Bernie Sanders News Roundup Week Ending 3/27/2016
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I’ve not put out a news roundup in a while because the media has decided that Sanders no longer exists, and so much of the focus has been on the horror show on the GOP side of things. For example, the vast majority of news pieces on polling matchups now exclude Sanders. Maybe now that he’s had a sweep of the last three caucuses, the media may return to full reporting.
So, instead, I’ve been focusing on writing pieces that counter the narrative the mainstream media is trying hard to turn into fact. So, along with quite a few news pieces, I am including links and blurbs of my own, in case you missed them.
I’ll start with what everyone was talking about on Saturday: #BirdieBernie
Bernie Sanders appeared on The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur:
During his appearance on CNN’s State of The Union, Sanders addressed the George Clooney fundraiser, at $353,000 per couple:
https://youtu.be/0rVq_PG6KuQ
Full State of The Union appearance by Bernie Sanders 2/17/16
https://youtu.be/SOgTC4PJaAU
As I wrote in my introduction to this news roundup, the media coverage of Sanders has taken on an especially dismissive attitude. Sanders won all three caucuses on Saturday, March 26. The media was there to cover the first two, but didn’t hang around for the third. Since when is the media a 9-5 operation? USA Today’s headline:
https://www.facebook.com/RBReich/posts/1184281728251088
Professor Seth Abramson writes this in HuffPo:
Bernie Sanders Is Currently Winning the Democratic Primary Race, and I’ll Prove It to You
03/23/2016
Nobody cares how well a politician does at the ballot box when he or she is running for an office unopposed. What matters is how a politician performs in contested primaries and general elections, as when it really matters — like it will, for instance, this November — you can be certain of a contested election.
With that said, let’s make an important observation: Bernie Sanders has tied or beaten Hillary Clinton in a majority of the actively contested votes this election season.
You doubt it? Okay, let me explain.
Bernie Sanders has terrible name recognition in states where he hasn’t advertised or campaigned yet; meanwhile, Hillary Clinton has universal name recognition everywhere. Realizing this, the Clinton camp pushed hard to rack up the early vote in every state where early voting was an option. They did this not primarily for the reason we’ve been told — because Clinton performs well among older voters, and older voters are more likely to vote early than other age demographics — but rather because they knew that early votes are almost always cast before the election season actually begins in a given state.
That’s right — in each state, most of the early primary voting occurs before the candidates have aired any commercials or held any campaign events. For Bernie Sanders, this means that early voting happens, pretty much everywhere, before anyone knows who he is. Certainly, early voting occurs in each state before voters have developed a sufficient level of familiarity and comfort with Sanders to vote for him.
But on Election Day — among voters who’ve been present and attentive for each candidate’s commercials, local news coverage, and live events — Sanders tends to tie or beat Clinton.
Click here to read the rest of this article on HuffingtonPost.com
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi on the “evolving” New York Times piece Jennifer Steinhauer originally wrote:
How the ‘New York Times’ Sandbagged Bernie Sanders
Online, we see both faces of the Gray Lady
The New York Times ran a piece about Bernie Sanders Monday, a sort of left-handed compliment of a legislative profile. It was called “Bernie Sanders Scored Victories for Years Via Legislative Side Doors.”
I took notice of the piece by Jennifer Steinhauer because I wrote essentially the same article nearly 11 years ago. Mine, called “Four Amendments and a Funeral,” was a Rolling Stone feature. Sanders back then was anxious that people know how Congress worked, and also how it didn’t work, so he invited me to tag along for weeks to follow the process of a series of amendments he tried (and mostly succeeded) to pass in the House.
I came to the same conclusions that Steinhauer did initially: that Sanders was skilled at the amendment process and also had a unique ability to reach across the aisle to make deals.
“Sanders is the amendment king of the current House of Representative. Since the Republicans took over Congress in 1995, no other lawmaker… has passed more roll-call amendments (amendments that actually went to a vote on the floor) than Bernie Sanders. He accomplishes this on the one hand by being relentlessly active, and on the other by using his status as an Independent to form left-right coalitions.”
Steinhauer the other day wrote very nearly the same thing. She described how Bernie managed to get a $1.5 billion youth jobs amendment tacked onto an immigration bill through “wheeling and dealing, shaming and cajoling.”
The amendment, she wrote, was “classic Bernie Sanders,” a man she described as having “spent a quarter-century in Congress working the side door, tacking on amendments to larger bills that scratch his particular policy itches, generally focused on working-class Americans, income inequality and the environment.”
Now, Steinhauer’s piece wasn’t all flattering. This is, after all, the New York Times, which has practically been an official mouthpiece for the Clinton campaign this election season.
Click here to read the rest of Taibbi’s piece on RollingStone.com
ABC News Video on Bernie Sanders’ reaction to the fiasco that was voting in the Arizona primary on Tuesday, March 22nd:
WATCH: @BernieSanders calls Arizona voting lines "a disgrace": "People should not have to wait 5 hours to vote" https://t.co/mlQVBs5Zsv
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 23, 2016
Glenn Greenwald: Cruz, Trump, Clinton “Playing into the Hands” of ISIL After Brussels Bombings
I explore in my piece entitled “Like Bread & Butter, Foreign Policy & Economics Go Together,” I explore what has now become the narrative around the media: when it comes to foreign policy and counter-terrorism, Hillary Clinton is the only expert. But is she?
Before you click, listen to a few seconds’ worth of Ted Cruz, likening ISIS terrorists to gangs.
This is practically the same analogy you will hear in the video included in my piece, of Hillary Clinton speaking to a panel at USC:
Like Bread & Butter, Foreign Policy & Economics Go Together |#BernieSanders on Blog#42
Why are progressives, those who vote for Bernie Sanders, so intent on him winning? Why is a rift emerging on the left?
The Progressive-Neoliberal Split Is Over Trade, Jobs, Investment & a Living Wage | Blog#42
#BernieSanders On #Israel, Palestine, Middle East Policy & ISIS | CNN Final Five on Blog#42
As #HillaryClinton Bungles, Angry Pundits Blame #BernieSanders! | #BlackLivesMatter on Blog#42
I’ll close with the latest funny meme…
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