I originally wrote the following as a comment…a sort of “P.S.”…on my recent post Neocentrist Hostility to Bernie Sanders-Just In Case You Have Any Doubts. [I initially screwed up the links and fixed them both on that thread and here as well.] There were simply too many suspect “Awwww shucks…you don’t really think the media would do something like that to good ol’ Bernie, do ya!!!???” responses to the original post, so I added links that would tell the tale. It grew, so now I am posting it as a standalone here.)
*************************
For those who think that the leftiness (read “neocentrist”) media aren’t busily constructing a new anti-Sanders narrative several years before it might be needed…and also for those who are just making believe that they don’t see what’s happening because of their own political and/or profit-making ends:
Action Alert: With Sleazy Innuendo, NYT Lays Virginia Attack at Bernie Sanders’ Feet
Smearing Sanders: From the NYT to MSDNC
The New York Times Shamefully Smears Bernie Sanders in Its Latest Lurch Right
And a pretty good look at what Sanders and Corbyn have in common in relation to their failed, corrupt political parties:
Lessons for the left, courtesy of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders
Looking political reality right in the face: it’s true Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn lost. But their vanquishers — Hillary Clinton, Theresa May — seem far more hangdog. One of Canada’s great left-wing figures, Madeleine Parent, said, If we learn something from defeat, we never really lose. In that vein…
- Truisms of the past have vapourized. Socialism is no longer a term to avoid. Bernie didn’t shrink from it and it seems to have intrigued voters, especially the young, rather than alienating them. Corbyn stuck with his antiwar position, even as terror burst out in Manchester and London, and it appears to have hurt May more than him. What’s typical of clueless left-wing parties, like our NDP, is that they ditched the term socialism at the very moment — 2013 — when it no longer would damage and would probably benefit them.
- Age isn’t relevant. The two old guys got the biggest youth boost. They didn’t get it because they’re old. Age just didn’t matter.
- This is my favourite: the chasm between hard-headed, pragmatic party officials and short-sighted idealistic members. The New York Times said: “The base wants it all, the party wants to win.” That’s exactly wrong. If the party (elected members and paid staff) wanted to win, they’d have backed Sanders over Clinton: he’d have creamed Trump and they knew it. In the U.K., they’d have stopped ceaselessly undermining Corbyn, and he’d almost surely have beaten May.
What the pros actually value over winning elections is keeping their jobs. The “base” wants it all only in the sense of reversing the deterioration in their lives and in the prospects of their children. They’re not into storming heaven.
- The dread mainstream media aren’t so dread. Tony Blair won for “the left” by cravenly courting Rupert Murdoch’s editorial support. Corbyn didn’t bother and got about the same vote percentage as Blair at his best. The tussle between social and mass media seems to be tipping toward the former. Clinton was brazenly backed by all the mainstream media (MSM) and it didn’t help her against Trump. In fact, Trump may be the only politician still obsessed by what the MSM say.
- Being yourself works, if you really are yourself and not some tortuous result of reverse political engineering. This appealing state is known as authenticity. Sanders and Corbyn have been themselves for so long they no longer have to pause and recall who they’re supposed to be. Clinton never did work it out. This relates to the much discussed theme of populism.
- This is a populist moment, but neither Sanders nor Corbyn are seizing it as populists. They haven’t changed in order to jump on board; they’re socialists and this equips them for the populist mood, which exists because of the widening gulf between most people and the arrogant rich.
—snip—
Read the rest of it. It’s quite perceptive.
This is all about the money, really. Sanders and Corbyn threaten the corporate controllers; said controllers control the centrist media all the way to the outside of the bloated part of my diagram above…where papers like the NY Times and WAPO live in a fictional leftiness, farm-to-table paradise for their desired audience (middle and upper-middle class, mostly white, college-misedumacated, millennial to retirable, all supposedly “reliable” DemRat voters), and the theory is (Which actually remains in place, even after HRC’s overestimation fiasco!!!) that this group of people combined with minority voters and ongoing massive media attacks on the Trump administration will sleepwalk the Dems into a recovery after 2016’s terrible beating.
I am here to tell you that it’s not going to happen. It didn’t work this time, and it is going to work even less well as time passes. There is clearly another force gathering out there in voter-land, and it ain’t Trumpism. If the DemRat Party does not reform…and soon…that force will completely walk away from the party (either not voting at all and/or voting for splinter parties) and it will doom the Dems to another, even worse loss than their last one.
This scenario has nothing whatsoever to do with whether Trump and whatever other Trumpist helpers are forced out of office or simply stymied in all of their efforts by the neocentrist DemRat/RatPub Congressional coalition and its media, thus becoming the country’s longest reigning lame duck preznit.
The only way it will not happen…and I think this is quite possible…is if Trump manages to wag the dog in DC with either a war and/or some huge anti-Congress/anti-media scandal and then takes the fuck over any which way he can.
Which he is quite capable of trying to do.
Bet on it.
Watch.
AG
P.P.S. Bernie Sanders Is a Russian Agent, and Other Things I Learned This Week
A fine look at the media mechanisms that are now being used in almost all smear campaigns against outliers from the the stolid centrist middle:
Be careful.
These kinds of actors and actions are now everywhere, espousing all sorts of political “views.” Bet on it.
Here as well.
Bet on that, too.
Later…
AG
And it doesn’t help when Dems/libs favorite news channel, Msnbc, runs wall-to-wall anti-Putin/Russiagate coverage for months, with no dissenting views allowed. Still-unsubstantiated charges treated as fact, or assumed to be true.
Anyone seen Robert Parry, Stephen Cohen, Patrick Lawrence or a dozen other leading Russiagate skeptics commenting in the past year on that channel?
I used to think we were the smart party. I used to think we were the free speech party. Not so much anymore. Dems (and increasingly I’m considering myself less and less of a Dem) it seems can be just as rigidly belief-driven and oblivious to the real facts and intolerant in our views as the political crazies and religious nuts on the Right.
That Dem Shakesville blogster — she looks like a real piece of work, far too deeply invested in identity group politics, as with her laughable defense of the political worthiness of Nancy Pelosi and Donna Brazile and other non-white males who are worthy because they are not white males.
I have remarked before that even with whites at 60%, does it make sense to chase away 30% of the voters?
I haven’t watched that channel for…oh, ten tears at least. It’s just Fox news turned on its head.
Xof News.
AG
I think the Russian stuff should be investigated in detail.
I also believe is it pretty obvious some DC consultants would like to use that to cover up their own incompetence. These same consultants primary objective is to keep the money flowing from their donors.
Said this before: most of the politicians I have spoken with, including from the centrist wing of the Party, are well aware that the need Bernie’s supporters.
In this sense MSNBC is well behind the thinking of the pols in the party: who do have to get re-elected.
Investigated impartially, not as a lynch mob intent on proving an assumption, and a self-serving assumption at that. The investigation should include where this idea came from and what were the motives. Honest men and woman don’t fear the light of truth.
They want Bernie’s supporters but Bernie and most especially not his policies.
From what I’ve been able to piece together, it started in March/April 2016 but was rolled out for public consumption beginning in mid-June 2016. The December 2015 DNC oppo research/strategy file on Trump made no mention of Russsia/Putin. As this six months into his campaign where he had differentiated himself from Obama/Clinton and the GOP on the issue of Russia/Putin, seems odd that team Clinton didn’t have this one under a microscope.
So, what happened March/April that got this narrative and focus started? The anti-Russia expats and anti-Russia Ukrainian expats associated with team Clinton/DNC seized what they saw as an opportunity. No big deal until Crowdstrike perpetrated a lie and it have built from there.
They want Bernie’s supporters but not Bernie and most especially not his policies.
Yup.
Exactly.
AG
Correction: They want Bernie’s supporters and their MONEY.
I think there is a recognition that college costs are out of control and what they have proposed previously is too weak.
The Post had an oped on Single Payer which speaks for the right of the party.
You know truthfully I think they are struggling with an agenda. They know they need an economic agenda, but are not sure what that looks like.
And they can’t offend those big
buyersdonors.Correction: they know exactly what their economic agenda is. It’s the marketing of it that has crapped out on them. That’s what they accept is in need of refreshing or reformulating.
I actually think they aren’t sure.
How do you deal with wage stagnation? Most are for an increase in the minimum wage, but that is hardly an agenda.
Short of outright redistribution, they wing up talking about infrastructure and worker training, but that isn’t going to materially make a difference.
I am reading a book called Capitalist Realism. It’s an interesting read. Part of it is how the existence of capitalism is just accepted as a part of nature that can be changed only at the margin.
That is why the Democrats are where they are. They proceed based on an acceptance of the basic market economy, so they win up talking about things like anti-trust – which isn’t a solution to wage stagnation either.
The problem is it unclear the left has a solution either – or it is unclear to me.
If the problem is wage stagnation, it can be solved with sufficient increase in demand for labour (for example infrastructure programs, or really any expansion of public sector jobs), increase in power for labour in wage negotiations (for example making it easier to form unions, increasing union power in negotiations and using law enforcement against employers that breaks laws that affects the employees) and last but not least decreasing the labour pool by generous pensions, health benefits etc, up to and including universal basic income. Or any combination thereof.
If I would guess, I don’t think this is unheard of. Rather the donor class prefers it the way it is. Increased wage share means decreased share for capital, after all.
And reducing the work week. Going back to 40 hours would be nice, 32 even better.
So, humans are nothing but greedy squirrels burying nuts for the winter?
It’s all a human invention and therefore, we can change any of the assumptions, practices, etc. of it any time we want. But that’s a discussion too large for a blog diary thread.
“So, humans are nothing but greedy squirrels burying nuts for the winter?”
Pretty much. A better analogy is sex-mad monkeys looking to steal food from their fellows and beat up the weaker ones. You can see a lot of human behavior at Monkey Island at the Brookfield Zoo.
A few footnotes regarding that article on the zoo I’ve known all my life but haven’t been to since the grandkid’s grew up: