Taibbi writes: "His critics say he's not realistic - but they have it
backwards. More than any other politician in recent memory, Bernie Sanders
is focused on reality."
The New York Times recently reported that Bernie Sanders 'hardly ever kisses
babies.' (photo: Kayana Szymczak/Getty Images)
The Case for Bernie Sanders
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
04 November 15
His critics say he's not realistic - but they have it backwards
The New York Times published a piece over the weekend about the political
prospects of Bernie Sanders, a politician who apparently does not kiss
enough babies:
"[Sanders] rarely drops by diners or coffee shops with news cameras in tow,
unlike most politicians. He hardly ever kisses babies, aides say, and does
not mingle much at fund-raisers.
"His high-minded style carries risk. As effective as his policy-laden
speeches may be in impressing potential supporters, Mr. Sanders is missing
opportunities to lock down uncommitted voters face to face in Iowa and New
Hampshire, where campaigns are highly personal."
The media response to the Sanders campaign has been alternately predictable,
condescending, confused and condescending again.
The tone of most of the coverage shows reporters deigning to treat his
campaign like it's real, like he has a chance. John Cassidy of The New
Yorker, for instance, swore he wouldn't be patronizing about the Sanders
run. "Indeed, I welcomed Sanders to the race!" Cassidy wrote recently.
But Cassidy's hokey "Welcome to the 2016 Race, Bernie Sanders!" piece from
last spring had a small catch. It basically said that Sanders was welcome
because he would be a boon to the real candidate, Hillary Clinton.
"[Sanders] can't win the primary," Cassidy wrote. "And he will occupy the
space to the left of Clinton, thus denying it to more plausible candidates,
such as Martin O'Malley." (!)
Noting that Sanders held positions that were "eminently defensible, if
unrealistic," Cassidy nonetheless said he was glad Sanders was running,
because he would "provide a voice to those Democrats who agree with him that
the U.S. political system has been bought, lock, stock, and barrel."
This passage he wrote just after arguing that Sanders cannot win and was
only useful insofar as he would help the bought-off candidate win.
So what Cassidy really meant is that the Sanders campaign was allowing
people who are justifiably pissed about our corrupted system to blow off
steam, before they ultimately surrender to give their support to the system
candidate.
And he welcomed that! But he wasn't being condescending or anything.
Cassidy referred back to that old piece recently, after he became among the
first of many pundits pronouncing Hillary the knockout winner of a debate
that most actual human beings seemed to think Sanders handled quite well.
Cassidy went so far as to ask, "Did the media get the Democratic debate
wrong?"
He thought and thought on this, then decided he/it didn't.
"Based on Clinton's manner," he wrote, "and her deftness in evading awkward
questions, I think she delivered the best performance."
Campaign-trail reporting is like high school: a brutish, interminable
exercise in policing mindless social rules. In school, if someone is fat or
has zits or wears the wrong clothes, the cool kids rag on that person until
they run home crying or worse.
The Heathers of the campaign trail do the same thing. Sanders is just the
latest in a long line of candidates - Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich and Ron
Paul, to name a few - whom my media colleagues decided in advance were not
electable, and covered accordingly, with a sneer.
When we reporters are introduced to a politician, the first thing we ask
ourselves is if he or she is acceptable to the political establishment. We
don't admit that we ask this as a prerequisite, but we do.
Anyone who's survived without felony conviction a few terms as a senator,
governor or congressperson, has an expensive enough haircut, and has never
once said anything interesting will likely be judged a potentially "serious"
candidate.
If you're wondering why no Mozarts or Einsteins ever end up running for
president in America, but an endless succession of blockheads like Rick
Perry are sold to us on the cover of Time magazine as contenders, it's
because of this absurd prerequisite.
Ultimately, what we're looking for is someone who's enough of a morally
flexible gasbag to get over with the money people, and then also charming
enough on some politically irrelevant level to attract voters. ("I'm a war
hero, and Sharon Stone's cousin" was Chris Rock's take on acceptable
presidential self-salesmanship).
Bernie Sanders bluntly fails the Rick Perry test. In fact he pretty much
defines what it means to fail that test. It isn't just that he doesn't kiss
babies or comb his hair or "deftly evade answers." He's also
unapologetically described himself as a socialist, which makes him a giant
bespectacled block of Kryptonite for Beltway donors and mainstream
journalists alike.
If questioned, most reporters would justify this by noting that an effective
president must be able to bridge the gap between powerful interests and
populist concerns. So it makes some sense to interrogate candidates
accordingly, to make sure they're acceptable to both sides.
The flaw in this reasoning is that it assumes that Wall Street and Silicon
Valley and Big Pharma and the rest need the help of us reporters to weed out
the undesirables.
They don't, of course. Big money already has a stranglehold on the process
of government. It outright owns most of the members of Congress, and its
lobbyists write much of our important legislation. With Citizens United,
buying elections is now more or less legal. Big money even owns most of the
media companies that employ those pundits who are all telling us now to
worry about how "realistic" Sanders isn't.
Everybody knows this. In fact, this numbing reality of how completely
corrupted the modern American political process is bends the brains of those
whose job it is to cover it. What happens over time is that you lose hope,
and you begin to view everything through the prism of the corruption to
which you're so accustomed.
When you stop believing in the electoral process, then the only questions
left to interest a professional observer are who wins, and how many laughs
there will be along the way. We've gotten good at thinking about these
things. Cassidy's bit about Sanders harmlessly occupying the left flank and
blocking more "plausible" candidates from threatening Hillary is exactly the
kind of sounds-smart observation we've been trained to believe passes for
political journalism today.
Conversely, we've been trained not to care about which old ladies are
freezing to death this week because some utility somewhere is turning the
heat off, or who's having their furniture put on the street by a sheriff
executing a foreclosure order, or who's losing a leg to diabetes because
they didn't have the money for a simple checkup two years ago, etc.
None of those characters make it into campaign reporting. As good as we are
at the horse-race idiocy, we suck that much at writing about these other
things.
Watching Bernie slog forward to an audience of political gatekeepers who
wish he would stop being a bummer and just kiss more babies shames me into a
confession. I find myself giving up on this process all the time.
Donald Trump, a man whose idea of policy is a big wall, was the Republican
frontrunner for months, and ceded the lead to a man who wants to fight
immigrants with drones. This whole thing is a joke. At times, the only thing
you can take seriously about any of this is the gambler's question of who
wins.
I got into the act a few weeks back, gushing about how Trey Gowdy's Benghazi
hearing solved Hillary Clinton's voter-sympathy problem. Quite a development
in the soap opera! But a million miles from anything that matters.
Successful politicians today on both sides of the aisle are sprawling
celebrity franchises. They seem always to be making piles of money and
hobnobbing with Beautiful People when they're finished moving the status quo
in some incremental direction, which some hack somewhere will always be
willing to call change.
Whether it's the Clintons with their foundations or Al Gore with his movies
and his carbon-trading interests or the Bush/Cheney axis of hereditary
politics and energy commerce, we expect the politicians who make it to the
big time to cash in somewhere along the line because, hey, this is America.
Donald Trump, if elected, would find a way to turn being the president into
a moneymaking operation.
Sanders is a clear outlier in a generation that has forgotten what it means
to be a public servant. The Times remarks upon his "grumpy demeanor." But
Bernie is grumpy because he's thinking about vets who need surgeries, guest
workers who've had their wages ripped off, kids without access to dentists
or some other godforsaken problem that most of us normal people can care
about for maybe a few minutes on a good day, but Bernie worries about more
or less all the time.
I first met Bernie Sanders ten years ago, and I don't believe there's
anything else he really thinks about. There's no other endgame for him. He's
not looking for a book deal or a membership in a Martha's Vineyard golf club
or a cameo in a Guy Ritchie movie. This election isn't a game to him; it's
not the awesomely repulsive dark joke it is to me and many others.
And the only reason this attention-averse, sometimes socially uncomfortable
person is subjecting himself to this asinine process is because he genuinely
believes the system is not beyond repair.
Not all of us can say that. But that doesn't make us right, and him
"unrealistic." More than any other politician in recent memory, Bernie
Sanders is focused on reality. It's the rest of us who are lost.
Error! Hyperlink reference not valid. Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.
The New York Times recently reported that Bernie Sanders 'hardly ever kisses
babies.' (photo: Kayana Szymczak/Getty Images)
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-case-for-bernie-sanders-201511
03http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-case-for-bernie-sanders-2015
1103
The Case for Bernie Sanders
By Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone
04 November 15
His critics say he's not realistic - but they have it backwards
he New York Times published a piece over the weekend about the political
prospects of Bernie Sanders, a politician who apparently does not kiss
enough babies:
"[Sanders] rarely drops by diners or coffee shops with news cameras in tow,
unlike most politicians. He hardly ever kisses babies, aides say, and does
not mingle much at fund-raisers.
"His high-minded style carries risk. As effective as his policy-laden
speeches may be in impressing potential supporters, Mr. Sanders is missing
opportunities to lock down uncommitted voters face to face in Iowa and New
Hampshire, where campaigns are highly personal."
The media response to the Sanders campaign has been alternately predictable,
condescending, confused and condescending again.
The tone of most of the coverage shows reporters deigning to treat his
campaign like it's real, like he has a chance. John Cassidy of The New
Yorker, for instance, swore he wouldn't be patronizing about the Sanders
run. "Indeed, I welcomed Sanders to the race!" Cassidy wrote recently.
But Cassidy's hokey "Welcome to the 2016 Race, Bernie Sanders!" piece from
last spring had a small catch. It basically said that Sanders was welcome
because he would be a boon to the real candidate, Hillary Clinton.
"[Sanders] can't win the primary," Cassidy wrote. "And he will occupy the
space to the left of Clinton, thus denying it to more plausible candidates,
such as Martin O'Malley." (!)
Noting that Sanders held positions that were "eminently defensible, if
unrealistic," Cassidy nonetheless said he was glad Sanders was running,
because he would "provide a voice to those Democrats who agree with him that
the U.S. political system has been bought, lock, stock, and barrel."
This passage he wrote just after arguing that Sanders cannot win and was
only useful insofar as he would help the bought-off candidate win.
So what Cassidy really meant is that the Sanders campaign was allowing
people who are justifiably pissed about our corrupted system to blow off
steam, before they ultimately surrender to give their support to the system
candidate.
And he welcomed that! But he wasn't being condescending or anything.
Cassidy referred back to that old piece recently, after he became among the
first of many pundits pronouncing Hillary the knockout winner of a debate
that most actual human beings seemed to think Sanders handled quite well.
Cassidy went so far as to ask, "Did the media get the Democratic debate
wrong?"
He thought and thought on this, then decided he/it didn't.
"Based on Clinton's manner," he wrote, "and her deftness in evading awkward
questions, I think she delivered the best performance."
Campaign-trail reporting is like high school: a brutish, interminable
exercise in policing mindless social rules. In school, if someone is fat or
has zits or wears the wrong clothes, the cool kids rag on that person until
they run home crying or worse.
The Heathers of the campaign trail do the same thing. Sanders is just the
latest in a long line of candidates - Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich and Ron
Paul, to name a few - whom my media colleagues decided in advance were not
electable, and covered accordingly, with a sneer.
When we reporters are introduced to a politician, the first thing we ask
ourselves is if he or she is acceptable to the political establishment. We
don't admit that we ask this as a prerequisite, but we do.
Anyone who's survived without felony conviction a few terms as a senator,
governor or congressperson, has an expensive enough haircut, and has never
once said anything interesting will likely be judged a potentially "serious"
candidate.
If you're wondering why no Mozarts or Einsteins ever end up running for
president in America, but an endless succession of blockheads like Rick
Perry are sold to us on the cover of Time magazine as contenders, it's
because of this absurd prerequisite.
Ultimately, what we're looking for is someone who's enough of a morally
flexible gasbag to get over with the money people, and then also charming
enough on some politically irrelevant level to attract voters. ("I'm a war
hero, and Sharon Stone's cousin" was Chris Rock's take on acceptable
presidential self-salesmanship).
Bernie Sanders bluntly fails the Rick Perry test. In fact he pretty much
defines what it means to fail that test. It isn't just that he doesn't kiss
babies or comb his hair or "deftly evade answers." He's also
unapologetically described himself as a socialist, which makes him a giant
bespectacled block of Kryptonite for Beltway donors and mainstream
journalists alike.
If questioned, most reporters would justify this by noting that an effective
president must be able to bridge the gap between powerful interests and
populist concerns. So it makes some sense to interrogate candidates
accordingly, to make sure they're acceptable to both sides.
The flaw in this reasoning is that it assumes that Wall Street and Silicon
Valley and Big Pharma and the rest need the help of us reporters to weed out
the undesirables.
They don't, of course. Big money already has a stranglehold on the process
of government. It outright owns most of the members of Congress, and its
lobbyists write much of our important legislation. With Citizens United,
buying elections is now more or less legal. Big money even owns most of the
media companies that employ those pundits who are all telling us now to
worry about how "realistic" Sanders isn't.
Everybody knows this. In fact, this numbing reality of how completely
corrupted the modern American political process is bends the brains of those
whose job it is to cover it. What happens over time is that you lose hope,
and you begin to view everything through the prism of the corruption to
which you're so accustomed.
When you stop believing in the electoral process, then the only questions
left to interest a professional observer are who wins, and how many laughs
there will be along the way. We've gotten good at thinking about these
things. Cassidy's bit about Sanders harmlessly occupying the left flank and
blocking more "plausible" candidates from threatening Hillary is exactly the
kind of sounds-smart observation we've been trained to believe passes for
political journalism today.
Conversely, we've been trained not to care about which old ladies are
freezing to death this week because some utility somewhere is turning the
heat off, or who's having their furniture put on the street by a sheriff
executing a foreclosure order, or who's losing a leg to diabetes because
they didn't have the money for a simple checkup two years ago, etc.
None of those characters make it into campaign reporting. As good as we are
at the horse-race idiocy, we suck that much at writing about these other
things.
Watching Bernie slog forward to an audience of political gatekeepers who
wish he would stop being a bummer and just kiss more babies shames me into a
confession. I find myself giving up on this process all the time.
Donald Trump, a man whose idea of policy is a big wall, was the Republican
frontrunner for months, and ceded the lead to a man who wants to fight
immigrants with drones. This whole thing is a joke. At times, the only thing
you can take seriously about any of this is the gambler's question of who
wins.
I got into the act a few weeks back, gushing about how Trey Gowdy's Benghazi
hearing solved Hillary Clinton's voter-sympathy problem. Quite a development
in the soap opera! But a million miles from anything that matters.
Successful politicians today on both sides of the aisle are sprawling
celebrity franchises. They seem always to be making piles of money and
hobnobbing with Beautiful People when they're finished moving the status quo
in some incremental direction, which some hack somewhere will always be
willing to call change.
Whether it's the Clintons with their foundations or Al Gore with his movies
and his carbon-trading interests or the Bush/Cheney axis of hereditary
politics and energy commerce, we expect the politicians who make it to the
big time to cash in somewhere along the line because, hey, this is America.
Donald Trump, if elected, would find a way to turn being the president into
a moneymaking operation.
Sanders is a clear outlier in a generation that has forgotten what it means
to be a public servant. The Times remarks upon his "grumpy demeanor." But
Bernie is grumpy because he's thinking about vets who need surgeries, guest
workers who've had their wages ripped off, kids without access to dentists
or some other godforsaken problem that most of us normal people can care
about for maybe a few minutes on a good day, but Bernie worries about more
or less all the time.
I first met Bernie Sanders ten years ago, and I don't believe there's
anything else he really thinks about. There's no other endgame for him. He's
not looking for a book deal or a membership in a Martha's Vineyard golf club
or a cameo in a Guy Ritchie movie. This election isn't a game to him; it's
not the awesomely repulsive dark joke it is to me and many others.
And the only reason this attention-averse, sometimes socially uncomfortable
person is subjecting himself to this asinine process is because he genuinely
believes the system is not beyond repair.
Not all of us can say that. But that doesn't make us right, and him
"unrealistic." More than any other politician in recent memory, Bernie
Sanders is focused on reality. It's the rest of us who are lost.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
