The Sanders Campaign Should Welcome Mainstream Media Hostility

As Bernie Sanders continues to perform well in Democratic Party primary contests, so-called "liberal" media platforms like MSNBC are finally starting to warm up to the idea of a (gasp!) democratic socialist as nominee. MSNBC's coverage of the Nevada primary relied on a motley mainstream crew including a lamebrain (Chris Matthews), a losing candidate who is now somehow an expert on how to win (Claire McCaskill), and a has-been living in the 1990s (James Carville) to lament Sanders' victory. The broadcast struck viewers as so over-the-top awful that the network the next day was forced to air a pro-Sanders voice. That voice was  writer Anand Giridharadas, who was allowed on-air to refer to Matthews, McCaskill, Carville and others as "Out of touch aristocrats in a dying aristocracy." 

Soon after, MSNBC pundit-host Chris Hayes delivered what sounded like a grudging acknowledgement that Bernie's lead "should not be surprising" since he's doing all a candidate needs to do to win a Democratic party nomination: winning state primaries, raising enough money to compete, and building a multiracial coalition. Significantly, Hayes' statement avoided the typical MSNBC and CNN tripe about Sanders; to wit, the moronic theory that his candidacy  benefits from "Russian interference in our elections." (I wonder how the Russiaphobes explain Bernie's defeat in South Carolina. Did Putin take the day off?). 

There are Sanders' supporters out there working hard to get more balanced treatment for their candidate on CNN, MSNBC, and mainstream media in general. My own view is that these efforts are misguided and counterproductive for three main reasons: (1) mainstream media SHOULD be hostile to Bernie Sanders, (2) in a time of tribal politics it's not clear what if any impact mainstream news and punditry has on elections, (3) an insurgent campaign like Sanders' probably benefits from being subject to mainstream media hostility. Let's examine each. 

Mainstream Media SHOULD be hostile to Bernie Sanders 

Unlike Donald Trump, who frames mainstream media as a hate object for political gain, Bernie Sanders' approach to media is simply an extension of his general critique of how corporate interests work in opposition to the interests of the population at-large. In his plan for rebuilding an independent press, he said the following: 

*At precisely the moment when we need more reporters covering the healthcare crisis, the climate emergency, and economic inequality, we have television pundits paid tens of millions of dollars to pontificate about frivolous political gossip, as local news outlets are eviscerated. 

*Today, after decades of consolidation and deregulation, just a small handful of companies control almost everything you watch, read, and download. Given that reality, we should not want even more of the free press to be put under the control of a handful of corporations and “benevolent” billionaires who can use their media empires to punish their critics and shield themselves from scrutiny. 

*We need to rebuild and protect a diverse and truly independent press so that real journalists can do the critical jobs that they love, and that a functioning democracy requires.

CNN and MSNBC are owned by Warner Media and Comcast, two enormous and profit-driven conglomerates that are poster children for pretty much everything wrong with mass media today. The best that could be said of either is that they are probably not as bad as the Fox Corporation. Given what those megacorps represent, and given what Sanders stands for, is it really odd or unusual that CNN and MSNBC products would be hostile to him? 

In no way am I suggesting that corporate media owners send directives to network hosts to bash Sanders or any progressive candidates. Such directives do not need to be sent because the news producers, directors, and on-air talent of such corporate entities know the rules of the game. Like Lee Strasberg's character in The Godfather Part II, participants in this media hit job rationalize that "this is the business we have chosen." 

Tribal Politics and the Impact of News and Punditry 

Even if the mainstream media were more fair to Sanders, it's not clear what difference that would actually make in terms of voter behavior. Writing in the New York Times, podcaster Steve Phillips makes a pretty convincing case that the "demographic revolution" going on in our country right now is highly supportive of the kind of politics represented by Sanders. Moreover, we're living at a time when people who identify with a party label are not easily budged from it. Consequently, it is difficult for Phillips to imagine a scenario in which Mr. Sanders loses ANY of the Democratic base that supported Hillary Clinton: 

The empirical evidence shows that there is no need for alarm about Mr. Sanders being the Democratic nominee, and even some cause for confidence. If you want to engage in theoretical thought experiments, a useful exercise would be to ask how many people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 would switch their votes to back Mr. Trump just because Mr. Sanders was the nominee? Common sense suggests that the answer is infinitesimally small.

Some Sanders supporters sincerely believe that fairer media treatment would put even the hardcore Trump voters in play. They believe that Sanders' message of working class economics, uniting across racial lines, bridging the urban/rural divide, and expanding the social safety net would be persuasive to MAGA hat wearing Trumpers if reported on fairly. Maybe so, but scholarly and other investigations of the Trump base suggests otherwise. University of Pennsylvania political scientist Diana Mutz's scholarship on "Status Threat, Not Economic Hardship, Explains the 2016 Presidential Vote" helps elucidate the the ideology found within the Trump base that makes such appeals fall on deaf ears. As summarized by journalist Rebecca Ruiz: 

Mutz found no evidence that personal economic anxiety, represented by indicators like worry about retirement savings, medical bills, and education expenses, predicted greater support for Trump. . . Meanwhile, Trump's supporters favored a smaller safety net, which suggests they're less concerned about how people will fare when they face dire financial straits.

One particularly telling factor did increase the likelihood of support for Trump: believing that white people are more discriminated against than people of color, and believing that Christians and men experience more discrimination than Muslims and women.

For links to similar studies, see Mehdi Hasan's excellent summary in the Intercept. 

For an anecdotal yet highly insightful look at the hard core Trump voter, I recommend writer Monica Potts' "In the Land of Self-Defeat" from the October 4, 2019 New York Times. Ms. Potts went back to her hometown in rural Arkansas (over 70-percent of the population went for Mr. Trump in 2016) and became dispirited by the quality of the debate over funding a local public library. She concluded that NO Democrat will win these folks back with promises of expanded government spending:  

Economic appeals are not going to sway any Trump voters, who view anyone who is trying to increase government spending, especially to help other people, with disdain, even if it ultimately helps them, too. And Trump voters are carrying the day here in Van Buren County. They see Mr. Trump’s slashing of the national safety net and withdrawal from the international stage as necessities — these things reflect their own impulse writ large. 

They believe every tax dollar spent now is wasteful and foolish and they will have to pay for it later. It is as if there will be a nationwide scramble to cover the shortfall just as there was here with the library. As long as Democrats make promises to make their lives better with free college and Medicare for all sound like they include government spending, these voters will turn to Trump again — and it won’t matter how many scandals he’s been tarnished by.

While I do not believe that Sanders or any candidate should simply write off these voters, I think it's silly to believe that mainstream national news and punditry will shift their views in any significant way. What's really needed in such communities is not more or even better television, but more local organizing by people committed to the region and in it for the long haul. That won't be easy, especially as opportunities for young people in such regions continue to disappear. Perhaps the Democratic National Committee, instead of plotting ways to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination, should dedicate resources to creating Americorp style opportunities across the land. The DNC perhaps could implore the Michael Bloombergs and Tom Steyers of the world to spend their billions not on hopeless ego-driven campaigns, but on programs that would support the ability of youth organizers to spend five years working on civic engagement projects in local communities. 

Hostile Media Benefits Insurgent Campaigns 

There's an insurgent quality to Mr. Sanders' campaign that resists calls for moving to the center. As I've argued in a previous rant, Sanders is not interested in the left/right "triangulation" that has marred our national politics for generations. For the mainstream media as represented by CNN and MSNBC to become less hostile to him means making him more "centrist." That is, showing that his programs really are not all that radical, and that he's really not all that different from your typical Democrat. Clearly the Democratic National Committee, like their RNC counterparts in bed with the one-percent, will find Sanders palatable only if he demonstrates a willingness to accommodate the oligarchs--or at least not be such an open threat to them. 

Speaking just for me, should Bernie Sanders somehow get the nomination, the only way he absolutely loses in the fall is if the campaign is stripped of its insurgent spirit. While the core base of the Republicans and Democrats have already made up their mind on how they're going to vote in November, the independents and nonvoters that Sanders is trying provoke into the ballot box have zero interest in mainstream "moderate" candidates. To the extent that the mainstream media transforms Sanders into "just a more left-wing Democrat," and to the extent that he himself muffles his insurgent instincts, he loses. 

When you start to see CNN and MSNBC being nice to Sanders, recognize that it is NOT because of some new commitment to fairness. Rather, it's to take the teeth out of the campaign and recast it as somehow within the boundaries of some corporate approved definition of the "mainstream." 

In The Devil's Dictionary (1911), the great writer Ambrose Bierce defined "radicalism" as "the conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today." There will come a time, hopefully in the not-too-distant future, when health care as a guaranteed human right, powering the world with renewable energy sources, living wages for all full-time workers, and other policies now deemed radical will seem so obvious that people will wonder why they were resisted so long. But to get to that point, activists have to be willing to face hostility from a mainstream media propped up by powerful opponents of those same policies. To win the White House, Sanders and his supporters need to welcome that hostility, not fall into the trap of watering down the message for better coverage. 

If Ambrose Bierce were around today, he'd have little difficulty recognizing the abuses of the mainstream press.