Matt Taibbi has a new article up at
RollingStone and gives his case for Bernie Sanders and why political reporting sucks.
He rips his colleagues for their cyncism and superficial "reporting":
In fact, this numbing reality of how completely corrupted the modern American political process is bends the brains of those whose job it is to cover it. What happens over time is that you lose hope, and you begin to view everything through the prism of the corruption to which you're so accustomed.
When you stop believing in the electoral process, then the only questions left to interest a professional observer are who wins, and how many laughs there will be along the way.
The media, who's lobbyist are funding Hillary, believe their role is gatekeeper for who is electable, or not:
When we reporters are introduced to a politician, the first thing we ask ourselves is if he or she is acceptable to the political establishment. We don't admit that we ask this as a prerequisite, but we do.
I love this line re modern pols:
They seem always to be making piles of money and hobnobbing with Beautiful People when they're finished moving the status quo in some incremental direction, which some hack somewhere will always be willing to call change.
Oh yes, incremental change that we are supposed to be gleeful over, cycle after cycle, while the rich get richer, and the rest of us stagnate.
Matt wraps up this small article with obvious admiration for Bernie:
Sanders is a clear outlier in a generation that has forgotten what it means to be a public servant. The Times remarks upon his "grumpy demeanor." But Bernie is grumpy because he's thinking about vets who need surgeries, guest workers who've had their wages ripped off, kids without access to dentists or some other godforsaken problem that most of us normal people can care about for maybe a few minutes on a good day, but Bernie worries about more or less all the time.
And Matt ends his piece articulating the sadness in the heart of many Bernie supporters re progressives who refuse to go with their values and to support Bernie, I believe because they have bought into the cynicsm and media spin:
And the only reason this attention-averse, sometimes socially uncomfortable person is subjecting himself to this asinine process is because he genuinely believes the system is not beyond repair.
Not all of us can say that. But that doesn't make us right, and him "unrealistic." More than any other politician in recent memory, Bernie Sanders is focused on reality. It's the rest of us who are lost.
The reality is that for any hope of mitigating a turbulent, chaotic future due to the combination of climate change and income/power gross inequalities, we must have a leader who will inspire a movement and who will use the bully pulpit to forcefully speak for the 99% and who will forcefully advocate for change. This is how you get voters out and real "coat-tails" to build the political force for real change.
Incrementalism and "pragmatism" (read conceding before negotiating --we've seen this before!) of a candidate endebted and enmeshed to the 1% power brokers will not cut it. Think beyond yourself, vote for Bernie for your kids and grandkids.