Once again the establishment media is unfairly sidelining Bernie Sanders by deliberately including unelected “Super” Delegates in both the state results and running tally. This is yet another demonstration of clear bias by the mass media oligopoly to try to derail a swelling anti-establishment movement for real change and reform.
We know the corporate media is biased against Bernie Sanders. That isn’t some wacky conspiracy theory, it has been demonstrated many times over. For the first few months after Bernie Sanders declared he was running for President, the media ignored him. They would talk about Hillary Clinton vs. the Republicans, but not mention Bernie at all, or if they did, mention him in passing as “the socialist”.
In fact, the NBC, CBS, and ABC network news gave Bernie Sanders only 10 minutes of coverage thru Nov. 30, 2015. They showered Donald Trump with 234 minutes, Clinton with 113, and even Joe BIDEN even received 56 minutes. In other words, someone not even running for President received 5.6 times the media coverage of Bernie Sanders. Bernie’s main rival for the Democratic Party nomination got 11 times his mass media exposure, and that carnival barker Trump was given 23 times what Bernie did.
This effect was most pronounced on ABC News, which devoted 81 minutes to Trump, but only 20 seconds to Bernie Sanders. Remember that Bernie had far more total supporters (polling at about 30% in the larger Democratic Party to Trump’s 25% in the less populous Republican Party). Bernie also had more events, far larger rallies, and an actual message.
Now, it’s no real surprise the corporate main stream media has an interest in trying to ignore Bernie Sanders. His anti-monopoly, anti-oligopoly stances could represent a direct threat to their domination over the media market. Bernie’s anti-trust stance against the Big Banks could also be applied to giant media corporations. Remember that 30 years ago fifty companies held 90% of the broadcasting market in the United States, but today 90% is dominated by only six big media giants. The concentration of power into the hands of a handful of billionaires, banks, and big businesses is a direct assault on the liberty of the American people.
First they ignore you, then they mock you, then they fight you, then you win. ~Gandhi
But I digress. The point of this post is to demonstrate that the corporate media has a vested interest in ignoring, demeaning, and opposing an anti-corporate candidate like Bernie Sanders. A new way they are doing this is by trying to artificially inflate the delegate counts by including unelected Super-Delegates (sometimes called Auto-Delegates) in state totals, and also by erroneously trying to claim they are already part of the total (as shown in the opening image).
We are going to have to constantly correct the corporate media on this from now on. Super-Delegates don’t count until the national convention. For now the ONLY thing that matters is elected delegates. Super Delegates are not pledged and frankly irrelevant. If Bernie wins 50.01% of the elected delegates, there is absolutely no way the unelected super-delegates would overturn the popular will. That would unleash a mass rebellion that would end the Democratic Party and ensure an ultra-right wing GOP sweep up and down the ticket all across the nation.