Benchmark Politics, the oft quoted political site announced yesterday, on Twitter, that they will be joining BNR (Blue Nation Review) as their “expert political analysts on polling and data”.
Why is this of any significance? Take a look at who controls Blue Nation Review in this article by The Huffington Post:
WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton ally David Brock is acquiring a media outlet, sources involved in the negotiation and sale of the site tell The Huffington Post.
True Blue Media, a newly formed company incorporated by Brock, has acquired progressive news website Blue Nation Review. BNR’s previous owner, MOKO Social Media Limited, will retain a 20 percent stake in the new entity while
Brock will hold the remaining 80 percent equity balance.
The sale was finalized Monday night.
Peter Daou, digital media strategist for Clinton’s 2008 campaign, will serve as the new CEO of True Blue Media.
...
“The need for alternative sources of information and independent reporting has never been greater,” Brock said in a statement provided to HuffPost. “With the 2016 campaign now fully underway, the time is right for the rise of a new liberal standard-bearer and Blue Nation Review is poised to assume that role.”
Brock said the publication would be “a focal point in liberal journalism,” producing daily content, investigative journalism and video.
Brock runs Media Matters for America, a nonprofit that has targeted conservative media outlets, particularly Fox News.
He also runs the pro-Clinton Super PAC Correct The Record, which claims the legal right to coordinate with the Clinton campaign.
Under Brock, the Democratic-leaning outlet will likely be a reliable defender of and advocate for Clinton.
So what kind of reliable defender and advocate for Clinton has the Review been since Brock’s 2015 purchase of the site? A good idea of David Brock’s pro Clinton propaganda can be easily obtained through his many rash and fantastic schemes to hurt the Sanders campaign:
Sanders released a new campaign ad [the ‘America’ ad] showing crowds of adoring fans. The Clinton campaign however noticed that almost everyone in the ad happens to be white. According to The AP, a Clinton representative says this is proof of Sanders’ racism and disdain for the black community:
On Thursday, David Brock, a top Clinton ally, criticized a new ad from Sanders, saying it presents a “bizarre” image of America, focused on white voters.
Brock, a longtime Clinton supporter who runs several super PACs aiding her candidacy said Thursday that a new Sanders ad was a “significant slight to the Democratic base.”
He added,
“From this ad it seems black lives don’t matter much to Bernie Sanders.”
But that’s not all,
That, anyhow, is the charge being leveled by the campaign of Clinton rival Bernie Sanders. They may have a point.
Back in the summer of 2014—when Blue Nation Review was a fledgling blog dedicated to creating “a place where progressives can debate where we want to be as a movement,” per the website’s mission statement—it treated Sanders as a liberal hero.
This was 18 months before BNR, as it’s known, started attacking the 74-year-old Sanders with a zeal normally associated with the Republican assault on Benghazi and the former secretary of state’s private email server.
These days the blog celebrates all things Clinton and relentlessly blames the socialist senator from Vermont for nearly every misguided, corrupt, hypocritical, or wretched thing in American democracy
—though it does admit, from time to time, that he’s no Donald Trump.
…
Yet BNR, in its current incarnation, seems more a comfortable venue for negative Sanders stories that Brock wasn’t successful in placing with mainstream news outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post.
An examination of BNR’s Sanders coverage documents the switcheroo since Brock and Daou took over. During Williams’s tenure as editor, for instance, the headline on BNR’s July 28, 2014, story about Sanders, then chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, was: “Senator Bernie Sanders and GOP Rep Jeff Miller find pathway to address VA problems.”
Subsequent BNR stories, as Sanders ramped up his seemingly quixotic White House quest, carried headlines such as “5 Awesome Things Bernie Sanders is Doing With His Campaign,” “Bernie Sanders Wants to Bring the Fight to the GOP,” “Bernie Sanders rolls through Virginia riding high,” “Over 110,000 Bernie Backers Pledge to Attend Grassroots Event,” and—on Oct. 29 of last year—“While the GOP Were Embarrassing Themselves at the Debate, Bernie Sanders Was Doing This.”
This last story—a dying burst of positive Sanders coverage—reported: “With most of the political world’s eyes trained on the CNBC GOP Presidential Debate on Wednesday night, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders held a rally at George Mason University.
“As the Republicans dodged questions about their own divisive rhetoric, Sanders decried Islamophobia and the hate that often follows it.
“BNR BOTTOM LINE: We think Robert F. Kennedy… would be proud.”
After early November came a two-month-long hiatus in which Sanders was barely mentioned—and certainly never again compared to a martyred liberal icon.
Then, on Jan. 19, BNR blasted a group that Daou, a prolific writer, called “a segment of Bernie Sanders supporters.”
“Why do you have to hate Hillary to love Bernie?”
Daou demanded. “Why do you have to echo Karl Rove and the GOP in their misogynistic rhetoric? Why do you have to do the dirty work of the far right and tear down one of the most accomplished women in the history of American politics?”
Two days later, BNR formally endorsed Clinton for president and subsequent articles carried headlines such as “Why does Bernie Sanders keep denigrating Hillary’s supporters,” “Why did Bernie Sanders sponsor a bill to dump nuclear waste on a low-income Latino community,” “NASTY HIT: top Sanders adviser questions Hillary’s capacity to appoint Scalia replacement,” “Bernie’s dark side: the reckless war on Hillary’s integrity,” [an absurdist title if there ever was one] and “Bernie Sanders gets gender equality painfully wrong.”
BNR founder Jimmy Williams, for one, barely recognizes the site he helped create.
Although he supports Clinton’s campaign, “Bernie Sanders was a great House member and he’s a damn good senator,” Williams said.
But that’s not all either.
A prime example of the Review’s neoliberal about face on its coverage of Sanders was an article it ran by Peter Daou (one of many) on March 6, 2016 during the debate in Flint, Michigan. The article, if you can call it that, was mainly a composition of comments from drama llamas on Twitter slamming the Vermont senator for saying ‘excuse me I’m talking’ after Clinton attempted to interrupt him during the debate such as this:
And this:
and this:
@Ringuette @MSNBC Yes. exactly, very rude and mean, excuse me, I'm talking from Bernie totally rude, will not vote for him.
Another article, published by the same author several months earlier on January 20th 2016, slammed Bernie Sanders as ‘unelectable’, repeated the extremely biased and laughable notion that he would be completely unable to take on the Republicans while lavishing high praise on Hillary Clinton:
Iowa Democratic voter to CNN: “I think it would be suicide” to nominate Bernie Sanders.
Ask yourself this question: why have Republicans stayed largely silent about Bernie Sanders while collectively bashing Hillary Clinton? Better yet, why were Republicans blasting out pro-Bernie press releases during the last Democratic debate?
Simple: they are on their knees praying for Sanders to defeat their most feared opponent.
...
Here we are 12 years later, with Bernie taking cheap shots at Hillary (comparing her to Cheney), hoping to become the Democratic nominee. If he ever gets the nod, he’ll likely face a demagogue like Donald Trump, a man who shouldn’t get within 100 miles of the nuclear button.
Anyone who is lulled by polls showing Bernie competitive with the Republican candidates is living in a fantasy world.
When the conservative machine cranks up and kicks into high gear, Bernie will be eviscerated, turned into an aging cartoon Commie, a flip-flopping America-hater, a 60s holdover writing bizarre essays about free sex and child rape fantasies, a non-Democrat Democrat whose embrace of the NRA undermines his claims to purity, a politician who voted against the Amber Alert system, a draft dodger, and a man who thinks women’s rights are a distraction.
...
I have a young daughter whose future will be determined by this election. That’s why I advocate so forcefully for Hillary, one of the most prepared, qualified, tested, experienced, and brilliant candidates ever to run for the presidency. Democrats need Hillary’s strength and indomitability in the face of what will be a colossal effort by the right to take back the White House.
Don’t be fooled by the GOP silence. If Bernie prevails in the primaries, Democrats can kiss the presidency goodbye. And frighteningly, perhaps a lot more than the presidency.
A far more glaring example of the Review’s pro Clinton turn can be found in an article on Paste monthly, which compared the political blog to the Fox News of the left:
The hate and vitriol generated by David Brock’s “news” outlet is rivaled only by Fox News
Before the primary, political attack dog and Clinton ally David Brock purchased the relatively newly established Blue Nation Review (BNR). Brock, who runs several pro-Clinton super PACs—some of which openly flout election laws by coordinating with
Clinton’s campaign—turned the outlet into the left wing version of FOX News, spewing propaganda piece after propaganda piece. And make no mistake—this is propaganda for Hillary Clinton, by Hillary Clinton’s foot soldiers.
Their narrative, geared towards social justice progressives, is that Hillary Clinton is a victim of vicious attacks by a hypocritical Bernie Sanders and his
ignorant, sexist supporters.
I wonder... what Benchmark Politics will be like upon becoming a part of David Brock’s personal pro — Clinton propaganda outlet? What sort of ‘awesome stuff’ will they be sending the Review? Will they continue their largely reasonable and informative coverage and predictions of the various primaries and caucuses? Or will the exact opposite be the case?
Because I have a small feeling, just a small one, that their future ‘revised’ projections will look absolutely terrible for Bernie Sanders. Courtesy of David Brock.
Note: This diary was published yesterday but was unpublished due to some formatting issues along with verification of some sources.