2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumthe Myth that Bernie is "Un-Vetted"
As Donald Trump caught up with Hillary Clinton in the polls over the past two weeks, the Bernie Sanders campaign has reiterated its last-ditch argument to win over superdelegates and secure the nomination: The Vermont senator is walloping Trump in the polls by over ten points, in contrast to Clintons dead heat. To counter this increasingly messy fact, several Clinton boosters in the media have dusted off an old talking point: that Sanders hasnt been properly vettedthoroughly examined for political faultsrendering the polls meaningless. Should Sanders become the nominee, the idea is, the scrutiny that he would get in the general election would devastate him.
Slate: This Is What a Republican Attack on Bernie Sanders Would Look Like
The Republican attack on Sanders would look a lot like the Slate attack on Sanders, apparently.
This line of argument has been advanced by, for example, everyone from Slates Michelle Goldberg to the Daily Beasts Michael Tomasky to MSNBCs Joy Ann Reid. The problem is this Beltway dogma is based entirely on rhetorical sleight-of-hand, conventional wisdom and unfalsifiable assumptions.
The refrain that the Clinton campaign hasnt run a negative attack on Sanders, thus protecting him from the sort of criticism that lies ahead, is just a lie one that normally reserved PolitiFact (5/22/16) deemed Clintons claim to this effect false. This argument has been repeated by several pundits, notably Goldberg (5/2/16), who wrote, Clinton has not hit Sanders with a single negative ad. Tomasky (5/24/16) added, While [Sanders] all but called Clinton a harlot, shes barely said a word about him.
As FAIR noted two weeks ago, the Clinton campaign directly coordinates online media with its Super PAC Correct the Record which has been attacking Sanders with an online troll army, text messages, videos, infographics and talking points for months. So even if one accepts the libertarian myth that Super PACs are somehow separate from campaigns, this cannot be said about this Super PAC, which freely admits it works with Clinton. Using TV appearances and social media, Clinton herself linked Sanders to the Sandy Hook massacre and the far-right Minutemen militia.
The core of the argument is that Sanders has never been asked about his socialist ties from the 70s and 80s. From Goldbergs May 2 polemic:
Right now theres no way of knowing, because theres been only scattered excavation of Sanders radical connections. He has never been asked to account for his relationship with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, for which he served as a presidential elector in 1980. At the time, the partys platform called for abolishing the US military budget and proclaimed solidarity with revolutionary Iran. (This was in the middle of the Iranian hostage crisis.) Theres been little cable news chatter about Sanders 1985 trip to Nicaragua, where he reportedly joined a Sandinista rally with a crowd chanting, Here, there, everywhere/The Yankee will die.
Tomasky piled on:
I dont think theyd even have to go into his radical past, although they surely would. Michelle Goldberg of Slate has written good pieces on this. He took some very hard-left and plainly anti-American positions.
But this isnt true. In nine debates, Sanders has been asked questions about his socialism a total of ten times (roughly the amount of questions asked about Russia). In the very first debate, CNNs Anderson Cooper, after bringing up Sanders honeymooning in the Soviet Union and support for the Sandinistas, pushed Sanders to pledge his loyalty to capitalism with three consecutive follow-up questions. Keep in mind these were the first four questions in the very first debatethe first impression millions of Americans had of the largely unknown senator:
COOPER: Senator Sanders. A Gallup poll says half the country would not put a socialist in the White House. You call yourself a democratic socialist. How can any kind of socialist win a general election in the United States?
COOPER: The Republican attack ad against you in a general election it writes itself. You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said youre not a capitalist.
COOPER: You dont consider yourself a capitalist, though?
COOPER: Just let me just be clear. Is there anybody else on the stage who is not a capitalist?
From the beginning of the campaign, the socialist label was leveled against Sanders, with self-described socialist attached to his name like a Greek apostrophe. In the first two months after he announced, the Washington Post, Guardian, National Review and Politico all explored Sanders ties to socialist governments in depth, some focusing on the Trotskyist past Goldberg insists the media ignored.
Since then, theres been too many socialist scare stories to count. Just to sample a few redbaiting gems:
Dont Be Fooled by Bernie Sanders Hes a Diehard Communist (New York Post, 1/16/16)
Bernies Past With the Far Far Far Left (Daily Beast, 1/30/16)
Why Democrats Should Beware Sanders Socialism (Politico, 2/22/16)
When Bernie Sanders Thought Castro and the Sandinistas Could Teach America a Lesson (Daily Beast, 2/28/16)
Bernie Sanders Has a Big Problem: Why His Decades-Old Statements About Castro & Sandinistas Are Trouble (Salon, 3/11/16)
Millennials Like Socialism Until They Get Jobs (Washington Post, 3/24/16)
New Yorks Doped-Up Beatniks, Hippies and Freaks Love Bernie Sanders (Daily Beast, 4/14/16)
Sanders was again grilled in the Disney/Univision debate in March by the unapologetically anti-communist panel:
MARIA ELENA SALINAS: In 1985, you praised the Sandinista government and you said that Daniel Ortega was an impressive guy. This is what you said about Fidel Castro. Lets listen.
After the moderators played a surprise clip of Sanders saying positive things about Cubas Castro and Nicaraguas Ortega:
SALINAS: In South Florida there are still open wounds among some exiles regarding socialism and communism. So please explain what is the difference between the socialism that you profess and the socialism in Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.
SALINAS: Senator, in retrospect, have you ever regretted the characterizations that you made of Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro that way?
SALINAS: In retrospect, have you ever regretted the characterizations of Daniel Ortega and Fidel Castro that you made in 1985
RAMOS: On Facebook, by the way, this is the conversation that everybody is having, talking about Cuba. Senator Sanders.
This debate, and the one where Cooper cross-examined Sanders about his lack of allegiance to capitalism, were watched by 6 million and 16 million people respectively. If being asked about something multiple times on stage by moderators in front of millions of viewers doesnt rise above cable news chatter, its difficult to say what would. But we cant really know for sure, since Goldberg, like Tomasky, offers no firm standard of what would qualify for more than little and scattered attention.
The cynicism of articles that handwring over the lack of vetting of Sanders (including virtually the exact same piece Goldberg wrote back in February) is that the articles themselves are the media. The media are vetting Sanders with their repeated complaints of him not being vetted. A variation of this was tried in the New York Times in January with Alarmed Clinton Supporters Begin Focusing on Sanderss Socialist Edge (1/19/16), in which Clinton staffers floated a series of redbaiting talking points about going after Sanders socialist past. Anyone familiar with the basics of public relations strategy could see that the front-page Times piece was the attack only it was free, and had the appearance of actual news.
A similar process piece ran in the Times in April, with Bernie Sanders May Hear the Word Socialist More, From Democrats (4/8/16). Both pieces detailed every one of the potential attacks Goldberg insisted hadnt been addressed.
Its possible Trump could trot out (pun intended) Sanders face on Stalins head and run ads on a loop, but given that Sanders has been repeatedly demagogued with the socialist label and his favorables have only gone up in both parties we have no reason to believe a more intensive version of redbaiting would work. Maybe it could, but without indicators, its simply an article of faith.
The Daily Beasts Tomasky didnt bother with any of this. The crux of his argument was based on conversations he had with some unnamed, unknown number of his buddies:
But I dont know a single person whose opinions I really value, and I include here Sanders supporters I know, who takes these polls seriously.
Thats it. Thats all the expert opinion he offers: people whose opinion he really values. Who? Where? Its unclear. Smuggling in vague assumptions by appealing to unknown parties who may or may not exist (also known as The Thomas Friedman) is a tell that whats being argued here is little more than a gut feeling.
Not all vetting, of course, has to come from the Republicans; thats a frame Clinton partisans evoke to obfuscate any corporate media bias against Sanders. First, he was largely ignored for months (having received on one-sixth as much nightly broadcast coverage as Clinton in 2015). And when he was covered, establishment media were virtually uniform in their editorial support for Clinton. The New York Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, New York Daily News, LA Times, Las Vegas Sun, and Rolling Stone, among many other outlets, endorsed Clinton, and vetted Sanders in the process, each leveling criticisms of the Vermont senator ranging from his tax plans to his socialist label to his time in Congress.
The Washington Post, which didnt officially endorse any candidate, has run editorial after editorial after editorial after editorial harshly critiquing Sanders. The paper infamously ran 16 negative stories on Sanders in as many hours on the eve of the critical Michigan primary. And a scathing critique of Sanderss tax plan released by centrist Democratic think tank Urban Institute (this, by the way, also counts as vetting) called for four articles by the Post in one afternoon. The Daily Beast has run several negative stories on the senator, as have other web-only outlets, like Vox and particularly Slate, whose chief political correspondent has been one of Sanders most consistent critics.
One could say these publications have also been critical of Clinton (and they certainly have), but thats not what these pundits are arguing. Whats being argued is that, unlike Clinton, Sanders hasnt yet been looked closely atand this, by any objective measure, is simply untrue.
Is there some undiscovered bombshell waiting to blow up about Sanders? Of course, its possible he murdered someone with his bare hands in a Calcutta bazaar in 1991we cant know for sure. What one has to believe in order to accept the entirely theoretical assumption that a damning piece of news about Sanders awaits to be revealed is that the Clinton team, armed with $186 million dollar warchest, either A) cant find something the GOP will or B) found something but is just too darn nice to expose it. Neither of these scenarios seems plausible. And this argument would be more persuasive if it wasnt already tried eight years ago on Obama in May 2008 (Reuters, 5/5/08):
Clinton has pushed the argument that the party elders and officials known as the superdelegates should rally around her as the nominee because, as a former first lady, she has been vetted and is better able to fend off attacks from Republicans in a general election.
The idea that Clintons unfavorable ratings have hit their floor, as Daily Kos founder and Clinton partisan Markos Moulitsas recently put it, is this talking points logical corollary. But Clinton also argued this back in January, when she insisted she was vetted, and since that time her unfavorable-to-favorable spread has widened by roughly 14 points. Since she announced her campaign, her favorable/unfavorable gap has increased by almost 20 points. One may argue this is due to increased attention by the GOP and Sanders, but at some point we have a boy-who-cried-wolf problem: Was Clinton fully vetted in May 2015, January 2016 or is she now?
Real Clear Politics: Hillary Clinton Favorable/Unfavorable Ratings
The reality is no one knows for sure how a general campaign will play out for either candidate. Anything can happen between now and November. But dismissing a major indicator of popularity like pollinga key tool of campaign journalism in virtually all other contextsdue to vague, handwaving claims of unvettedness comes across as far more a convenient talking point than an earnestly arrived-at conclusion.
http://fair.org/home/the-myth-that-sanders-hasnt-been-criticized-wont-go-away/
this was in an email to me so I am assuming it is ok to paste here in its entirety
oldandhappy
(6,719 posts)Cooley Hurd
(26,877 posts)I just received something similar:
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Vattel
(9,289 posts)Claiming that he "stood with" the minutemen was a particularly vile one.
Tavarious Jackson
(1,595 posts)that he can not handle criticism and does not have good temperament.
pangaia
(24,324 posts)He is showing the world the dirt that is American politics and that he can not be bought off or bullied.
Tavarious Jackson
(1,595 posts)Most Americans disagree
Response to Tavarious Jackson (Reply #8)
Bob-o the Clown This message was self-deleted by its author.
mac56
(17,575 posts)Got a link to that, Junior?
Maybe in your latest issue of "Highlights For Children."
lmbradford
(517 posts)I am so sick of reading along and then BOOM, the troll makes some nasty, out of context, not even about the OP statement that makes me want to start yelling. GO AWAY!!
scscholar
(2,902 posts)me b zola
(19,053 posts)Gothmog
(145,828 posts)No one including people who like Sanders think that he has been fully vetted or that he is really electable http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/05/24/bernie-sanders-is-crushing-donald-trump-head-to-head-and-it-doesn-t-mean-a-thing.html
While hes all but called Clinton a harlot, shes barely said a word about him, at least since the very early days of the contest. And while Republicans have occasionally jibed at him, like Lindsey Grahams actually quite funny remark that Sanders went to the Soviet Union on his honeymoon and I dont think he ever came back, in far more serious ways, Republican groups have worked to help Sanders weaken Clinton.
That would change on a dime if he became the nominee. I dont think theyd even have to go into his radical past, although they surely would. Michelle Goldberg of Slate has written good pieces on this. He took some very hard-left and plainly anti-American positions. True, they might not matter to anyone under 45, but more than half of all voters are over 45. And then, big-P politics aside, theres all that farkakte nonsense he wrote in The Vermont Freeman in the early 70s about how we should let children touch each others genitals and such. Fine, it was 40-plus years ago but its out there, and its out there.
But if I were a conservative making anti-Sanders ads, Id stick to taxes. An analysis earlier this year from the Tax Policy Center found that his proposals would raise taxes in the so-called middle quintile (40-60 percent) by $4,700 a year. A median household is around $53,000. Most such households pay an effective tax rate of around 11 percent, or $5,800. From $5,800 to $10,500 constitutes a 45 percent increase.
Sanders will respond that your average family will save that much in deductibles and co-payments, since there would be no more private health insurance. And in a way, hed have a pointthe average out-of-pocket expenses for a family health insurance plan in 2015 were around $4,900. But that is an average that combines families with one really sick person needing lots of care with families where they all just go see the doctor once a year, who spend far less. Theyd lose out under socialized health, which Republicans would be sure to make clear.
But all the above suggests a rational discourse, and we know therell be no such thing during a campaign. Itll just be: largest tax increase in American history (which will be true), and take away your doctor (which also might be true in a lot of cases). Theres a first time for everything I guess, but I dont think anyone has ever won a presidential election proposing a 45 percent tax increase on people of modest incomes. And the increases would be a lot higher on the upper-middle-class households that tend to decide U.S. elections.
Bah, you say. Bernie can handle all these things. Plus, hes going to get all those white working-class votes that Clinton will never get. Its true, he will get some of those. But every yin has a yang. How is Sanders going to do with black and Latino voters? They wont vote for Trump, obviously, but surely some percentage will just stay home. This will matter in Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, maybe Michiganall states were a depressed turnout from unenthused voters of color might make the difference. The media find discussing this a lot less interesting than they do nattering on about the white working class, but its real, and Trump is smart enough to get out there and say, Remember, black people, Bernie said your votes werent legitimate.
General election polls dont reflect anything meaningful until nominees are chosen and running mates selectedthat is, July. They especially dont reflect anything meaningful when respondents know very little about one of the candidates theyre being asked about. Superdelegates know this, and its one reason why theyre not going to change. I dont blame Sanders for touting these polls; any politician would. But everyone subjected to hearing him do so is entitled to be in on the joke.
Sanders has not been vetted and would be a horrible general election candidate
Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)When he left and when he return. Also what did he do between college and becoming mayor, There are years which has not been touched. Has it been necessary for Hillary to dwell on getting Sanders, no, and she has not. Her decision was correct.
Response to amborin (Original post)
silvershadow This message was self-deleted by its author.
thesquanderer
(11,999 posts)can't figure out how to embed the ad, but it's at the bottom of that page.
senz
(11,945 posts)It's not like he's spent his life hiding from public view. Everything "atypical" about him stems from his youthful quest to discover himself and the world before he had settled on a career path, and none of it says anything bad about him as a human being. His "unusual" political views came from his lifelong caring for the well being of other people. That is indeed unusual, but it's not, by any stretch, shameful or bad.
Bernie has written an autobiography, Outsider in the White House, but what he should probably do in interviews is talk more about his life -- his good life of service to others.
His autobiography: http://www.amazon.com/Outsider-White-House-Bernie-Sanders/dp/1784784184
BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)senz
(11,945 posts)BobbyDrake
(2,542 posts)Sanders' followers were so busy making sure they were better than everyone else and driving away anyone who didn't qualify, they forgot they were supposed to be convincing people to join them. As Rick Perry would say, "OOPS!"