Rachel;
I love your work. Your coverage of the flint crisis deserves an Emmy, and inspired me to create the above logo. You’ve been progressive champion, pushing the Democratic Party toward better governance. You’re a hero, and one of the 3 major news personalities that has actually covered Bernie Sanders from the beginning. However I take issue with the latest coverage of Bernie Sanders “Theory of the Case”, and would like to respond.
Ostensibly the argument is that; if Bernie Sanders is not driving 2008 level turnout then he has no argument for continuing to run.
So, this is the guy that should step out :
Sorry I gotta call BS (and I don’t mean Bernie Sanders)
Firstly let talk about where we were as a nation in 2008
There is a general “party out of power” motivational effect, but lets rehash what was happening in 2007-2008
A GOP president (essentially appoint by the supreme court) had driven us to political ruin. Soldiers were coming home from an unnecessary war in body bags and with missing limbs daily. The rationale for said war was proving to be a complete lie, while a regime of encouraged torture was coming to light. Thousands had died in New Orleans while “Brownie” did a “heck of a job” watching from the sidelines. The real estate and stock markets were crashing. People were being laid off by the thousands. Compare that to today where things have stabilized in many ways, and improved in many more. Why would we expect there to be even bigger political urgency and motivation to engage in the Primaries?
Secondly is it fair to put the onus for “low” voter turnout (albeit 2nd highest compared to every other year) at the feet of the one guy driving new voters to the polls by a 4 to 1 margin :
Hillary Clinton is once again in the political fight of her life. She’s the first female candidate to have a real shot at the White House, and she’s the front runner. Where are the legions of new women voters chomping at the bit for the opportunity to vote for Clinton? It seems the women coming out in 2016 for Clinton are the older already registered women who genuinely fear they’ll never see a woman president in their lifetime. I get that sentiment. As a big support support of Obama in 2008 I had many a touching experience with older African Americans who though the day would never come when they’d be able to pull the lever for a black president. However surveying the field in 2008 what drove me to support Obama was that he was right about the two major issues we face as a nation; our military imperialism (Iraq war vote), and special interest money defining our politics (his campaign was initially built on small donations and volunteers). No desire to see any particular demographic (be it race, gender, religion, sexual orientation) finally get their “turn” at the seat of power, should override this basic question; “Have you been right, and consistent, about the major issues we’re facing?”
So in deciding who support for the election this year, many of us (including me) were in the “Draft Warren” movement. (IMO she’d be up by %20 already)
Which brings me to the first person to “blame” for sub-2008 turnout.
Elizabeth! WHY DIDN’T YOU RUN!
We begged you. People love you.
The corporate media (which looks for any excuse to write off Sanders) would have fawned on you the way they did Obama in 2007.
You have huge cross-over appeal with Independent and Republicans. You’d be up 20 point on Clinton by now. Because not only would you be the first woman president, but you too have also been consistently right about the two issues facing us as a nation (with Iraq behind us… sort of) campaign finance and and economy rigged by wall street. A Warren / Sanders ticket would have been unstoppable. It could still be unstoppable, if Sanders went to Warren and said
“ Hey, it is time for a woman president. I want you to join my campaign and I will promise to the American people that I’ll serve only one term and hand the reigns over to you. I want to get the political system fixed I’m not concerned with political power or legacy. I don’t care about being labeled a ‘one-termer’, and I am 74 years old. I will also promise to the American people that your role as VP will be more that the traditional role. You will be engaged in every major decision we take from the oval office. Elizabeth, the first woman president should be someone with a favorability rating over 30% Join me and be the first woman president in four years.”
There’s still time Bernie and Elizabeth if you happen to stumble across this. Fingers crossed.
The next culprit on the turnout “blame” game is the MSM.
Donald Trump may be a xenophobe, fraud, who’s 1/10 as smart and ¼ as rich as he pretends to be, but he knows the media, and he played them like a fiddle.
First he pays actors to start the buzz, and the illusion, that people are excited about his campaign. Then he piggy backs off Sheriff Arpaio and his Tea-baggers to fill a 4k capacity ballroom in NV that he claims is 15,000 people! Remember at this time Bernie was already drawing stadium sized crowds. In order to give the MSM justification and rationale for their 24/7 wall to wall Trump coverage he had to be “winning” in the enthusiasm race. So (as you pointed out) he then cherry pics Mobile Alabama to do a rally. Xenophobe central. With much fanfare he declares that he will fill a football stadium and beat Bernie Sanders 28k LA rally. He will win! Then the giant rally in Mobile turns out to be not so much. How will the MSM justify their wall to wall coverage of Trump if he’s losing to a lil’old Bernie Sanders who they’ve been ignoring for months. So they prop up his MSM fueled Astroturf and ride the “what will Donald say next” ratings bonanza. Soon the illusion becomes reality.
As I mentioned; I give you full marks on your early and continued coverage of Bernie. You personally have been great. However the vast majority of Americans don’t have MSNBC, and disenfranchised, the poor, minorities (the very people Bernie needs to reach with his message) are even less likely to have an extended cable package with MSNBC to find your show. Disproportionately the work work rely on free network media outlets and they Ignored Sanders almost completely while covering every verbal bowel movement Trump Spewed.
www.thenation.com/…
Contrast that to 2007 where Obama had the MSM behind him over every other candidate. www.journalism.org/… The amazing thing about Bernie Sander is that he’s caught Clinton in polls even with far less MSM coverage. Sanders rise has been nearly 100% Grassroots. In this way he’s outperformed the far more charismatic Obama.
I created he twitter account Morning Trump to mock the way the MSM and even MSNBC allowed Trump to dominate the news.
Which brings me to the next culprit; I give you — Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Could the Democratic primary been any more poorly run? Clearing the field for Clinton was probably the plan (and promise) to Hillary in order to get her support for Obama, and not fracture the party in 2008. By hiding Clinton behind a debate schedule that that all but insured low viewership DWS ceded the playing field to Republicans for months. The big loses in congress, since she took the helm, alone are enough to warrant her dismissal. Factor in the completely underhanded and biased way she’s handed this primary, and it’s clear she has to go.
Lastly there is this;
Obama is a super charismatic figure. Let’s face it he looks great on TV and as I referred above (Journalism.org article) even though Obama was not yet drawing stadium sized crowd the media put Obama’s face on TV regularly. So I’ll add our own vanity and idea of what it mean to be charismatic, to the list of who’s to “blame” for Sanders lower turnout. Obama started his campaign with few big donors and ran on the message that he was “change you can believe in”. When he got into office he was faced with unprecedented obstruction. I think he will admit (when he’s out of office and can talk frankly about his GOP congressional adversaries), that he made the mistake of believing the GOP could be reasoned with and negotiated with. He will go down as one of the best presidents we’ve ever had, but he did make some key errors early that haunted him. He needed to take the health care reform battle to the people from the bully pulpit while he had an army of citizens behind him. I believe if he had fought harder and gotten a public option in the ACA, Health care costs would not just have leveled off but started to go down. That success would have generated enormous political capital for him. The ACA ended up being an overly complicated measure that added more people to the insurance rolls but at a big cost to tax payers and only halted the escalation of premium costs. The middle class and working people wanted to see real savings and got none.
Obama also seemed to get inside the Washington bubble with his appointments of more Goldman Sachs alumni to key Treasury Department positions. So now an admittedly less charismatic Sanders is tasked with basically running a “Change You Can Believe in II” campaign when many progressives feel (justified or not) Obama fell short.
Not to be overlooked when talking about Obama is that African American voters may not be ready to start thinking about who will replace the first African American president. POC are a big part of the Democratic electorate very emotionally invested in this president. There’d be a justified and understandable enthusiasm lull as they are asked to get excited about a replacement.
Now that all the “blame” is distributed, let me pivot if I might to this;
What is Hillary’s “theory of the case”? I believe it’s that she alone has been tested and won. But has she really been tested? Who has she won against?
IMO it’s a step back from Obama’s legacy to go back to Politics as usual.
Friday, Feb 26, 2016 · 3:27:57 PM +00:00
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mtosner
My argument is not that we don’t need more people out, or that we should be satisfied with current turnout. I believe that it is key to a Sanders victory to boost turnout even higher. However let’s really evaluate whether sanders was ever given the opportunity to get his message (which is working where it is being heard, Millenials who heavily use FB and twitter have heard it and are coming out in droves for Sanders) out to tradition MSM channels, and reach those people not on FB and Twitter. Let’s not dismiss that his message is not resonating, or push the notion that he has a “problem” with African American voters. The real problem is not his message character, or experience, (Obama was much less experienced in 2008), it simply been the “Conventional wisdom” of the pundits and total lack of coverage behind Trump.
