For the last few years, Sen. Bernie Sanders has made it a point to deliver his own response to the State of the Union Address. Just last month, when Donald Trump used a televised address to the nation as an effort to foment the false notion that there existed a "crisis" at the U.S. Southern border, Sanders followed the official Democratic response with one of his own. Sanders' fiery, no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners dissections of Trumpian lies and nonsense and forceful defense of progressive values have stood in sharp contrast to the limp, pathetic, empty-platitude-packed official Democratic responses. Handling these responses is considered a thankless job and when it comes to doing so, Democrats, for whatever reason, just haven't been able to get it together. Sanders' are the real Democratic responses from the real leader of the Democratic party.
This year, when Dems announced they'd chosen former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams to handle their official response, it was hoped this would lead to a presentation more worthy of the time expended to broadcast it. Abrams is certainly far more formidable than the unfortunates chosen by Dems in both of the prior two years. Sanders, who had endorsed and campaigned for Abrams last year, praised her as "a great choice. I'm very much looking forward to her speech." For the third year in a row, Sanders planned to internet-broadcast his own response to the State of the Union Address following the official Dem response.
That's when the trouble started.
In my first "Stupid Press Tricks," I wrote about how part of the toxic legacy of Hillary Clinton is the weaponization of "identity" to attack progressives and how the Clinton cult "portrayed up as down, in as out and Sanders--a lifelong feminist and civil rights advocate--as a misogynist and a racist. Everything Sanders says or does regarding race or gender--and even a lot of things unrelated to them--is interpreted, usually ripped from vital context, through this lens and in a negative way," and--wouldn't you know it?--that happened again here. Clinton-cult Twitter jumped all over Sanders' announcement of his SOTU response to suggest he was trying to steal the spotlight from Abrams, upstage Abrams, slight Abrams, disrespect Abrams, and all of the above is used to continue the tired narratives about how Sanders has a "blind spot" regarding race and gender, "downplays" race and gender, is "insensitive" and/or "tone deaf" when it comes to race and gender, is a racist and sexist, full stop. Shane Ryan collected some of the early "greatest hits" of this latest leg of the cult's Slander Sanders Forever campaign and assembled them into an article at Paste, "The Bad Faith Bernie Sanders Attack of the Day: Bernie Is Racist Because He's Responding To the SOTU."
Twitter is, unfortunately, a sewer of Clinton cultism and veteran users have come to expect this kind of response to pretty much anything having to do with Sanders. It's a daily drumbeat as relentless as it is transparent in its naked bad faith, carried out by people who despise Sanders for having the audacity to have stood in the way of their Queen's coronation in 2016. Theirs is a milieu that relishes absolutely wallowing in anti-Sanders lies and misinformation and as any veteran of exchanges with them can attest, debunking this rubbish only makes them wallow in it more enthusiastically. In this case (as is so often the case), their feigned outrage at Sanders was entirely selective. Along with Sanders, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and others issued their own responses to the State of the Union Address via social media or in press appearances after the event, but not one of these others faced so much as a word of criticism from those who so feverishly raged against Sanders. There wouldn't be any need to say much more about it than that except in this case--as often happens with anti-Sanders slanders--numerous major press outlets decided to pick up on and amplify the "controversy."
Vox's Zack Beauchamp set about trying to untangle the matter in "The Controversy Over Bernie Sanders' State of the Union Response, Explained." He gets it basically right when he writes, "this has become just another opportunity to relitigate the 2016 primary." Unfortunately, he goes out of his way to privilege, rather than question, the bad-faith attacks on Sanders and to grossly elevate those slinging them. He calls the matter "a petty fight... but it’s a revealing petty fight that shows just how deep the wounds from the 2016 primary remain in the Democratic Party--and how likely those divisions are to come back up if Sanders does, in fact, mount a 2020 run." But is it? Beauchamp gives that question a bit of a kick in the teeth when he writes that Sanders "remains a controversial figure in the party." Is this remotely true? One need only consult the polling regarding Sanders' favorability among Democrats; it has hovered around 80% for over 2 years now. The January Harvard/Harris poll has Sanders' favorability among Dems at 76%. At the same time, Democrats with a "very unfavorable" view of Sanders--that is, the ones who use these ginned-up "controversies" to obsessively rage against him--have only measured out between 3-7%. In that H/H poll, they're at 6% (with another 10% expressing merely an "unfavorable" view). Sanders is, in fact, largely beloved within the Democratic party and Beauchamp's assertion only leads one to question what he thinks is a reasonable threshold for "controversial" within the party.
Beauchamp, like pretty much everyone else who covered this, presents this controversy as representative of a serious divide in the party, as if there are large factions on both sides of it, which is a complete misrepresentation. That Sanders' rabid Dem critics, for all their noise, amount to little more than a margin-of-error faction--a lunatic fringe within the party--simply must inform any and all such assessments. If their rage against Sanders is even judged worthy of any coverage--and in most cases (like this one), it probably shouldn't be--that fact should inform the framing of the coverage. They're not representative of anything so profound as "how deep the wounds from the 2016 primary remain in the Democratic Party"; they're just a marginal faction that doesn't speak for anyone.
To put in perspective how marginal, 19% of Democrats oppose same-sex marriage,[1] several times that 3-7% and, in fact, more than the total 16% who express any unfavorable opinion of Sanders. For the party, repealing same-sex marriage would be as unthinkable as repealing the right of women to vote but there's stronger support for doing so than there are unfavorable feelings for Sanders. There are an endless array of other such tiny factions within the party--and every party--holding fringe, crank and/or marginal views. Now, of course, just because a view is fringe doesn't mean it's wrong but in this particular matter, the overwhelming and defining characteristic of these attacks on Sanders is their utter bad faith. Beauchamp's failure to properly contextualize the attacks while treating them as something far more significant than they are is a pretty striking journalistic failing, one repeated by every press outlet that picked up on this "story."
Near the end (and feeling an awful lot like an afterthought), Beauchamp does acknowledge the existence of those who see the
"criticisms of [Sanders'] record on identity issues as a cynical ploy from Democratic loyalists, who were willing to forgive Hillary Clinton for her comments about black youth and 'superpredators' in the '90s and overlook Joe Biden’s support for policies that have increased America’s mass incarceration problem, but turn readily to identity-based critiques of Sanders. It's bad faith all the way down, in their view: The critics just don't like him, either because he's an outsider or because he's a democratic socialist, and are looking for any excuse to discredit him."But while providing plenty of room for the anti-Sanders attacks, Beauchamp attributes this view only to "Sanders supporters" and makes no effort to unpack it. He reproduces a Sanders tweet in which Sanders notes this will be his 3rd State of the Union response but takes no further notice of this, despite its direct bearing on the good faith of Sanders' attackers. He never mentions the lack of criticism of the other Democrats who delivered responses to the SOTU. He doesn't even acknowledge there were any other Democratic responses. Exasperatingly, he concludes by putting the attacks and defenses of Sanders on equal footing:
"Sanders critics see it as proof that Bernie hasn't really learned his lesson on race and gender; Sanders defenders see the critics as once again ginning up faux-outrage about something unimportant to discredit their guy."Still, Beauchamp's very flawed work looks positively golden compared to others who wrote about the mater.
Joseph P. Williams of U.S. News & World Report certainly fails much more spectacularly with, "Is Bernie Sanders Stealing the Post-State of the Union Spotlight From Stacey Abrams?" (5 Feb.). Williams mostly just concerns himself with repeating the attacks on Sanders, which he does even when allegedly presenting the other side of the story:
"Political analysts, however, point out that this is Sanders' third independent State of the Union rebuttal, and deciding to give it is Bernie being typically Bernie: a little selfish, perhaps tone deaf, uncompromising when it comes to his political vision. His rebuttal to Abrams' rebuttal may not be a good look, but it's definitely on brand."That's Sanders: Selfish, Tone-Deaf, Uncompromising Bad Looks R Us. Offering a "rebuttal to Abrams' rebuttal," instead of what he was actually offering: a rebuttal of Trump. The only two Sanders "defenders" Williams quotes are from conservative outlets, which he misidentifies (he describes the center-right Brookings Institution as "a center-left think-tank" and the very conservative Reason magazine as "centrist") and--wait for it--both also repeat the attacks on Sanders.
Aki Soga, writing in USA Today, repeats them as well and adds another layer of awfulness by portraying them as coming not from a fringe but from "progressives": "Bernie Sanders Faces Progressive Backlash Over State of the Union Response" (6 Feb.). Compounding this, Soga declines to quote any progressive defenders of Sanders, choosing, instead, to quote only conservatives, who weren't really defending Sanders but merely throwing elbows as the "progressives' attacking him. Soga does, at least, identify them as conservative.
The Root's Stephen Crockett Jr. provides only a somewhat extended treatment of the attacks on Sanders with, "Hey, Bernie Sanders Can You STFU After the SOTU and Let Stacey Abrams Shine?" (5 Feb.). He begins with an off-the-scale lie:
"I thought after the 'Bernie Bros.' reportedly ditched their liberal persona and voted for Donald Trump in an effort to 'bern' Hillary Clinton that everyone had learned their lesson and informally agreed to play nice."In every survey, even the flawed one favored by the Clinton cult, 3/4 or more of Sanders supporters voted for Hillary Clinton in the general. Crockett never gets any better.[2]
In the Washington Post, Eugene Scott writes, "Stacey Abrams Will Give the Response To the State of the Union. But Bernie Sanders Wants the Last Word" (5 Feb.), in which he says, "Sen. Bernie Sanders’s plan to deliver his own response was not well received, especially among people of color"--again, suggesting absent any evidence whatsoever that this is a very widespread furor. Even the anecdotal evidence of the anti-Sanders Twitter ranters won't back that dog--they're overwhelmingly white. Scott's conclusion is just as ill-considered:
"The current class of congressional Democrats is one of the most diverse in history in terms of gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation. The selection of Abrams as rebuttal speaker seems designed to honor and highlight that diversity. While it is understandable that many people want to push back on Trump’s ideas, Sanders’s effort to get the last word undermines that message."Bernie Sanders is Jewish, part of one of the smallest minorities in the U.S., equaling only 1.4% of the population. When it comes to the warriors of weaponized "identity," that's a demographic that apparently doesn't matter.[3] Sanders is also one of only a handful of democratic socialists in congress, three of which were only just elected in 2018. Substantive political, rather than superficial, diversity doesn't seem to score very high with the identitarians either.
"Within a not-insignificant chunk of the Democratic Party, there is some leftover ill will toward Sanders for his role in the 2016 campaign and lingering doubts as to the firmness of his commitment to the Democratic Party."Like Hillary Clinton, Cillizza suggests an electorate far more concerned with the superficial matter of what party-label a pol slaps on himself than the policies he advocates.
"Democratic voters in 2020 will have candidates who not only represent their own liberal views but also have aligned themselves with the Democratic Party their entire lives. And that may leave Sanders on the outside looking in."Or maybe it won't.
In one cackle-inducing parenthetical moment, Cillizza acknowledges that Kamala Harris was also giving a response to Trump and tries to exempt her from the criticism of Sanders he's laying down.
"(Sidebar: Yes, I know California Sen. Kamala Harris, who is also running for president in 2020, is set to deliver a SOTU pre-buttal before Trump speaks tonight. But Harris isn't dealing with the same is-she-really-a-true-blue-Democrat that Sanders is. No one has--or will--question Harris' commitment to the Democratic Party and its principles. She's always been a Democrat. Sanders, well, hasn't.)"Uh huh. Cillizza has pushed Harris' candidacy for months now.
The concluding irony of all of this huff and bluster is that Stacey Abrams, despite her obvious advantages over the other Dems recently assigned Trump-reply duty, went on to fail in her presentation, turning out yet another uninspiring platitude-filled dud to add to the pile, while Sanders' own response again proved the spectacularly effective counter.
As I covered in my previous article, CNN's ongoing "power rankings" of Democratic candidates have proven a farcical effort to manipulate public perceptions of the race. Allegedly a survey "of Democrats most likely to get their party's presidential nomination in 2020," the top-10 "rankings," prepared by Chris Cillizza and "data journalist" Harry Enten, are entirely untethered from any actual data on the state of the race. They're just a vehicle for Cillizza and Enten--and CNN--to promote their favored candidates, talk down the ones they don't like and, by doing both, try to make both a reality.
Thus while Kamala Harris is polling at 10% in a recent Morning Consult poll I'll use for comparisons here, Cillizza/Enten have yet again placed her at #1 in their rankings for February, a slot they've given her for months. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders continue to dominate the top of the polls, with Sanders clearly the stronger candidate, yet Sanders is consigned to #6, sandwiched between Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, both of whom finish with, respectively, 3% and 1% in that Morning Consult poll, while the uber-conservative Biden is ranked #2.
The arguments Cillizza/Enten offer for Sanders' poor standing are so nonsensical, it leaves the reader with the impression that they're just playing to hardcore anti-Sanders Dem Establishment partisans and don't even care that they're not making any real case.
"It's not clear, however, that Sanders can pick up support beyond his base."In a race that may include as many as 30 or more candidates, that, it would seem, would be more than sufficient to win (and that's setting aside questions about the authors' notion of what constitutes Sanders' "base").
"He continues to poll well behind his 2016 primary showing despite having high name recognition."It's impossible to believe that any serious analyst--or anyone who, say, dabbles in math--would be surprised by the fact that in a race crowded with so many candidates, Sanders isn't polling as high as he did back when he was one candidate in a two-candidate race. It's also impossible to believe anyone would think that necessarily pointed to any sort of serious problem for that candidate.
"Sanders is an independent running in a Democratic Party with other actual Democrats who are also very liberal. Finally, many Clinton fans still have ill will toward him after 2016."As covered earlier, Sanders' favorability among Democrats is overwhelming. Democrats simply don't share the Clinton cult's obsession with Sanders' independent status when not running for president or its hatred of him. And a "data journalist" like Enten is certainly well aware of this.
Cillizza/Enten have been part of the vast corporate press chorus trying to goad former Texas congressman Beto O'Rourke into joining the presidential race. This extraordinary effort has continued for months despite O'Rourke himself expressing virtually no interest in the prospect. Cillizza/Enten devote a significant chunk of their February rankings article to continuing this crusade. "If and when--and it feels more like a question of when than if at this point--O'Rourke decides to get into the 2020 race, he will fundamentally alter the contest in ways big and small." If O'Rourke throws his hat in the ring, he "will become the central mover of the contest." O'Rourke "has star power and a grassroots backing that is the envy of the Democratic Party" (Sanders' much more impressive grassroots backing doesn't merit so much as a mention). O'Rourke's support as measured by Morning Consult is at 6%; Cillizza/Enten rank him the #3 Dem contender.[4]
Other press promotion of Harris' candidacy continues.[5]
Amie Parnes of the Hill offers a great example of an Echo Chamber Story, which she headlines "Harris Off To Best Start Among Dems In Race, Say Strategists, Donors" (17 Feb.), because calling it something like "Dem Establishment Likes Dem Establishment Candidate" would lay the entire enterprise a bit too bare. There's no actual news in the piece; it's just Dem Establishment insiders praising all things Harris (and throwing shade on her opponents) as Parnes acts as their stenographer.
The next day, Newsweek turned up with a rather surprising headline, "Kamala Harris Surges Into Lead Among Democratic Party Candidates" (18 Feb.). Given that Kamala Harris has, up to then, never led the Democratic race in a single poll, that would be some big news indeed. Katherine Hignett's lede only gives a hint of her game: "Kamala Harris has leaped to the front of an already-packed Democratic 2020 race, recent polls, political strategists and party donors have suggest." But then, things fall apart.
"Although recent polls show Harris lagging behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, the California senator is first among Democrats who have announced their bids for the 2020 nomination in recent polls..."Yep, no poll had actually shown Harris ahead. Rather, Hignett had just taken several polls that included a wide array of candidates, both announced and not, and ignored the results for those who hadn't yet officially entered the race. Among those who had entered, Harris was first. Polling, of course, doesn't work that way; if those other not-yet-announced candidates weren't in the theoretical race being surveyed, their support would have gone elsewhere. The rest of Hignett's piece is just an Echo Chamber rehash of both the Parnes piece from the Hill and the most recent Cillizza/Enten "power rankings" article.
In October, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported that the world has only 12 years to contain climate change or face potentially devastating--and escalating--consequences. To address this crisis, progressives have called for a "Green New Deal"--a major government push to develop and convert to clean, renewable energy. On 7 February, freshman New York congresswoman (and Democratic rock-star) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez teamed with Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey to introduce an outline of this Green New Deal.
The reaction of the evening newscasts of the three major networks that night? The Green New Deal went uncovered and, in fact, entirely unmentioned. That "liberal media" at work.[6]
Last year was a bad one for conservative "Democratic" senators. Voters given a choice between Republican and Republican Lite sent several incumbent species of the latter packing. One was Claire McCaskill in Missouri, who, playing up how much she agrees with Trump and running against "crazy Democrats" (progressives), was defeated by Republican Josh Hawley. McCaskill spent a lot of December on a sort of Sour Grapes Tour. As Christina Cauterucci summarized in Slate (27 Dec.),
"Since she lost her bid for a third term as a U.S. senator from Missouri, Claire McCaskill has been trashing the left to anyone who'll listen. She's insulted Democrats who wanted her to be a more vocal critic of the president, Senate colleagues who questioned her opposition to banking regulations, and progressives who try to push their more moderate representatives to the left. In recent days, she’s expressed even more pointed ire for young women, abortion-rights activists, and voters excited by upstarts like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 'She's now talked about a lot,' McCaskill said of the 29-year-old incoming congresswoman from New York in a CNN interview that ran on Monday. 'I'm not sure what she's done yet to generate that kind of enthusiasm.'"Calling Ocasio-Cortez a 'bright shiny new object,' McCaskill told CNN that Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist who ousted a long-seated congressman in a primary upset, should pay attention to the 'whole lot of white working-class voters' who 'need to hear about how their work is going to be respected, and the dignity of their jobs.' She boiled down Ocasio-Cortez’s appeal to her 'cheap … rhetoric,' then remarked that 'getting results is a lot harder.'"This potshot at a young woman of color who’d already become a favorite target of the right came just a few days after McCaskill told The Daily that she wished pro-choice activists who pressed her to be more vocal on abortion rights would 'shut up.'... 'Shame on them that they’re not working as hard as they can for me.'
Having lost, McCaskill was just full of terrible advice for Democrats on how to win. It was essential, she told the New York Times podcast, that Democrats not nominate a presidential candidate "so far to the left." Of the progressive practice of challenging conservative "Democrats," she was huffy (and taking another swipe at Ocasio-Cortez): "[I]t’s the people who defeated Republicans, in this election, that we need
to be emulating, not the people who defeated Democrats in primaries."
Cauterucci, perhaps somewhat naively, writes, "It's anyone's guess what McCaskill expects to gain from this
bridge-burning farewell tour, especially since she hasn't divulged any
definitive post-Senate plans." But while most reasonable observers will see in McCaskilll's graceless sore-loser riot confirmation that both Senate Democrats and America is better off without her, it plays, in the current media environment, more like a job interview. Having shown herself willing to relentlessly trash the entire progressive project, McCaskill was promptly hired by "liberal" MSNBC as an on-air political analyst, where she'll be able to offer her insightful commentary on the coming presidential campaign.
CNN just made an effort to top even that, hiring Sarah Isgur, a longtime Republican operative. Not, as is usually the case, as an on-air pundit but as its politics editor, to helm CNN's coverage of the 2020 presidential campaign. While any news organization should place great value on a little thing called the truth, Isgur is a partisan hack whose demonstrated disregard for the entire concept couldn't be more complete. She has "pushed conspiracy theories about Planned Parenthood, was "in regular contact" with the guy pushing the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, peddled the intriguing statistic that '92 percent of jobs lost in Obama's first term belonged to women'," etc. Isgur regularly attacks the media in terms resembling Donald Trump. Media Matters has collected some of the anti-abortion misinformation she has spread over the years, as well as examples of some of her other lies and demagoguery. Isgur has worked for, among others, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Mitt Romney, the Republican National Committee and, most recently, Trump himself, as the spokesman for Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions. To get that last job, Isgur reportedly had to swear a loyalty-oath to Trump, whose reelection campaign she'll now be charged with overseeing. The one item not on her resume is anything having to do with journalism. As the Daily Beast noted, "it is almost unheard of for a high-profile operative with zero journalistic experience to land a top editorial role at a major news organization."
CNN just made an effort to top even that, hiring Sarah Isgur, a longtime Republican operative. Not, as is usually the case, as an on-air pundit but as its politics editor, to helm CNN's coverage of the 2020 presidential campaign. While any news organization should place great value on a little thing called the truth, Isgur is a partisan hack whose demonstrated disregard for the entire concept couldn't be more complete. She has "pushed conspiracy theories about Planned Parenthood, was "in regular contact" with the guy pushing the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, peddled the intriguing statistic that '92 percent of jobs lost in Obama's first term belonged to women'," etc. Isgur regularly attacks the media in terms resembling Donald Trump. Media Matters has collected some of the anti-abortion misinformation she has spread over the years, as well as examples of some of her other lies and demagoguery. Isgur has worked for, among others, Ted Cruz, Carly Fiorina, Mitt Romney, the Republican National Committee and, most recently, Trump himself, as the spokesman for Trump's Attorney General Jeff Sessions. To get that last job, Isgur reportedly had to swear a loyalty-oath to Trump, whose reelection campaign she'll now be charged with overseeing. The one item not on her resume is anything having to do with journalism. As the Daily Beast noted, "it is almost unheard of for a high-profile operative with zero journalistic experience to land a top editorial role at a major news organization."
While dishing out lumps to CNN for its rather blatant promotion of Kamala Harris, one of the items I covered in my previous piece was the news network's decision, only days after Harris officially entered the race, to grant the candidate a solo townhall event from Iowa, the first contest on the Democratic calendar. For those who are into liberal democracy, the chance to hear from candidates in a longer form like that is, in the abstract, a good thing and something other press outlets should emulate. It was the context of that particular event that made it so snipe-worthy. In the aftermath of the event, CNN immediately made that context even worse, by offering a press release that claimed the show had been "the most watched cable news single candidate townhall ever." Go, Kamala, eh? Except this turned out not to be true; while the event set a record for CNN, the real record for such events is held by Donald Trump in 2016. Further, the Harris event finished in third place for even its own evening, behind both MSNBC's regular programming and that of Fox News.
Since Harris, CNN has continued its series of townhalls featuring presidential candidates.
The next featured former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, an utterly baffling choice in that, other than being a billionaire who can pay his own way through a campaign, he's someone without any national profile or measurable public support and has done absolutely nothing to merit this kind of attention. No one knows him and the few who do don't really seem to care but he is a very conservative fellow. He hasn't officially entered the race. He's presenting himself as an independent while staking out ground on the Clintonite right and selling himself via Clintonian triangulation tactics, slamming "extremists" from both the right and the left--especially the left--to position himself as the candidate of his own artificially-manufactured sensible center. His event was mostly notable for its unintentional comedy, as Schultz, obviously totally unprepared, spent a lot of the evening ducking and dodging direct answers to questions. The event was, predictably, a ratings flop.
Next up was Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, an event in New Hampshire, the first primary state on the Dem calendar. Her event showcased one of her long-running problems: she's dull as dishwater. Not only aggressively uninspiring, she tends, when asked a question and given the space to do so, to drone on and on without really saying anything--basically filibustering, as if trying to wear down the questioner. Klobuchar presented herself as the candidate to merely restore the pre-Trump status quo. Asked about the Green New Deal, she doesn't express support for it and instead launches into a long litany of pre-Trump environmental measures that Trump ended and that she says she will restore. Asked about Medicare For All, she doesn't dare outright dismiss it because of its popularity among Dems but brushes it off as something that could perhaps be done in the far future while presenting, as her alternative, technocratic tinkering with Obamacare, such as adding the public option Obama initially wanted, as more pragmatic things that could be done more immediately. Asked if she supports tuition-free higher education at public colleges and universities, she's a "no" on that one too; in the midst of a major student debt crisis, she merely suggests minor tinkering to try to lighten that load, backs an Obama plan, abandoned when Trump was elected, to provide for 2 years of community college and, perhaps most egregiously, presents the tuition-free 4-year plan favored by progressives as fairy dust and unicorns. "If I was a magic genie and could give that to everyone and we could afford it, I would." To unpack that, the federal portion of Bernie Sanders' College For All act comes with a price-tag of $47 billion/year. Less than a year ago, Klobuchar apparently had custody of that magic genie; she voted to expand the already obscenely bloated U.S. military budget by $82 billion--more than even Trump had requested.
For anyone entertaining any doubts, Klobuchar's townhall confirmed she's an instant also-ran who will probably wash out early. It bombed with viewers as well.
Soon, however, CNN goes for some real ratings. Its next townhall event will feature Bernie Sanders.
Four years ago, in April 2015, when Bernie Sanders entered his first presidential contest, the corporate press barely bothered to tell the public. As I wrote at the time, "if, while watching either the CBS Evening News or ABC’s World News Tonight, you’d sneezed, you could have missed their only mentions of Sanders’ announcement." ABC dispensed with it in 20 seconds, part of even that devoted to Hillary Clinton's reaction to the development. CBS correspondent Nancy Cordes threw in the only CBS mention of it during her wrap-up to an unrelated story about Clinton Foundation controversies. "The NBC Nightly News wasn’t much better," I wrote then. "Sanders' announcement was contextualized as a potential problem for Hillary Clinton on her road to the Democratic nomination. Correspondent Andrea Mitchell shoehorned a few words about Sanders and a pair of soundbites from the candidate into her report about Clinton’s political chameleonism over the years." For the evening newscasts of the three major networks, that was it--not a single segment dedicated to the subject. Every Republican campaign up to then, even the ridiculous long-shot ones, had been treated more extensively. It was the beginning of a phenomenon that would come to be known, as 2015 unfolded, as the "Bernie Blackout."
When Sanders formally entered the 2020 race on 19 Feb., the press had been trying to talk down his prospects for months. The reception he was given by the networks this time around wasn't exactly warm but it was a reception; 2015 barely qualified. Sanders gave a launch-day interview with CBS and the CBS Evening News led the broadcast that night with Sanders' announcement, the only one of the Big Three newscasts to do so. Correspondent Nancy Cordes' report was also the best of the three. ABC's World News Tonight, which had the worst record of the three when it came to 2016 cycle coverage of Sanders, offered a meandering hodgepodge report by Mary Bruce that began with Sanders, showed him talking about how his ideas are increasingly mainstream then suddenly veered off into mention of Elizabeth Warren's just-announced childcare proposal only to circle back around with, "but other Democratic candidates are blunt about some of these progressive promises" and show a clip of Amy Klobuchar's "magic genie" comment (CBS had used that clip as well). Bruce says Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist then says Kamala Harris "wants no part of that label." She points out that Sanders significantly outraised Harris on his first day but can't resist a parting cheap-shot:
"Still, this year, Sanders faces another hurdle; he's up against six female Democratic candidates while facing accusations from women who worked on his 2016 campaign about sexual harassment by male staffers. The senator has publicly apologized."When made aware of that problem, Sanders acknowledged it, apologized, put in place protocols it's hoped will prevent any such things from ever happening again and there's no indication that any of those female candidates, many of whom are friends of Sanders, are going to try to weaponize it into an issue to use against him. The story was, by that point, over a month old, with no new developments. Bruce devoted most of her wrap-up to speculation about whether Joe Biden will run for president. A poor showing by ABC. The NBC Nightly News pretty much replicated its 2015 performance; feeling a lot like an afterthought, correspondent Hallie Jackson shoehorned a brief mention of the Sanders news into an unrelated report about the controversy over Donald Trump's efforts to construct a wall on the Southern U.S. border.
Almost immediately after Sanders' announcement, CNN's Chris Cillizza unleashed a new article attempting to talk down his prospects, "5 Reasons To Be Skeptical of Bernie Sanders' 2020 Bid." Among other things, Cillizza relies on some worn-out Clinton cult talking-points. The notion that Sanders was never "vetted" during the 2016 race, for example, was spawned during that campaign (and refuted then as well) and has been obsessively repeated on a daily basis by cultists on Twitter to this day. Cillizza:
"One of the secrets to Sanders' success in 2016 was that no one--most especially Clinton--thought he had any chance of going anywhere in the race. Clinton largely ignored him for the better part of 2015, allowing some problematic parts of Sanders' record for Democrats--most notably his voting record on guns--to go unnoticed."The weasel-wording here is terrible. It's true that while the "Bernie Blackout" was underway, there wasn't a lot being reported about Sanders but Sanders' "voting record on guns" is ground that was very thoroughly covered in the latter part of 2015, as the blackout began to fade, and throughout the 2016 primary season after it had ended. By calling that "one of the secrets to Sanders' success in 2016," Cillizza is trying to delete that, as if it wasn't very loudly made a part of the public record, doing whatever damage to Sanders it could. He's also trying to delete Clinton's criticism of Sanders on the issue, which, contrary to Cillizza's account, began at least as early as August 2015, continued throughout that year and never abated until the primary season was over. Clinton's attacks were sometimes incredibly savage; she once asserted that Sanders cared more about gun manufacturers than the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre. Cillizza tries to send this down the Memory Hole as well, writing that "When the race began to tighten, Clinton gently prodded Sanders on guns and health care."[7] Cillizza asserts that Sanders also "largely flew under the radar of investigative reporters for major news outlets," but the press was criticizing Sanders on the issue of gun control before even the Clinton campaign.
Cillizza seems giddy at the prospect of Sanders being criticized and investigated but he's proceeding from an utterly false premise that this hasn't already happened. His implication is that there must be all sorts of bad things in Sanders' record that will be brought to light but the only specific things he mentions are Sanders' record on guns, which, in reality, has been examined to death, and how [Sanders'] wife's time as president of Burlington College could well come up." The link there is the one provided by Cillizza himself--it goes to a story reporting that Jane Sanders was cleared of all wrongdoing in that matter. Further, the effort to turn it into a scandal was the work of a Republican hack with a long history of making such big allegations against Dem figures that, upon examination, go nowhere.
Probably the most repeated Clinton cult talking-point is Cillizza's next--pointing out that Sanders isn't a Democrat. "[W]hy," he writes, "does Sanders feel the need to be an independent and describe himself as a democratic socialist? And in a field in which there will be lots and lots (and lots) of options for liberal voters, will they really choose someone who has spent almost his entire adult life as something other than a Democrat?" In a world in which over 40% of Democrats--defined as those who always support Democrats--are independents, is there a shred of evidence that this is any sort of liability?
Next, there's a variant on the "victim of his own success" trope so fashionable in Sanders stories this season:
"Sanders won't have the liberal lane to himself in this race like he did in 2016. In fact, the liberal lane is stuffed full of candidates--all of whom sound a hell of a lot like Sanders on policy. (This is not an accident.) Can Sanders win on a well-yeah-but-I-was-here-first argument? Or does he need something more, something beyond the ideas that energized his 2016 campaign?"Another--clearer--way of looking at this: why would voters prefer one of the Bernie Lite candidates when the real deal is available? And, of course, no one ever asks the Bernie Lite candidates what it is they can contribute to a race in which they're copying bits of Bernie but Bernie himself is running.
Cillizza concludes by turning to identity":
A few things to note: White men are the 2nd-largest demographic in the Democratic party, second only to white women. Once again, we get the "diversity" calculus that puts no value on Jews. No Jewish person has ever been nominated as the presidential candidate of one of the major parties, while 70-79% of American Jews vote Democratic in every election. The first Jewish candidate to win a presidential primary in U.S. history was--wait for it--Bernie Sanders, when he defeated Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire in 2016. Most of the new elected Democrats that Cillizza uses as his examples--Abrams, Gillum, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar (the two Muslim women) and Deb Haaland, one of the Native American women--were elected with the support of the Sanders-affiliated Our Revolution. How much sense does it make to wave the youth card at Sanders when, in 2016, vastly more young voters cast their ballot for him than for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump combined? Sanders dominated the youth vote across every other demographic. And is there a cheaper shot than rhetorically tying Sanders to Donald Trump?"In the 2018 midterm elections, the increasing diversity of the Democratic Party was on full display. From the bevy of women elected to the House to the history making victories for two Muslim women and two Native American women to the candidacies of people like Stacey Abrams and Andrew Gillum, the message was clear: The Democratic Party's base is getting more female, more liberal, less white and younger."Aside from the 'more liberal' thing, Sanders doesn't fit any of those categories. At 77, he will be the oldest candidate in the field on either side. (Biden is 76.) Sanders simply doesn't look like the Democratic Party that scored across-the-board victories in 2018. What he does look like--demographically speaking--is the current occupant of the White House. Do Democrats want to nominate an older white man to run against an older white man in 2020?"
A few years ago in Harper's, Thomas Frank documented the absolute visceral hatred of Bernie Sanders that editorially emanated from the Washington Post during the 2016 primary season. The Post wasn't very happy with Sanders joining the 2020 race either. From virtually the moment the news was announced, the Post began generating a string of anti-Sanders op-eds and analyses:
"The Daily 202: The Biggest Challenge Facing Bernie Sanders 2.0," in which James Hohmann asserts that "most Democratic strategists, analysts and insiders see Bernie’s quest as quixotic." Hohmann compares Sanders to Rick Santorum, a fringe reactionary loon who carried out two unsuccessful Republican presidential campaigns. He drags out most of the cliche's of the pour-cold-water-on-Sanders-2020 press, offering the "Sanders is a victim of his own success" trope, the "Sanders will face more scrutiny" trope (in which he brings up the sexual harassment business from 2016), points out that Sanders is old, Sanders will "again take heat for past apostasies on immigration and guns," and so on. Hohmann dives into complete Clinton cult fantasy when he asserts that Sanders "enters the race with high negatives, limiting his upside potential... [M]any from the party establishment... blamed him for their defeat," and he quotes Hillary Clinton on the point! As I've covered so often it's become a trope of my own, Sanders is overwhelmingly popular in the Democratic party. The notion of "high negatives" is a flat-out lie. And yes, Hohmann goes here too: "Another factor that still annoys many Democrats: He is not a registered Democrat," which is hardly meaningful, as Sanders' state of Vermont doesn't have party registration. Hohmann concludes by pointing out Sanders' difficulties attracting African-American voters in 2016 (which is largely a myth--Sanders won young black voters but lost the more numerous and active old ones), and ignores the last two years of polling data, which has shown Sanders' popularity among African-Americans has hovered around 70% (it's at 68% in the most recent Harvard/Harris poll).
Eugene Scott does the same thing in "Bernie Sanders Struggled To Win Black Voters. It Could Be Even More Difficult In 2020."
Then, there's "Bernie, Your Moment Has Come--And Gone," in which David Von Drehle compares Bernie Sanders to Eugene McCarthy, who saw brief, flash-in-the-pan success in the 1968 presidential campaign only to pursue multiple subsequent--and wildly unsuccessful--presidential campaigns. "Sanders will find, like gruff Gene, that his moment is gone, his agenda absorbed by more plausible candidates, his future behind him. Only the residue of unslaked ambition remains."
"Bernie Sanders Is Probably Just Another One-Hit Wonder," in which Henry Olsen offers the Sanders "victim of his own success" cliche by analogizing Sanders to a musical act. "Sanders’s songs are not novel. Just as the Beatles begat a host of imitators, it seems that virtually every Democratic contender sings some sort of Bernie-inspired tune. He launches a new single, 'Medicare-for-all,' and suddenly most other Democrats are covering it." All that's required for Olsen to have a point is a world in which the Beatles are forgotten by history while everyone listens to the Monkees. He brings up Eugene McCarthy and Rick Santorum too.
"Bernie Sanders Is No Big Deal the Second Time Around," in which Jennifer Rubin just repeats some of the standard talk-it-down tropes, adding nothing original. It's mostly noteworthy because Rubin, a conservative, repeats the identity attacks of the Clintonite right.
Back in January, when Kamala Harris raised $1.5 million in the first 24 hours of her campaign, the press cooed. That matched Sanders' first-day haul from 2016, which was thought to be a record. Sanders 2020 promptly buried that record, raising $5.9 million from--also probably a record--223,000 donors (Harris had only 38,000 donors). Given that fundraising is one of the major metrics by which the corporate press measures success and viability, one would think this would inspire some humility by the journalists, pundits, outlets that had spent so much time pouring cold water on his campaign's chances.
Yeah, right.
Jennifer Rubin was right back with another cooler-full with "Why Sanders Money Haul Doesn't Mean Very Much," in which she assured readers that Sanders' "Democratic opponents shouldn’t be surprised or concerned." But she's a snowball--or a snowflake--in Hell on this one; here's what she has to say about Sanders raising nearly 4 times the previous record:
"For someone with nearly universal name recognition, an extensive donor list and a long run-up to his announcement, Sanders’s haul shouldn't impress knowledgeable political watchers."And...
"(Should Joe Biden announce, I would bet his 24-hour fundraising total will dwarf Sanders’s total. A former vice president shouldn't have to lift a finger to trigger a flood of money.)"...the petulance of which is just, well, you get the picture. Rubin goes on to argue that, suddenly, money isn't really that important in political campaigns, and gosh-darn it, Sanders can't win black voters.
While cable news discussed Sanders' entry into the race on the day, it was a different story when it came to the much-higher-rated primetime shows, where, in a potentially quite troubling development, it seemed as if the "Bernie Blackout" may be back on again. In the three hours of CNN primetime from 8-11 p.m., the only mention of Sanders was in a brief parlay between Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon as the former handed off the evening to the latter. On MSNBC in the same timeslot, Chris Hayes did a segment on the news featuring two commentators who spent their time talking down his campaign (one of them, Michelle Goldberg, was a Hillary girl who, in 2016, published slimy anti-Sanders oppo research in Slate).[8] Rachel Maddow offered the latest look at the ongoing tragedy of what was once often a good show, spending her entire hour on Trump conspiracies and never even mentioning Sanders' name. Lawrence O'Donnell--never mentioned Sanders' name.
--j.
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[1] Caveat: The poll on which I'm relying there is from mid-2017. A bit out-of-date, perhaps, but the most recent I found with a full demographic breakdown of Democratic yeas and nays.
[2] Seemingly aware of the disruptive effect on his own narrative of the fact that Sanders has delivered these responses for years, Crockett limply tries to dismiss this with a wave of the hand: "Sure, America’s favorite disheveled math teacher has always given his own response on Facebook Live since Trump’s been in office, but this year should be different."
[3] When Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign in January, some press outlets used the identity card to declare her candidacy "historic." CNBC: "Kamala Harris 2020 Presidential Bid Marks An Historic Moment For American Politics." Bloomberg: "Kamala Harris Seeks To Make Historic 2020 Presidential Run." Vox described it thusly:
"Harris would be the first African-American woman and the first Asian-American woman to be a major-party nominee for president if she ultimately secures the Democratic nomination. With her announcement, she joins trailblazers including Shirley Chisholm and Carol Moseley Braun, two African-American women who previously vied for the Democratic ticket."Were Sanders to win the Democratic nomination, he would become the first Jewish person to get the nomination of either major party but no one describes his candidacy in those terms.
[4] Cillizza/Enten strike their most amusing note with their declaration that Cory Booker "is--with the possible exception of O'Rourke--the most naturally gifted candidate in the field." For those who actually follow public affairs, of course, Booker is known primarily as a serial phony, a guy who habitually grandstands as a public spectacle, staging emotional, headline-grabbing stunts that inevitably blow up in his face as the cynical calculation behind them comes to light.
During the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanagh's nomination to the Supreme Court, Booker, in perhaps the most notorious example of this, made a public show of releasing documents related to the nominee, which he asserted the committee was keeping secret. He boldly declared that by releasing them, he was violating committee rules and understood that he could be disciplined for this, even expelled from the Senate, but he was releasing them anyway, because he just thought they were too important to conceal from the American public. Clips of this show went all over the internet. A few hours later, it was revealed the the documents in question had been cleared for public release the night before and that Booker was well aware of this--his staff had helped clear them.
Only a few days ago, a Monmouth University poll asked residents in Booker's native New Jersey if he would make a good president. 42% said he wouldn't; only 37% said he would.
[5] In one particularly embarrassing piece of business, reporters assigned to cover Kamala Harris went on a shopping excursion with her in South Carolina, helping dress the senator then writing glowing tweets about it. Guess the outlet for which the journalist who recommended the "awesome oversized rainbow sequin jacket" worked?
[6] As a bit of a cherry on top, the always-kooky Newsbusters tried to spin this--the press ignoring the roll-out of a major progressive priority to address a major crisis--as an example of "liberal media."
[7] The Clinton camp's "gentle prodding" of Sanders on healthcare was the assertion that Sanders wanted to completely repeal Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare--everything--and leave those affected with nothing while he tried to pass Medicare For All, an absolutely outrageous lie that even some of Clinton's staunchest allies in the press felt compelled to condemn. Clinton's subtle take on Medicare For All was that it was something that will "NEVER, EVER COME TO PASS!!!"
[8] In Hayes' defense though, he landed an interview with Sanders on a subsequent night.
