Bernie Sanders and me here pictured together in New York City, October 2016
Bernie Sanders is doing very well so far in the 2020 primary. He received more votes than any other candidate did in the Iowa Caucus, which he justifiably feels translates to him having won. Polls across the nation show him doing strongly throughout the country, as he clearly is one of the frontrunners among the Democrats. Many of these same polls show him defeating Trump in the general election.
And he obviously did well again in New Hampshire last night.
In other words, Bernie has some clear momentum, and despite the reluctance by many mainstream Democrats and prominent players in the mainstream media to concede the point, it sure seems that Bernie Sanders is the frontrunner to win the 2020 Democratic nomination for the White House.
Of course, that is no real surprise. After all, mainstream Democrats and the mainstream media spent the entire primary season trying to undermine Bernie Sanders as a serious candidate, constantly and stubbornly identifying him as some sort of “fringe candidate.” They were relentless with this label, sticking with it no matter what the truth showed. They did not bother explaining (or often admitting) that his rallies drew crowds of thousands of people. They did not bother explaining why he kept rising in the polls, or how he won 10 states in a row against the seemingly unbeatable Hillary political machine, or how he pulled even with her in terms of approval ratings nationally towards the end.
So nobody was really surprised this time around when the mainstream Democrats and major media sources once again tried to undermine the Sanders campaign. Only this time, the lie was pretty obvious, and nobody bought it, other than, arguably, the ones who made those claims in the first place. Even then, it is sometimes that they do not believe their own BS when it comes to Bernie Sanders.
What is being revealed, however, is how low some of these major media and mainstream Democrats are sinking.
Just a few days ago, I published one story about how Chris Matthews of MSNBC labelled Bernie Sanders as a socialist who might bring execution squads to New York’s Central Park. Chuck Todd compared Bernie Sanders supporters to Brown Shirts. And on an MSNBC program, James Carville suggested that Bernie Sanders and his supporters will convert the Democrats into a cult, if they have their way.
Clearly, MSNBC are not fans of Bernie Sanders. Yet paradoxically, according to millions of Americans, they are part of the so-called "liberal elite" media, slanted and biased towards supposedly progressive candidates.
Unless those candidates really are, in fact, progressive.
Just a few days ago, I wrote a whole blog entry about Chris Matthews, so it hardly seems worth rehashing the details about that story. If you would like to read more about his comments (and they were nasty, clearly implying that a President Sanders might bring about death squads in New York's Central Park), then please click on the link to my recent blog entry about it here: (Chris Matthews is the Face & Voice of Media Failures That Made the Rise of Trump Possible in the First Place - https://charbor74.blogspot.com/2020/02/chris-matthews-is-face-voice-of-media.html)
Clearly, MSNBC are not fans of Bernie Sanders. Yet paradoxically, according to millions of Americans, they are part of the so-called "liberal elite" media, slanted and biased towards supposedly progressive candidates.
Unless those candidates really are, in fact, progressive.
Just a few days ago, I wrote a whole blog entry about Chris Matthews, so it hardly seems worth rehashing the details about that story. If you would like to read more about his comments (and they were nasty, clearly implying that a President Sanders might bring about death squads in New York's Central Park), then please click on the link to my recent blog entry about it here: (Chris Matthews is the Face & Voice of Media Failures That Made the Rise of Trump Possible in the First Place - https://charbor74.blogspot.com/2020/02/chris-matthews-is-face-voice-of-media.html)
As for the what those other two said, here are snippets.
James Carville:
"There's a certain part of the Democratic Party that wants us to be a cult," Carville told the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday. "I'm not interested in being in a cult."
James Carville:
"There's a certain part of the Democratic Party that wants us to be a cult," Carville told the hosts of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Monday. "I'm not interested in being in a cult."
"Carville doesn't like progressive people causing trouble for corporate Democrats," Norman Solomon, co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org and a Sanders delegate to the 2016 Democratic National Convention, told Salon by email.
"His problem is with the content of the critiques. Twitter is an avenue for any and all opinions, including ones that threaten the lucrative deals that Carville thrives on as he helps the rich and powerful get even richer and more powerful."
And here is more about Chuck Todd, and his disinformation propaganda regarding Bernie Sanders, shamelessly labeling his movement as a "digital brownshirt brigade," conveniently ignoring the fact that some members of the Sanders family died in the Holocaust:
The hashtag #FireChuckTodd was trending on Twitter overnight as the MSNBC anchor faced a social media backlash for quoting a column that described Bernie Sanders supporters as a "digital brownshirt brigade."
Hosting a panel discussion on MSNBC yesterday, Todd said: "I want to bring up something that Jonathan Last put in the Bulwark today, and it was about how—and Ruth we've all been on the receiving end of the Bernie online brigade.
"Here's what he says: 'No other candidate has anything like this sort of digital brownshirt brigade. I mean, except for Donald Trump. The question no one is asking is this:
What if you can't win the presidency without an online mob?' "'What if we now live in a world where having a bullying, agro social media army running around popping anyone who sticks their head up is either an important ingredient for, or a critical marker of, success?'"
After he finished quoting Last's column for the Bulwark, his fellow MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell simply said "wow," and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus later said the passage he read was "really depressing."
"I know everybody's freaking out about this, but you saw the MAGA rally that's preparing around here," Todd said. "There are people coming from three or four states on that. This is like Bernie."
Of course, not everybody remained quiet or took kindly to Todd's rather obvious lies and huge liberties that he took with anything resembling the truth:
Responding to the clip of Todd quoting the Bulwark column on Monday evening, Sanders' speechwriter David Sirota tweeted: "MSNBC seems very frightened that ordinary voters, many of whom use the Internet, may actually get to participate in deciding who wins the presidency."
Senator Sanders' national press secretary Briahna Gray also weighed in against Todd's remarks, saying he had shown "contempt" for ordinary people.
She tweeted: "'Digital brown shirt brigade.' That's how our Jewish candidate's supporters are being described on the MSM. The contempt shown for ordinary people is really something."
Using the #FireChuckTodd hashtag, Democratic congressional candidate Jen Perelman said Todd's segment was "indefensible."
"As a fellow Jew who's aware half of Bernie's family was murdered in the holocuast, he knows better," Perelman tweeted. "We're not Nazis. God, the MSM makes me sick & we're just getting started."
The Pushback podcast host Aaron Maté posted: "In addition to #FireChuckTodd -- #WhyDidYouHireChuckTodd?"
Or how about this gem from New York Times reporter Jeremy Peters? Take a look at what he posted on Twitter:
Jeremy W. Peters @jwpetersNYT Pete, after winning Iowa, is almost beating Bernie in a state Bernie won four years ago by 22 points. Under any normal standard of assessing the Democratic race, Pete would be called a frontrunner.
11:02 PM · Feb 11, 2020·Twitter for iPhone
https://twitter.com/jwpetersNYT/status/1227442852986335232?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
Nate Silver of 538 had a perfect response:
Nate Silver @NateSilver538
Personally, I'd say the candidate who won 1.5 states (Sanders) is the frontrunner over the candidate who won 0.5 states (Buttigieg), especially if that candidate is also leading national polls.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1227456434469834754
We need some serious pushback against horrible slander, disinformation, and blatant lies like this, and it is not only Carville, Peters, Todd, and Matthews who are guilty of it. In fact, there are plenty of others. Not surprisingly, Donald Trump is one. I will not even get into the ridiculous nickname that he has for Bernie Sanders, because he has a stupid nickname for everyone, betraying his immaturity. But he suggested that he believes Sanders to be an outright communist. And of course, there is Hillary Clinton, who's attacks on Bernie Sanders, not surprisingly, increase on par with the success and momentum that the Bernie Sanders campaign has seen thus far.
Frankly, I am tired of Hillary Clinton. Tired of hearing about her, and tired in particular of her opinions on Bernie Sanders. She attacked him and his supporters back in 2016, implied that his supporters were losers living in the basement of their parents, claimed that they were the reason that she lost the general election, at least when she was not pointing the finger of blame on Russia, or on racism, or sexism, or on everything and everyone but herself, because she lacks the maturity, integrity, and intelligence, apparently, take ownership of her own responsibility for the ultimate failure of her doomed 2016 campaign. So, I am not going to bother with her comments and recent attacks right now. She still gets more airtime and headlines than she deserves, and I do not want to give her even a little bit more attention than she deserves.
The attacks have been going on for some time, and will continue. That is to be expected. Why? Because unlike career politicians and popular media figures who give lip service to meaningful change, and in reality do everything humanly possibly to prevent meaningful change to the status quo, they know that Bernie Sanders has, in fact, been consistent throughout his life in fighting against the status quo. He was there in Selma marching for civil rights. He has been an advocate for regular people, and stood up to elites, throughout a well-established political career. He was one of the very few people who stood up to the lies and disinformation that led to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. he has been an unapologetic critic of Donald Trump and all that he stands for. And he has been an unapologetic critic of the decidedly undemocratic streak of mainstream Democrats. He remains a vocal critic of the status quo, and has been remarkably consistent throughout his career, and indeed throughout his life, in this regard. He knows that elected officials are, in fact, public servants, and that they are supposed to be serving the public interest, rather than the other way around.
We do not need more politicians, either supposedly to the left or supposedly to the right, gaining power and then fattening their wallets in blatant self-interest. We have that in Trump right now, but let's face it, this is nothing new. Barack Obama is living a life of ease, and will not have financial problems for the rest of his life. Neither will George W. Bush. Neither will Bill Clinton (or Hillary). Neither did George W. Bush, or Ronald Reagan. We need someone with integrity, with honesty, who will tell us the truth, rather than sugarcoating everything and feeding us pretty lies with a pretty smile, and with every word and every hair in place, for the perfect image to produce the best results in poll numbers.
In short, we need Bernie Sanders.
Here are the links to the two articles that I used in writing this particular blog entry, and from which I used the quotes by and about the comments from Carville and Todd:
#FIRECHUCKTODD TRENDS AFTER MSNBC ANCHOR QUOTES ARTICLE COMPARING BERNIE SANDERS SUPPORTERS TO BROWNSHIRTS BY JAMES WALKER ON 2/11/20
https://www.newsweek.com/fire-chuck-todd-trends-quote-article-comparing-bernie-sanders-supporters-brownshirts-1486641
James Carville: Democratic Party would turn into a "cult" if it nominates Sanders for president "You're not a member of the Democratic Party, but you know this as well as I do," Carville warned Joe Scarborough MATTHEW ROZSA FEBRUARY 11, 2020
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