END TO END BERNERS: The Official Bernie Sanders 2020 Crew thread

yeah that sounds like a great future tbh

biden consistently beats trump in the polls, nationally and in swing states

This sounds familiar...

the mainstream media - an amorphous collection of many different corporations with one central ideology, that is profit

btwn this and your 'the pandemic hasn't appeared due to any weaknesses in our society', oh boy

Such a large percentage of people, even a large percentage of Democratic primary voters, are so minimally engaged with politics on a day to day basis that I don't believe the predilections of "the media" were any kind of deciding factor in his failure to win the nomination. I do think anti-left bias does exist in corporate media, but it was just one factor here. I don't think Bernie wins the nomination even if he'd been handled with kid gloves, but I guess we'll never know.

btwn this and your 'the pandemic hasn't appeared due to any weaknesses in our society', oh boy

lol you've misrepresented the other side of the argument with this which is that the pandemic was exacerbated by problems in our society i would love to hear this counterfactual tho where our society's problems actually made the pandemic appear was it our exotic wildlife consumption

btwn this and your 'the pandemic hasn't appeared due to any weaknesses in our society', oh boy

lol you've misrepresented the other side of the argument with this which is that the pandemic was exacerbated by problems in our society i would love to hear this counterfactual tho where our society's problems actually made the pandemic appear was it our exotic wildlife consumption

― Mordy, Wednesday, April 8, 2020 11:42 AM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

a completed aside here: we don't actually know where COVID crossed over to humans, we know it wasn't directly from bats. might have been pangolins. but the most common denominator with flu pandemics with a zoonotic origin somewhere in the chain of transmission has historically been factory farmed birds.

so industrial society is to blame for COVID.

heading to my cabin, au revoir

This sounds familiar...

you say that like its a contemptible thing. but if consequences matter, then the potential costs of four more years of trump & pence seem much worse than the potential costs of four years of biden and whoever he chooses for veep. it's a minor blessing biden isn't running behind trump.

Such a large percentage of people, even a large percentage of Democratic primary voters, are so minimally engaged with politics on a day to day basis that I don't believe the predilections of "the media" were any kind of deciding factor in his failure to win the nomination.

Minimal engagement with politics gives the media outsize influence, it doesn't diminish it.

you say that like its a contemptible thing.

I say that like it's a meaningless thing. Biden leading now shouldn't give anyone hope.

handling the media well is a skill some politicians have and others don't it's weird to blame the media - an amorphous collection of many different organizations with many different beliefs and ideologies - over the candidate

― Mordy, Wednesday, April 8, 2020 1:27 PM (nine minutes ago)

Major media organizations are united in their goal of making money for the large corporations that own them. That guarantees hostility to a candidate like Bernie Sanders. Ideological diversity among the specific organizations and people carrying out that mandate only results in relatively minor variation as to when and how that hostility is expressed.

my implication was that people are so minimally engaged that they're not even aware of the media narratives, i guess that wasn't clear enough.

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Trump has the advantage of incumbency, gerrymandering that always benefits the GOP, a larger percentage of the vaunted Berniebros will actually not vote or vote third party this time, etc.. Banking on hatred of Trump to carry zombie Biden across the finish only makes sense if you've been brain-poisoned for the last four years and know the names of more than four people involved in Russiagate.

If the economy is still shit, Biden's chances are certainly improved.

the #1 reason Biden is the nominee is he was Obama's veep. that's it. there honestly might not have been ANYTHING Bernie could have done to overcome that.

at this moment I'm way more worried about Trump winning because of procedural shenanigans related to coronavirus and ballot access than I am worried about Trump winning because Biden's a shitty candidate.

even a shit economy won't mean much if Biden can't make a positive case for how he's going to improve the lives of people being fucked by that economy - as of yet,, he and centrist Democrats have not shown a capacity to do so.

handling the media well is a skill some politicians have and others don't it's weird to blame the media - an amorphous collection of many different organizations with many different beliefs and ideologies - over the candidate

― Mordy, Wednesday, 8 April 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Love how someone, somewhere can pretend the media is just this amorphous random thing when it very clearly as a pack expresses specific views and demonizes others xps

the #1 reason Biden is the nominee is he was Obama's veep. that's it. there honestly might not have been ANYTHING Bernie could have done to overcome that.

this is where I'm at of late. I haven't found any of the "bernie would have won if he'd done (x)" arguments remotely convincing

agreed. In fact I thought that was the cw after Biden won a bunch of states he didn't even have a campaign office in? I suppose you could expand on what it *meant* to different people that he was the VP but it's the root anyway

Bernie would have won if he cut off all communication in and out of Richard Branson's private island where Obama was vacationing when he decided to muscle Klob and Pete out before Super Tuesday.

even a shit economy won't mean much if Biden can't make a positive case for how he's going to improve the lives of people being fucked by that economy - as of yet,, he and centrist Democrats have not shown a capacity to do so.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Wednesday, April 8, 2020 2:53 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

if trump wins it's good news because it means the coronavirus didn't shake out as badly as it could have. if projections are correct, there is no way he can win given his "response" to the crisis. not just pitting states against one another, but refusing to acknowledge the danger of the virus until we were well into march.

if Biden can't make a positive case for how he's going to improve the lives of people being fucked by that economy

A whole bunch of people have already voted for him despite this lack of a positive case for how he's going to improve their lives. (Note, I was not one of them.)

It's possible that people don't vote because the candidate made a positive case. Perhaps a whole bunch of people just point at the guy whose name they've heard, or the guy who they think seems appropriately relatable.

Sometimes we fall into the error of thinking that people make their voting decisions the same way we would, if we were in their shoes. It's also possible that we construct post-hoc rationalizations for our voting decisions, that insert a whole I AM RATIONAL MAAAAAN veneer on the same fucking gut/tribal decision all the other schmucks are making.

He's going to need people to vote for him who are not Democratic primary voters

A whole bunch of people have already voted for him despite this lack of a positive case for how he's going to improve their lives.

Not that many actually? And primarily people who would 'vote blue no matter who' regardless.

It's also possible that we construct post-hoc rationalizations

... or we could just be looking at historical elections and the forces that shaped them.

thx M, I knew that was gonna be yr sillyass reply. never change

if I was jaymc i'd dig up yr post, but nah

the credulity w/r/t media motivation around these parts by otherwise intelligent posters is just confounding

For some reason it's conventional wisdom that employees of by News Corp, w/o explicit instructions, adapt to that culture for purposes of preserving a profitable political order; but those of Disney, TimeWarner, Comcast, National Amusements? Never!

i wrote about politics for newspapers at one point in my life. if anything my editors and fellow journalists leaned left and they fiercely guarded their independence from the money side of the business. moreover major media orgs regularly report unfavorably about corporations and other major potential sponsors (not to mention the state). ilx opinions on the media are v shallow imho

He's going to need people to vote for him who are not Democratic primary voters

this is what should scare you, yes.

ilx opinions on the media are v shallow imho

handling ilx is a skill some posters have and others don't it's weird to blame ilx- an amorphous collection of many different ppl with many different beliefs and ideologies - over the poster

i am not blaming ilx for losing the democratic nomination or really for being anything other than what it is

you are making generalisations and inferring from them

"i wrote about politics for newspapers at one point in my life."

All is revealed.

that's a different complaint - if you differ from the opinions i was responding to above feel free to elaborate xp

if anything my editors and fellow journalists leaned left

most thought The System Worked, I bet

after all Obama "leaned left" lol

I sometimes think defenders of the media coverage during this political season actually believe the critique has something to do with some kind of secret cabal or reflects the politics of individual reporters

it's natural that when power (in this case to disseminate information and shape opinions) is concentrated in the hands of so few entities, that market will condition employers—not out of any nefarious intent but just as a means of self-preservation—to behaviors that most behoove those entities

no most journalists do not lean "the system worked" are you guys morons do you actually read any newspapers?? almost every story is "What went wrong"

you are making generalisations and inferring from them

In order to conflate people this is somewhat necessary?!

if anything our media bias is towards sensationalism and bad news since that sells papers / earns clicks - titillation and despair

w Mordy on this one tbh

the bias is systemic and organic to unregulated capitalism

The journalists I know (quite a few) are terrified about losing jobs and are quite aware of institutional biases and privileges, waging daily battles they have 50/50 odds of winning. And these aren't even explicitly political journalists

being reductive about the media = weird
being reductive about ilx = wise

i.e not covering the Beltway or even state politics scrim

ogmor your complaint is weird i was responding to like 4+ ppl itt saying the same thing i'm sorry i overgeneralized about ilx

Journalists totally reinforce each other's lane, spoon-fed opinions all the time, and you see it time and again in their tweets about politics or something like covid.

Are the journalists now genuinely trying to convince us that line is "flattening" pic.twitter.com/a3Tl4Lvy0j

— Sam ✌️ (@samisam147) April 8, 2020

wtf nobody fucking said journalists are claiming "the system worked"

the argument is that the parameters of the "what went wrong" story are constrained....which is...obvious?

I think ppl don't have much awareness of the power the basic structure and form of media has in shaping thinking at an epistemic/framing/dialectical level, that form isn't neutral just because it can be adopted by a variety of ppl who disagree on a lot of things

^^^^^

Decades of research and thousands of dreary academic journal articles back that up, yeah.

plenty of academic research about no matter who you are you are inclined to think the media is biased against you (even the same media for two people with diametrically different positions cf this beirut study)

Not the same as using a monolithic term like The Media, though

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