Bob,
Sanders is doing better than any of the other Democratic candidates in the
polls. Yet, in a New Yorker article today, I read a bald faced lie, and that
was that there is no front runner. A majority of people want what his
platform stands for which is basically, returning to the protections of
FDR's New deal. The Younger people want the kinds of Democratic Socialism
that you can find in Norway, Sweden, or Denmark. I'm not sure why anyone,
including Sanders, is calling it socialism. But the label doesn't matter,
except that the word "socialism" frightens some people.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Bob Hachey (Redacted
sender "bhachey" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2020 8:01 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The Escalating Class War Against Bernie
Sanders
Hi Miriam,
Good article here. The more negative I see on Bernie, the more likely I am
to vote for him in the primary despite my fears that he may not be
electable. And, seems to me that more of the negativity on Bernie now comes
from the left rather than the right. What a mess and a farce as well.
IF someone wants to argue that Bernie's policy positions may not be
supported by the majority of Americans I can live with that as a possibly
reasonable argument. What I hate most is the tired old rant that "He's a
socialist" and how awful that is. Also, many trot out the lazy definition of
socialism that appears on dictionary.com which says socialism promotes
ownership or regulation of the means of production. I was taught that it is
communism that promotes ownership of the means of production. Socialism
promotes the regulation, not ownership of the means of production according
to my BC professors.
Bob Hachey
Bob Hachey
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of
miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tuesday, February 18, 2020 3:16 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders
The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders By Norman Solomon, Reader
Supported News
18 February 20
More than ever, Bernie Sanders is public enemy number one for power elites
that thrive on economic injustice. The Bernie 2020 campaign is a direct
threat to the undemocratic leverage that extremely wealthy individuals and
huge corporations constantly exert on the political process. No wonder we're
now seeing so much anti-Bernie rage from leading corporate Democrats -
eagerly amplified by corporate media.
In American politics, hell hath no fury like corporate power scorned.
Flagrant media biases against Sanders are routine in a wide range of
mainstream outlets. (The media watch group FAIR has long documented the
problem, illuminated by one piece after another after another after another
just this month.) In sharp contrast, positivity toward Sanders in mass media
spheres is scarce.
The pattern is enmeshed with the corporatism that the Sanders campaign seeks
to replace with genuine democracy - disempowering great wealth and corporate
heft while empowering everyday people to participate in a truly democratic
process.
Big media are continually amplifying the voices of well-paid reporters and
pundits whose jobs involve acceptance of corporate power, including the
prerogatives of corporate owners and sponsors. And, in news coverage of
politics, there's an inexhaustible supply of former Democratic officeholders
and appointees who've been lucratively feeding from corporate troughs as
lobbyists, consultants and PR operatives. Their corporate ties usually go
unmentioned.
An important media headquarters for hostility toward the Sanders campaign is
MSNBC, owned by Comcast - a notoriously anti-labor and anti-consumer
corporation. "People need to remember," I pointed out on Democracy Now! last
week, "that if you, for instance, don't trust Comcast, why would you trust a
network that is owned by Comcast? These are class interests being worked out
where the top strata of ownership and investors hires the CEO, hires the
managing editors, hires the reporters. And so, what we're seeing, and not to
be rhetorical about it, but we really are seeing a class war underway."
Routinely, the talking heads and go-to sources for mainline news outlets are
far removed from the economic pressures besetting so many Americans. And so,
media professionals with the most clout and largest megaphones are quite
distant from the Sanders base.
Voting patterns in the New Hampshire primary reflected whose economic
interests the Sanders campaign is promising to serve. With 10 active
candidates on the Democratic ballot, Sanders "won 4 in 10 of voters with
household incomes under $50,000 and nearly 3 in 10 with incomes between
$50,00 and $99,000," The Washington Post reported.
Meanwhile, a trio of researchers associated with the Institute for New
Economic Thinking - Thomas Ferguson, Jie Chen and Paul Jorgensen - found
that "the higher the town's income, the fewer votes cast" for Sanders.
"Lower income towns in New Hampshire voted heavily for Sanders; richer towns
did the opposite."
The researchers saw in the data "further dramatic evidence of a point we
have made before: that the Democratic Party is now sharply divided by social
class."
It's a reality with media implications that are hidden in plain sight. The
often-vitriolic and sometimes preposterous attacks on Sanders via powerful
national media outlets are almost always coming from affluent or outright
wealthy people. Meanwhile, low-income Americans have virtually zero access
to the TV studios (other than providing after-hours janitorial services).
With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass media are
coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial vicinity of
average Americans. Virtually none of the most widely read, seen and heard
journalists are on the low end of the nation's extreme income inequality.
Viewed in that light - and keeping in mind that corporate ownership and
advertising dominate mainstream media - it shouldn't be surprising that few
prominent journalists have much good to say about a presidential campaign
fiercely aligned with the working class.
"If there is going to be class warfare in this country," Bernie Sanders told
the Iowa AFL-CIO convention last summer, "it's time that the working class
of this country won that war and not just the corporate elite."
To the corporate elite, goals like that are unacceptable.
