't leaned harder into making the case that Vladimir Putin was specifically targeting her and trying to throw the election to Trump."
[8] Some press outlets--and many Dem Establishment demagogues--chose to focus on Biden's win among black voters in the state, wallowing in the traditional Clintonite-right slanders about Sanders' base of support being mostly white and pretending as if non-white voters in conservative South Carolina were representative of non-white voters everywhere, but, in a fact, Sanders had, by then,
taken the lead among black voters nationally, something the press treatment of South Carolina then Super Tuesday would quickly reverse.
[9] Though taking a
passive-aggressive swipe
at Sanders back in November, former president Obama had publicly
maintained neutrality in the Democratic contest, saying he'd endorse and
work to elect whomever the party nominated. Privately, though, he
reportedly said
that if it looked like Sanders was going to win, he'd step in and stop
it. At some point, Obama began working behind the scenes on Biden's
behalf. The dimensions of this,
as reported, are sketchy.
After South Carolina, Obama called Biden, Biden called Buttigieg and
asked for his endorsement, Obama then called Buttigieg to advise the
former mayor on the matter. There's probably plenty more, and we may
never know all of it. In April, the New York Times
reported that Obama had been "considerably more engaged" in bringing the primaries to a close than was publicly known, and ran through some details, including the fact that Obama had repeatedly called Sanders toward the end and tried to push him out of the race.
[10] This author wrote an article in March--referenced a few times already--that covers this phenomenon and considered its implications, "
Democratically Disconnected Democrats: An Editorial." Data developed after that article further bolsters this case. At the end of March, ABC News released
a poll showing that "strong enthusiasm for Biden among his
supporters--at just
24%--is the lowest on record for a Democratic presidential candidate in
20
years of ABC/Post polls. More than twice as many of Trump's supporters
were highly enthusiastic about supporting him, 53%." A larger slice of
Biden's supporters--26%--say they have no real enthusiasm at all for him than
say they are very enthusiastic about him. This is worse than even Hillary Clinton, whose enthusiasm low-point was 32% very enthusiastic. The only candidates whose numbers have matched or been worse than Biden's were Republicans, all of whom went on to lose in the general election. Even after much of the press spent the month of March declaring the Democratic contest at an end and Biden the candidate,
the Hill reported in early April:
"A Grinnell College national poll released Wednesday morning showed
that 55 percent of likely voters who said they would back Biden say
their minds are made up, while 43 percent said they could be persuaded
to support a different candidate."
On 10 April, two days after Sanders exited the race,
another new poll found that, even with Biden as the nominee, most Democrats preferred to dump him in favor of the unspeakably corrupt governor of New York:
"A majority of Democrats want to nominate New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
for president instead of Joe Biden, according to poll results shared
exclusively with The Post.
"The national poll found 56 percent of Democrats prefer Cuomo, with 44
percent wanting to stick with presumptive nominee Biden--a 12-point
margin well outside the 4.8 percent margin of error for the Democratic
sample."
And so on. From all appearances, Biden won because people were convinced to vote for a lackluster candidate a lot of them didn't really want because they were told--and told and told and told--that other people
will want him. Doesn't exactly sound like a recipe for success in a general election.
[11] Biden barely even had a campaign by Super Tuesday but Cillizza also writes that "by blaming
the media for his defeat, Sanders takes credit away from the remarkable
comeback that Joe Biden, the presumptive nominee, who he formally
endorsed just this week, engineered."
