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CNN's Coverage of Sanders Was 3X More Negative Than Biden Following Their Big Primary Wins |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=53614"><span class="small">Juan Caicedo and Sarah Lazare, In These Times</span></a>
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Tuesday, 10 March 2020 08:02 |
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Excerpt: "A survey by In These Times finds that CNN has portrayed Bernie Sanders more negatively than Biden, suggesting that media slant itself may play a role in Biden's rise."
Bernie Sanders. (photo: Antonella Crescimbeni)
CNN's Coverage of Sanders Was 3X More Negative Than Biden Following Their Big Primary Wins
By Juan Caicedo and Sarah Lazare, In These Times
10 March 20
 oe Biden’s ascent into frontrunner status is often portrayed as an organic consequence of big-time endorsements and an untapped desire for a more “centrist” and “electable” candidate. But a survey by In These Times finds that CNN has portrayed Bernie Sanders more negatively than Biden, suggesting that media slant itself may play a role in Biden’s rise.
In the 24 hours following his massive win in Nevada, Sanders received 3.26 times the proportion of negative CNN coverage than Biden did following the latter’s South Carolina win—despite the two wins being by similar margins. Sanders received more coverage after his win than Biden did after his: 419 mentions to Biden’s 249. But a larger share of Sanders’ mentions were negative, and fewer positive, than Biden’s. The above 3.26 figure was arrived at by comparing negative coverage as a proportion of total coverage for both candidates.
CNN is one of the most widely watched cable news networks on television, averaging about a million viewers during prime time. Given its down-the-middle reputation, CNN can be a useful proxy for broader media coverage. The 24-hour window following a primary is a critical time for setting a public narrative about which candidates are viable, have “momentum,” and seem presidential. Media coverage that drives up the negatives of a candidate can have a hand in harming their campaigns.
Sanders won a blowout victory in Nevada, garnering 46.8% of the vote in a multi-candidate field—putting him well ahead of Biden’s 20.2% support. Yet in the 24-hour period following his win, starting at midnight, CNN’s coverage of Sanders was slightly more negative than positive: He received 32 positive mentions, 33 negative mentions, and 354 neutral mentions from CNN guests or hosts. (For the purposes of this study, a “mention” refers to each time a candidate is discussed—but not to each time his or her name is mentioned. In These Times tended towards conservatism and only logged a mention as positive or negative if it was clearly either.)
In contrast, during the 24 hours following Biden’s blowout win in South Carolina, bringing in 48.4% compared to Sanders’ 19.9%—roughly the same result—the former vice president received much more fawning coverage from CNN: 19 positive mensions, only 6 negative mentions, and 224 neutral mentions.
Sanders’ negatives and positives were roughly equal (33 vs. 32) to each other, while Biden received more than three times more positive than negative mentions.
This tally is likely an undercount of overall pro-Biden slant in the current media landscape, as it does not include the avalanche of positive coverage Biden received for the endorsements from Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke that came the following day. CNN’s 5:00 a.m. Newsroom and its 11:00 a.m. episode of Connect the World were excluded from the count, as transcripts for these episodes the day after the South Carolina primary were missing from CNN’s website.
Twelve of the negative mentions Sanders received following his win in Nevada either accused the Vermont senator of being too far left to win, or denounced him as a socialist. On the February 23 episode of Newsroom, James Clyburn, the Democrats’ House Majority Whip, said, “On Super Tuesday, people are concerned about this whole self-proclaimed Democratic socialist. Socialism since I was a student in grade school was something that engendered a kind of vociferous reaction among people of a negative nature, and socialism is always kind of interesting.”
Such criticisms are repeatedly levied via major media outlets with no evidence, despite polling that shows Sanders could beat Trump in a general election and is trusted on issues deemed important to the Democratic base.
In that same 24-hour period, six negative mentions denigrated Sanders’ candidacy by tying him to Russia, or suggesting that the Russian government prefers him as a candidate (one of those critical mentions overlapped with the “too far left” criticisms). On the February 23 episode of State of the Union, former Reagan administration official Linda Chavez said, “But the problem is, the real winner last night I believe was Putin. I mean, we are going to have the most divisive election if Bernie is the nominee, we are going to see two very, very angry people representing two very different extremes of their parties, and I think that helps make America more chaotic, it makes us more divisive and, I think, the one that gets advantaged by that is Russia.”
Fourteen criticisms fell under the umbrella of nebulous “electability” knocks. One of those arguments was delivered by Biden himself, who was briefly featured on the 3:00 p.m. episode of Newsroom. The network’s White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny asked Biden, “Senator Sanders as the nominee be a McGovern-like mistake for this party?” Biden replied, “Well, that's for the voters to know. Now, look, I think it's going to go down between Senator Sanders and me for the nomination. As I said all along, it's not just, can you beat Donald Trump, can you bring along—can you keep a Democratic House of Representatives in the United States Congress? And can you bring along a Democratic Senate? Can you help people up and down the line? And I think I'm better prepared to do than Senator Sanders.”
Notably, Sanders was not interviewed by CNN in the aftermath of his Nevada win, nor was he invited to comment on Biden’s win in South Carolina.
In contrast to Sanders, criticisms of Biden following his South Carolina win were far more temperate—and less seathing and drawn-out—with all of them focusing on inadequacies or challenges in the campaign, competition from other “moderates,” and the need for him to be more inspirational. Some of the criticisms also contained encouragement. For example, on the 2:00 p.m., March 1 episode of Newsroom, CNN political correspondent Arlette Saenz said, “Clyburn is speaking out more about his endorsement of Joe Biden. He says Biden was—has his work cut out for him, and it may start with retooling his campaign, I'm quoting him on saying that.”
And on Newsroom’s 3:00 p.m. episode later that day, CNN political correspondent Hilary Rosen said, “But I also think that Vice President Biden has to get a little more inspirational. I think telling people they shouldn't have dreams is not going to be a good long term message. Cutting down someone else's dreams is not a good long term message.”
For the purposes of counting negative mentions, In These Times did not make qualitative distinctions. But it’s worth noting Linda Chavez saying Sanders’ win plays into Putin’s hands is far worse than Rosen insisting Biden could afford to be a bit more “inspirational.”
The morning show State of the Union also set aside at least nine minutes to an interview with Joe Biden by Jake Tapper, which aired at 9:00 a.m. the morning after the South Carolina primary. Between discussion of the U.S. deal with the Taliban and the Trump administration’s response to coronavirus, Biden hit out at Sanders on three occasions, arguing that he has greater credibility, criticizing Sanders’ track record in Congress, and knocking Sanders’ position that the winner of the plurality of delegates should be the DNC’s presidential nominee. “They are not looking for revolution, they [want] results. They want a return to decency. They want to be able to get things done,” Biden said. “And I have a record that is far superior on those two issues than Bernie’s.”
No corresponding interview with Sanders was aired in the 24 hours following his victory in Nevada.
This aligns with the analytics of television marketing monitors with no vested interest crying foul. Citing a survey from Critical Mention, a “real-time media monitoring platform,” advertising consultant Kevin Cate noted on Twitter that “between South Carolina polls closing Saturday & 7 PM ET on Super Tuesday, @JoeBiden earned $71,992,629 worth of almost entirely positive national media. Add local media in those markets and it easily tops $100 million worth of earned media in 72 hours.” Media monitors in journalism have another name for “earned media”: It’s called “puffery,” and its existence is not evidence of skill on the part of the Biden campaign, but rather a systemic failure on the part of media outlets, that should not be anointing a presidential frontrunner as “inevitable.”
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John Oliver Gleefully Mocks Noted Liar (and MSNBC Host) Brian Williams |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=34577"><span class="small">Marlow Stern, The Daily Beast</span></a>
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Monday, 09 March 2020 12:46 |
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Excerpt: "The 'Last Week Tonight' host couldn't believe Williams, who's been caught telling a number of lies on-air, is also unable to do simple math."
John Oliver. (photo: HBO)
John Oliver Gleefully Mocks Noted Liar (and MSNBC Host) Brian Williams
By Marlow Stern, The Daily Beast
09 March 20
The “Last Week Tonight” host couldn’t believe Williams, who’s been caught telling a number of lies on-air, is also unable to do simple math.
 ast week, John Oliver dedicated the majority of his late-night show to the coronavirus—namely, Trump’s boneheaded response to it (and litany of lies over it), as well as Fox News’ wildly irresponsible promotion of conspiracy theories surrounding it.
While the Last Week Tonight host continued to hammer the Trump administration over their bungling of the coronavirus’ spread, including Trump’s patently false claim that people can get tested at will, and Mike Pence’s refusal to answer whether the 30 million uninsured people in America can have their testing covered, he began his program with a quick recap of the week, “which saw Elizabeth Warren and Michael Bloomberg end their presidential campaigns—in Bloomberg’s case, after spending over half a billion dollars.”
He added, “It is hard to overstate just how much money Bloomberg wasted—although, as Brian Williams viewers know, it’s not impossible.”
Yes, the truth-averse Brian Williams, host of MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, made himself look like an idiot on-air this past week while discussing the outrageous amount of money Bloomberg burned on his campaign, and all those groan-worthy memes.
Williams, who again has a very tenuous relationship with the truth, was discussing the following tweet by Washington Post contributor Mekita Rivas:
Cue Williams, ace mathematician: “When I read it tonight on social media, it kind of all became clear,” said Williams. “Bloomberg spent $500 million on ads. The U.S. population is 327 million. Don’t tell us if you’re ahead of us on the math. He could have given each American $1 million and have lunch money left over. It’s an incredible way of putting it.”
New York Times editorial board member Mara Gay agreed with Williams’ assessment, saying, “Absolutely. Somebody tweeted recently that actually with the money he’s spent, he could have given every American a million dollars…It’s an incredible way of putting it. It’s true. It’s disturbing. It does suggest, you know, what we’re talking about here, which is there is too much money in politics.”
Yeesh. “OK, for the record: it’s not true. $500 million divided by 327 million is not $1 million, it’s around $1.50, which goes to show you can’t believe everything you see on Twitter,” cracked Oliver.
“Twitter is not where you go for facts; it’s where you go to see the official account of New Jersey tweet ‘gabagool,’ or Post Malone tweet ‘is meatball an fruit,’ or see Henry Winkler posting photos of him holding fish,” the comedian continued.
At least Oliver didn’t stoop to defending Williams’ former MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews over allegations of sexual harassment like his network-mate Bill Maher. Now that was a truly nauseating performance.
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The President as Political Hit Man: Trump's Perpetual Reelection Machine |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=53611"><span class="small">John Feffer, TomDispatch</span></a>
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Monday, 09 March 2020 12:46 |
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Feffer writes: "Donald Trump filed his paperwork to run for reelection only hours after his inauguration in January 2017, setting a presidential record, the first of his many dubious achievements."
Supporters react as President Donald Trump holds a campaign rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (photo: Leah Millis/Reuters)
The President as Political Hit Man: Trump's Perpetual Reelection Machine
By John Feffer, TomDispatch
09 March 20
Note for TomDispatch Readers: Just a reminder that if, like me, you’re a fan of dystopian fiction -- I began reading H.G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell in my teens, assumedly preparing for the worst -- you should get your hands on the first two novels in John Feffer’s Splinterlands trilogy, beginning with Splinterlands itself and then Frostlands. (The third and final novel is scheduled to be published in 2021.) Remember that, if you’re an Amazon customer, any book (or anything else) you get by traveling there via an Amazon link at this site (including the book cover image embedded in any TD piece) assures us of a few cents at no extra cost to you. And should you want to help this website make it through the age of Trump by contributing more directly, signed, personalized copies of each of Feffer's novels are still available at our donation page for a gift of $100 ($125 if you live outside the U.S.) and the heartwarming knowledge that you’ve helped TD stay afloat in tough times. Tom]
He was horrified and angry -- and who wouldn’t be? A recent Fox News -- Fox News!!! -- poll showed that, if the 2020 election were held tomorrow, any Democratic candidate worth mentioning would beat Donald Trump head to head and both Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden would do so by eight percentage points! “Worst polls,” the president tweeted. “Why doesn’t Fox finally get a competent Polling Company?”
And mind you, that worst poll was taken before Donald Trump’s perfect economy (no matter that he inherited it from... gasp!... Barack Obama) and his perfect stock market both caught the Democratic coronavirus “hoax” and were hospitalized. If I were him, I’d be outraged, too!
After all, only 15 people have that disease in this country, or so he bragged until, of course, those numbers began to grow and grow -- and no one, he told voters proudly, had yet died from it, until, of course, the deaths started coming in.
As TomDispatch regular John Feffer so strikingly points out today, Donald Trump, who may shirk reality itself but never “reality” TV, wants to be the last survivor on the island we still like to call the United States of America (rather than Trumplandia). Nonetheless, even if you do your best, Donald-style, to ignore the latest pandemic that could, before it’s done, become another Spanish Flu of 1918, this island Earth (to steal a title from a sci-fi movie of my youth) is itself involved in something like a pandemic situation. Though we still label it, modestly enough, “climate change” or “global warming,” when it comes to the broiling of the planet, instead of just ducking and accusing others of being hoaxers, President Trump and his crew are proving to be arsonists first class. Give him four more years and who knows what could go up in flames (other than Australia). So, there’s every reason, as John Feffer does so strikingly today, to turn our attention to election 2020 -- and so far it’s not a pretty sight, whatever the polls of the moment might tell us.
-Tom Engelhardt, TomDispatch
 onald Trump filed his paperwork to run for reelection only hours after his inauguration in January 2017, setting a presidential record, the first of his many dubious achievements. For a man who relished the adulation and bombast of campaigning, it should have surprised no one that he charged out of the starting gate so quickly for 2020 as well. After all, he’d already spent much of the December before his inauguration on a ”thank you” tour of the swing states that had unexpectedly supported him on Election Day -- Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin -- and visited Florida for a rally only a couple of weeks after he took the oath of office. In much the same way that Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky once embraced “permanent revolution,” Donald Trump embarked on a “permanent campaign.”
But The Donald was fixated on 2020 even before he pulled off the upset of the century on November 8, 2016. After all, no one seems to have been more surprised by his victory that day than Trump himself.
According to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and his personal attorney Michael Cohen, even on election night 2016, the billionaire tycoon didn’t think he’d win his first presidential bid. His wife, Melania, assured by her husband that he’d lose, reportedly wept as the news came in that she would indeed be heading for the White House. Before his surprise victory, Trump described the election many times as “rigged” and seemed poised to declare the vote illegitimate as soon as the final returns rolled in. The attacks he’d launched on Hillary Clinton during the campaign -- on her health, her integrity, her email account -- were not only designed to savage an opponent but also to undermine in advance the person that everyone expected to be the next president.
In other words, Trump was already gearing up to go after her in 2020. And this wasn’t even a commitment to run again for president. Although he reveled in all the media attention during the 2016 campaign, he was far more focused on the economic benefits to his cohort, his businesses, his family, and above all himself. He understood that attacking Clinton had real potential to become a post-election profession.
Before Election Day, for instance, Trump was already exploring the possibility of establishing his own TV network to cater to the anti-Clinton base he’d mobilized. The relentless stigmatizing of the Democratic standard bearer -- the threats of legal action, the “lock her up” chants, the hints at dark conspiracies -- could easily have morphed into a new “birther” movement led by Trump himself. With Clinton in the White House, he could have continued in quasi-campaign mode as a kind of shadow president, without all the onerous tasks of an actual commander-in-chief.
Thanks to 77,744 voters in three key states on November 8, 2016, the Electoral College not only catapulted a bemused Trump into the White House but eliminated his chief electoral rival. Hillary Clinton’s political career was effectively over and Donald Trump suddenly found himself alone in the boxing ring, his very identity as a boxer at risk.
As president, however, he soon discovered that a ruthless and amoral executive could wield almost unlimited power in the Oval Office. Ever since, he’s used that power to harvest a bumper crop of carrots: windfall profits at his hotels, international contracts for his son-in-law Jared Kushner’s family business, not to speak of fat consulting gigs and other goodies for his cronies. Trump is a carrot-lover from way back. But ever vengeful, he loves sticks even more. He’s used those sticks to punish his enemies, real or imagined, in the media, in business, and most saliently in politics. His tenuous sense of self requires such enemies.
Even as president, Trump thrives as an underdog, beset on all sides. Over the last three years, he turned the world of politics into a target-rich environment. He’s attacked one international leader after another -- though not the autocrats -- for failing to show sufficient fealty. At home, he’s blasted the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives with a special focus on Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He’s lashed out against “deep state” opponents within the government, particularly those with the temerity to speak honestly during the impeachment hearings. He typically took time at a rally in Mississippi to besmirch the reputation of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court aspirant Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault. He's even regularly gone after members of his inner circle, from former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions to former Pentagon chief Jim Mattis, blaming them for his own policy failures.
Those relentless attacks constitute the ambient noise of the Trump era. But a clear signal has emerged from this background chatter. Since committing to run for a second term, he’s mounted one campaign of political assassination after another against any would-be successor to Hillary Clinton. Just as he ran a unique campaign in 2016 and has governed in an unprecedented manner, Donald Trump is launching what will be a one-of-a-kind reelection effort. This is no normal primary season to be followed by run-of-the-mill party conventions and a general election like every other.
Trump isn’t just determined to destroy politics as usual with his incendiary rhetoric, his Twitter end runs around the media, or his authoritarian governing style. He wants to destroy politics itself, full stop.
Last Man Standing
Over the course of 40 seasons, the American reality show Survivor has been filmed at many different locations and in a variety of formats. Still, the basic rules have remained the same. Contestants are divided into different “tribes” that must survive in adverse conditions and face extraordinary challenges. A series of votes in Tribal Councils then determine who can stay on the island. Sometimes, tribes or individuals win temporary immunity from expulsion. As the numbers dwindle, the tribes merge and individuals begin to compete more directly against one another. A Final Tribal Council determines the winner among the two or three remaining contestants.
What makes Survivor different from typical game shows -- and arguably explains its enduring success -- is that contestants don’t win simply by besting their adversaries in head-to-head battles as in Jeopardy or American Idol. Instead, they have to avoid getting voted off the island by fellow contestants. You win, in other words, through persuasion, negotiation, and manipulation.
The first season’s victor, Richard Hatch, “was not the most physically able of the contestants,” psychologist Vivian Zayas once explained. “In fact, out of the twelve individual Challenges, he only won one. Richard was also not the most liked. He was perceived as arrogant and overly confident, and even picked by some to be one of the first to get voted off the island.” Ultimately, what made Hatch successful was his ability to form alliances.
To put it in Trumpian terms, you win Survivor by being best at the art of the deal. At times, this requires ruthlessness, wheedling, and outright lies. It makes perfect sense that Trump would revive his stagnant career by translating Survivor into the business world in his show, The Apprentice. Less predictable perhaps was his application of this strategy to electoral politics.
The 2020 election resembles nothing less than a political version of the Survivor franchise. Donald Trump fully intends to be the last man standing. To do so, however, he must contrive to get everyone else voted off the island. The first to go was the tribe of Republican rivals he defeated in the 2016 primary and who no longer pose a political threat. Next to exit, in the general election, was the leader of the rival tribe of Democrats, Hillary Clinton.
In 2020, having won the equivalent of Survivor’s immunity prize, Trump has earned a pass to the final round in November. He faces no significant challenge within the Republican Party. In fact, nine states -- Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada, South Carolina and Wisconsin -- have scrapped their primaries altogether and pledged their delegates to him. In the remaining primaries, he’s racking up the kinds of results that only totalitarian leaders typically enjoy like the 97% of caucus delegates he captured in Iowa, the 97% of primary voters in Arkansas, and his 86% margin of victory in New Hampshire.
As befits a political survivor, Trump has excelled at forging alliances. An irreligious and profane man, he still managed to win over the evangelical community. Despite his previously liberal record on social issues, he successfully courted the anti-abortion vote. A draft dodger, he’s effectively pandered to veterans and active-duty soldiers. And though he’s a billionaire given to grossly conspicuous consumption, he even managed to woo the disenfranchised in the Rust Belt and elsewhere. After capturing the Republican Party in this way, he then purged it of just about anyone without the requisite level of sycophancy to the commander-in-chief. In 2016, he also fashioned informal alliances with disgruntled Democrats and independent voters. Since then, he’s tried to make further inroads in the Democratic Party by persuading a few politicians like New Jersey Congressman Jeff Van Drew to switch parties. His pardon of corrupt Democratic pol Rod Blagojevich might even win him some additional crossover votes in Illinois.
Trump hopes, of course, that the 2016 alliances he forged among Democratic and independent voters in key swing states will produce the same results in 2020. Indeed, those voters may well pull the lever for him again, even if they supported Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections. It’s not just his politically incorrect personality that has won them over. During his presidency, he’s used the power of the state to direct significant resources toward such constituencies.
To compensate, for instance, for losses incurred in his trade war with China, he’s provided $28 billion in farm subsidies over the last two years. Even with the first part of a Sino-American trade deal in place, the president has promised critical rural voters yet more handouts in this election year. Although his tax cuts have certainly put plenty of extra money in the pockets of his wealthy supporters and affluent suburbanites, there’s evidence that those cuts have also advantaged red states over blue ones, just as job growth has favored such states, in part because of the help his administration has given to specific economic sectors like the oil, coal, and chemical industries.
All of this, however, could mean little if Donald Trump faces a popular Democrat in November. So the president has gone into overdrive to ensure that those he considers his strongest potential rivals are voted off the island before the ultimate contest begins.
Going After Biden
Joe Biden formally threw his hat into the presidential ring on April 25, 2019. But Donald Trump’s anxiety about running against him had begun much earlier. In July 2018, according to campaign advisers, the president was already fretting Biden might win back some white, working-class voters in swing states like Pennsylvania. However, the president promptly began to insist that Biden would be a “dream candidate,” resorting to his common and often effective strategy of saying the opposite of what he really thought.
That summer, Trump was well aware that, in election 2020 polls, he was seven points behind his possible future Democratic opponent. So he began to go after “sleepy Joe” (as he nicknamed him) on Twitter. He insulted Biden’s age, intelligence, and political record, but a true hatchet job required a sharper hatchet.
Trump had long sought a lawyer who could do some of his hatchet work for him, a figure akin to Roy Cohn, the anti-Communist huckster who assisted Senator Joe McCarthy and later served as The Donald’s mentor. Several people aspired to play that very role, including Michael Cohen, who became the president’s personal lawyer. But like former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in the end, he proved insufficiently loyal in the president’s eyes.
Rudy Giuliani has emerged as the latest in this line of fixers. He endorsed Trump in 2016 and then entered his administration as an adviser on cybersecurity. In April 2018, after the FBI raided Michael Cohen’s office, Giuliani joined Trump’s legal team. He immediately went to work exploiting his past connections in Ukraine as part of an effort to shift blame to that country for Russia’s interference in the U.S. elections. At some point in the fall of 2018, hooking up with two shady operators, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, he began to investigate Biden, his son Hunter, and the latter’s links to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. When Volodymyr Zelensky became that country’s president in April 2019, Trump felt emboldened, thanks to Giuliani, to press the new leader to relaunch an investigation into the Biden family even though the previous effort had produced nothing.
It was an extraordinarily risky move, coming just after Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in his long-awaited report, had described Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump administration’s attempts to cover up its Kremlin connections. But that’s how much Trump worried about the man he then expected to be his foremost political rival in 2020. For reelection, Giuliani and Trump knew that nothing illicit actually had to be nailed down when it came to Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian activities. They simply had to damage his father’s reputation through insinuation.
Trump was furious at the impeachment inquiry that followed his “perfect” phone call with Zelensky on July 25, 2019. In the end, however, even though the House investigation exonerated Biden and implicated Trump, it was the Democrat’s reputation that suffered the greater hit.
As Peter Beinart wrote in The Atlantic:
”By keeping Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine in the news, they have turned them into a rough analogue to Hillary Clinton’s missing emails in 2016 -- a pseudo-scandal that undermines a leading Democratic candidate’s reputation for honesty. The Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee last fall launched a $10 million advertising blitz aimed at convincing Americans that Joe Biden’s behavior toward Ukraine was corrupt.”
Biden’s national poll numbers didn’t actually suffer much during the impeachment investigation, but his leads in the early state primaries did. Beginning with an ad campaign in Iowa, the president seemed determined to kneecap Biden in those very primaries. True, the Democratic candidate did himself no favors with lackluster debate performances and his usual verbal gaffes. Trump’s strategy, however, helped ensure that the residents of Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada nearly voted the competing tribe’s leading candidate off the island before the big Tribal Council on Super Tuesday. Only a resounding victory in South Carolina kept Biden in the race, propelling him to a surprising comeback on Super Tuesday.
Targeting the Rest
Trump deployed his traditional strategy of attack to minimize the other Democratic candidates for 2020 as well. He ridiculed Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas,” made fun of Mike Bloomberg’s height, and intentionally garbled Pete Buttigieg’s last name. But the candidate Trump seemed most worried about replacing Biden as the party’s nominee was Bernie Sanders.
After all, Sanders has some of the very strengths that made Trump such an attractive candidate in 2016. The Vermont independent is a political outsider who can credibly distance himself from the failings of both major parties. He has an authentically populist agenda that targets the very corporate fat cats who are Trump’s closest friends, allies, and supporters. He can potentially appeal to voters who didn’t go to the polls in 2016, those who voted for Trump but haven’t been able to stomach his performance in the White House, and young people who otherwise might not bother to turn out at all.
This profile has, for instance, attracted the endorsement of popular libertarian podcaster Joe Rogan. Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh, who voted for Trump in 2016 before challenging the president for the party’s nomination this year, has already pledged to vote for Sanders if he becomes the nominee. Even far-right pundit Ann Coulter, once an ardent Trump supporter, declared last year that she’d consider voting for Sanders if he took a harder stance on immigration. "I don’t care about the rest of the socialist stuff,” she told PBS. “Just: can we do something for ordinary Americans?”
Trump himself has expressed concerns about taking on Sanders. "Frankly, I would rather run against Bloomberg than Bernie Sanders," Trump told reporters last month. "Because Sanders has real followers, whether you like them or not, whether you agree with them or not -- I happen to think it's terrible what he says -- but he has followers."
A significant number of those followers in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania switched parties to vote for Trump in 2016. If they were to go back to Sanders in 2020 -- and if the Democrats who voted for Clinton generally maintained their party loyalty -- the Vermont independent could win those three states and probably the election in November.
Of course, in his worrying about Sanders, Trump could well be using his simplistic version of reverse psychology. The president could be pretending to be scared of Sanders when he really wants to run against a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” next fall. Citing Republican Party sources, for instance, the New York Times concluded in January that “President Trump’s advisers see Senator Bernie Sanders as their ideal Democratic opponent in November and have been doing what they can to elevate his profile and bolster his chances of winning the Iowa caucuses.” These advisers are well aware that, according to a November poll by NPR/PBS and an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll last March, only 20%-25% of Americans are enthusiastic about a “socialist” candidate. For these reasons, Trump urged South Carolina Republicans to cross the aisle to back Sanders in the Democratic primary in order to shut down Biden once and for all.
To play it safe, however, the president has also begun to focus a portion of his considerable ire on Sanders. He’s already mounted vigorous attacks on his approach to health-care reform, his opposition to the assassination of the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, his supposed hypocrisy as a “wealthy, fossil fuel-guzzling millionaire,” and above all that socialism of his. It’s just a taste of what’s to come. According to someone who saw the opposition research the Republicans compiled on Sanders in 2016, it “was so massive it had to be transported on a cart.”
And that’s before Trump blows all this material out of proportion through outright lies and misrepresentation.
And the Winner Is...
At the end of August, Donald Trump heads into the Republican Party’s nominating convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, with some advantages he didn’t have four years ago.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton had raised nearly twice as much money as he did. This time, the president has already collected more than $100 million. (Barack Obama had $82 million at this point in 2012.) A war chest like that supports a large ground operation eager to flip some blue states like Minnesota, New Hampshire, Nevada, and even New Mexico. Trump has the authority of incumbency, plus a reputation for invincibility that’s been enhanced by his surviving both the Mueller investigation and impeachment by the House. As long as a coronavirus pandemic doesn’t truly shut down the global economy, he will continue to claim, misleadingly, that low unemployment figures and modest growth are his personal achievements.
In a normal political contest, Trump would have to deal with a raft of negatives, including his relative unpopularity, his many policy failures, his embarrassments on the global stage, and of course, the cuts his administration has made in funds to prepare for a possible pandemic. Election 2020, however, is anything but a normal political contest. Trump has been busy gaming the system, focusing virtually all his efforts on Electoral College swing states, while Republicans do their damnedest to purge voter rolls, suppress turnout, and ignore warnings from the U.S. intelligence community of coming Russian election interference.
Donald Trump has also been hard at work stripping politics of its content, a longer-term trend for which he’s anything but the sole culprit. Still, more than any other candidate in memory, he’s boiled elections down to pissing contests and personality clashes. In addition, his nonstop barrage of lies has thoroughly confused voters about what his administration has and hasn’t done. In the process, he’s delegitimized the mainstream media, placed himself above the law, and reduced American politics to a litmus test of loyalty.
It’s not yet possible to predict the winner of the 2020 election, but the loser is already clear: the American public. Trump has sabotaged in a significant way the normal give-and-take, compromise, and negotiation once at the heart of everyday politics. He believes only in power, the more naked the better. He long ago gave up on elite opinion. Now, he doesn’t want to take any chances on the vagaries of popular choice either.
Trump believes that he already owns the island, that he’s now the survivor-in-chief. To maintain that illusion, he’ll do anything in his power to ensure that he’s never voted off the island, certainly not by something beyond his control like actual democracy.
John Feffer, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of the dystopian novel Splinterlands and the director of Foreign Policy In Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies. His latest novel is Frostlands, a Dispatch Books original and book two of his Splinterlands series.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel (the second in the Splinterlands series) Frostlands, Beverly Gologorsky's novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt's A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy's In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.
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Tech Workers for Bernie |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=53593"><span class="small">Nicole Aschoff, Jacobin</span></a>
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Monday, 09 March 2020 12:46 |
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Aschoff writes: "Bernie Sanders wants to rein in Big Tech, but tech workers love him anyway. Why? Because tech workers, like all workers, recognize the impact that policies such as Medicare for All and student loan debt relief could have on their well-being."
Google employees walk off the job to protest the company's handling of sexual misconduct claims, on November 1, 2018, in Mountain View, California. (photo: Mason Trinca/Getty Images)
Tech Workers for Bernie
By Nicole Aschoff, Jacobin
09 March 20
Bernie Sanders wants to rein in Big Tech, but tech workers love him anyway. Why? Because tech workers, like all workers, recognize the impact that policies such as Medicare for All and student loan debt relief could have on their well-being.
 he Financial Times recently noted, with some surprise, that California tech workers at Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, Uber, and Apple were considerably more likely to support Senator Bernie Sanders over any other Democratic presidential nominee despite his vows to rein in Big Tech. But the Federal Election Commission data shouldn’t come as a surprise — tech workers have shown repeatedly that they care about the same issues that workers everywhere do.
Tech workers are sometimes viewed as a different breed of workers — members of the “labor aristocracy.” Highly skilled, highly paid, and seduced by the perks and exclusivity that come along with working for a company like Google or Facebook, it is often assumed that they align with their bosses instead of ordinary people.
The reality is not so simple. Yes, it’s true that many tech workers earn far above both the 2018 median US household income of $63,179 and median personal income of $33,706 (2018). Median pay at Google (including stock compensation) was $246,884 in 2018. At Facebook it was $228,651, and at Twitter, $172,703. But median pay is significantly lower at tech companies such as Apple which employs large numbers in its retail stores, and at Amazon, which directly employs many warehouse and logistics workers. Software engineers at Apple and Amazon earn an average base salary of roughly $120,000.
But the sky-high salaries of Google and Facebook engineers are not representative of most tech workers, either in California, elsewhere in the United States, or even, for that matter, at Google and Facebook. Contract workers, who make up an estimated half of Google’s workforce, earn substantially less and are entitled to few of the benefits that direct employees enjoy. The same goes for people-facing tech workers who fill customer service positions, and the armies of blue-collar tech workers (some of whom are directly employed by tech companies) who keep the sprawling Silicon Valley campuses running.
Moreover, Silicon Valley’s astronomical housing costs put a significant dent even in the high salaries enjoyed by elite tech workers. Add to this crippling student loan burdens and increasing health care costs and it’s clear that, while many tech workers lead a much more comfortable existence than most folks, they are not at the table with the billionaires and venture capitalists who run the show. Tech workers, like all workers, recognize the transformative impact that policies such as Medicare for All and student loan debt relief could have on their well-being.
Their support for progressive candidates goes beyond bread-and-butter issues, however. While workers at Google, Facebook, and Apple are often presented as worker bees, cheerfully falling into line behind their glorious leaders, in reality, tech bosses expend a lot of energy enforcing discipline and quashing dissent.
Nondisclosure agreements are de rigueur at many tech companies. Tech workers face intense pressure from company executives to present a sunny public face, and workers who talk to journalists or investigators about their work environments can face dismissal. Recall a much-publicized email from a Google executive to employees: “If you’re considering sharing confidential information to a reporter — or to anyone externally — for the love of all that’s Googley, please reconsider! Not only could it cost you your job, but it also betrays the values that make us a community.”
Industry-wide demands for discipline and secrecy suggest not only that Big Tech companies have a lot to hide, but also that as Big Tech business practices come to light (both to the public and, in many instances, to the people that work at these companies) tech workers are increasingly unwilling to toe the line. Many, as evidenced by the FT’s campaign analysis, support a progressive vision for change on issues such as global warming, surveillance, and militarism that clashes with the prerogatives of their bosses.
Amazon workers, for example, recently formed Amazon Employees for Climate Justice (AECJ). After Jeff Bezos’s pledge to donate $10 billion to his new “Bezos Earth Fund,” AECJ pushed back against the initiative (which some environmental groups have dubbed “hypocritical”), demanding to know: “When is Amazon going to stop helping oil and gas companies ravage Earth with still more oil and gas wells? When is Amazon going to stop funding climate-denying think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and climate-delaying policy? When will Amazon take responsibility for the lungs of children near its warehouses by moving from diesel to all-electric trucking?”
Amazon has threatened to fire employees for speaking out against its environmental practices, but its workers are willing to take the risk.
Tech workers also recognize the role that their employers, and by extension they themselves, play in a host of other problems associated with Big Tech, such as the use of digital technology to surveil and oppress ordinary Americans, and the long-standing partnership between tech companies and US imperialism.
Google workers began organizing after they learned about a secret company program called Maven to provide artificial intelligence to the military to improve the speed and accuracy of sorting drone footage and photographs. The successful pressure campaign forced Google to back out of the contract. Meanwhile, Amazon employees have lobbied executives to stop selling facial recognition software to law enforcement, while tech workers at Microsoft and Salesforce have called for their companies to cancel contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Actions like these make it obvious why tech workers support candidates who want to rein in Big Tech, defund militarism, and lay the foundation for a just transition to sustainable energy.
More and more, tech workers recognize both the need to take on Big Tech and their own power to change how these companies operate. They are organizing together, building coalitions with other members of their communities, and, not surprisingly, supporting large-scale, progressive political change at the ballot box.
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