This is anecdotal, but you know how Facebook suggests people who you might want to be friends with? For some reason, over the last month or so the algorithm has been serving up nearly 100% people who have few friends in common with me but who love Bernie Sanders so much that they use him in their avatar. And I spent some time yesterday looking at these folks and their bios are a lot different from the old suggestions I was getting. In the past, most suggested friends were in three groups: academics, journalists/editors, or employed progressive organizers. But most of these Bernie folks are just regular people who work as food servers or have a job at Lowe’s or maybe do some charity work with the homeless. There’s a lot of young people still in their first job. There are stay-at-home moms and people who are self-publishing short stories.
In any case, there are a lot of them and they’ve managed to get connected to each other and want to bring me into The Borg.
Nothing wrong with that, but I thought about it when I saw that Bernie has just reached the million donor plateau. That’s right, a million people have donated money to the Bernie Sanders campaign, which is more than any other candidate and more than Obama had attracted at the same point in his campaign.
How many of these folks are infrequent voters? How many would be disengaged from the process if not for Bernie being in the race?
Those are the big questions. Because something could be afoot.
Maybe it’s time to mention my primary anxiety about this election: having a wave election and not having Congressional and Senatorial candidates who are in alliance enough with Bernie Sanders to take advantage of that surprise (and unlikely) event.
If you’re going to break obstructionism, you have to break it in the Congress and the legislatures and eventually in the Supreme Court. And there are some mighty old folks on the Supreme Court.
Presumably, that’s part of why Booman is wondering about how many of these folks are infrequent voters. Because if they are, it’s also an opportunity to increase Congressional support. That is, to whatever extent Dem leadership allows non-“centrists” to run.
The age of the justices is an important issue, since the next President will get to appoint their replacements and that could set the court for the next generation.
another anecdote: when Sanders had his event in L.A. a few weeks ago, my facebook feed served up a pic of my niece and my oldest sister attending. My family does NOT have a history of political activism or even a lot of political talking, so I was a little surprised. I don’t know anything about their voting history or engagement (other than confidently assuming Democratic) but they seem to me the kind of voters that pundits would count for Hillary.
I love me some Bernie, but this statistic is misleading–his campaign is touting 1 million “donations”, not 1 million “donors.” My GF and I have each donated to his campaign more than once, so by this measure we each count as multiple “donations”. I’m not thrilled that they’re being borderline-misleading here. . . .
I’d like to know whether Obama’s 1 million in February 2008 referred to individual donors or donations as well.
I’d also like to know the number of unique donors Bernie has. If it’s something like 300-800k, no biggie. If it’s something like 250K, though, it’s a lot less impressive.
It’s being reported as an apples-to-apples, er, donations to donations comparison.
WSJ: “He is the first candidate of the 2016 campaign to announce it had reached this number – and he reached it faster than President Barack Obama did in 2008 and 2012.”
Average donation is $24.86. I’m not sure how that compares to Obama at this stage in the 2008 campaign.
It’s my understanding that campaigns release the top line number of contributions at the end of each reporting period. By the time more detailed information has been collated and reported, everybody has moved on to the next quarter.
Yeah, I think the donorations number has essentially become the standard metric, at least for general PR purposes.
Which makes sense. As soon as one campaign did it that way, everybody would.
It was about 650k individual donors.
Or it was with a few hours to go before the deadline.
Yeah, I donated 35 clams to Bernie and now that I am natchulized I intend to vote for the first time in da primary – and it’ll be for Sanders.
What’s natchulized?
Naturalized like became citizen finally
Oh, right, heh. Brain fart.
Congratchalations!
Regardless of how you vote, congrats on becoming a citizen and thanks for participating!
congratulations!!
Thanks guys! I nearly went back to the UK during the Cheney coup, but folks like markos, atrios, digby, and this guy (~booman~) helped me get through. Thanks for the quality ascii.
A couple of my Brit transplant friends became citizens recently too. Congratulations and welcome!
President Howard Dean approves this comment.
Excellent! I wish I lived in your timeline.
Booman’s “feeling the Bern”!
That’s:
Contributions not donors. Can’t recall that the Sander’s campaign released a figure for individual online contributions as of 6/30. iirc the number of donations was under half a million and number of donors was approximately 250,000. Both impressive numbers. However, merely matching the second quarter numbers for new donors and total individual donations isn’t robust enough unless the average amount of the individual donations also doubled.
Near the end of the second quarter, team Clinton was requesting her supporters to get her to half a million donations. To dig a bit deeper and send $1, $5, $10 if at all possible to help her reach that goal. iirc her team reported that they had made it t0 approximately 460,000 donations but not sure that number was confirmed and then didn’t see anything more about it.
The contributions in have to be compared to the burn rate of expenditues, something that Scott Walker’s guys apparently did not do.
Getting the best mileage out of contributions in terms of increasing momentum and shifting up the campaign load to a national campaign without mistakes is the mark of a political leader that stands well when they take office.
Letting the other guys waste their money is always an effective margin-maker. Just as long as you deliver the votes on election day.
While we won’t know about the Walker campaign until they file the 9/30 financial statement, my guess is that all parts of it will look sophomoric.
A fascinating tidbit is the 2013-2014 Draft Carson for President PAC. Raised $13.5 million and spent either $12.9 or $13.9 million. On what? Mostly fundraising. It’s that direct mail fundraising model that Vigurie perfected.
Clinton spent $19 million in the last quarter. Don’t have a clue what portion was consumed by fundraising, consultants, and building HO and field operations. Suspect that latter was more advanced than Sanders,’ but was it five or six times further along? Expect her budgeted burn rate through the rest of this year won’t be too much more than that. She’s in good financial shape — but does need to be careful on the spending because her huge hauls to date are tapping out the major portion of her donors and there isn’t an infinite pool of people that can plunk down $2,700.
So far, Bernie’s getting a lot of bang for his buck. Avoiding the high ticket price items that quickly gobble up campaign cash. Unlike Walker, is conservative in fundraising projections and budgeted expenditures. And doesn’t have an idiot like Trippi squandering huge amounts on useless ad buys. There’s a lot riding on the first debate (in 13 days). Expect he’ll go with just being Bernie. The possibility of Biden jumping makes Clinton’s debate prep more complicated.
Okey dokey — In good shape. Exactly 50% of what I projected he needed to raise from 7/1 to 12/31. Might be a little bit ahead because fourth quarters tend to be easier.
It’s interesting how little focus in left blogs there is about Bernie. DKos seldom mentions him on the front page.
Bernie has a message that can be reduced to one line: Income inequality is a result of money’s role in politics.
Contrast it with the Clinton speech I saw – which has a laundry list of proposals, some of them compelling, but nothing close to a single message like Bernie has.
At the NH Democratic Convention I was struck by how universally a part of his message is believed. He has many of the same type of people who animated McGovern a lifetime ago it is true. But rank and file Democrats agreed with his message too. I didn’t talk to a single person who didn’t agree with the core message (which makes him very different from McGovern).
Kos sometime ago jumped on the Clinton bandwagon. That’s why there is little FP coverage of Sanders at dKos. This shouldn’t be surprising because Kos isn’t a liberal. His “guy” in 2004 was Wesley Clark (who I will never believe wasn’t a Clinton plant).
He worked for Dean in ’03 – he was never for Clark.
It used to be very poll obsessed – they are now ignoring discussing polls on the front page. Mostly they are all Donald or Carson all the time.
Liberal/progressives that were there for the entire period 11/02 through 10/03 would beg to differ with your interpretation of Kos’ position. In the 11/02-1/03 period readers were sorting through the announced and expected candidates. By February a majority (including Kos’ buddy Jerome) had begun to settle on Dean. The others were spread out among Gephardt, Kerry, and Edwards (and one for Lieberman). Except for Kos who really wanted Clark to run.
Over the next few months the most heated engagements were between Dean and Gephardt supporters. The Edwards’ folks were polite. The Kerry folks mostly AWOL. There was quite a to do when it came out the Kos had accepted a paid consulting gig from the Dean campaign without have disclosed that on the blog. Didn’t bother some of the Dean folks but most were outraged at the non-disclosure even if the gig was only computer tech consulting. Kos may have then said that he was leaning towards Dean, but it wasn’t more than that.
Next period was the invasion of the Clarkies; very vocal and they were bullies. By August, Kos tired of Clark dicking around about entering the race and defaulted to Dean. Once he jumped in that September, the place became a battle ground. Clark was as ludicrous a candidate as some of the current crop of GOP candidates and his self-identified Democratic supporters couldn’t see. Should also mention that there were undisclosed operatives at the site by then as well. Some, like me, dropped out or took a long break. Unfortunate because we missed real time observations of how the Dean campaign was totally blowing it.
iirc Kos unplugged (to the extent he was plugged in) from Dean immediately after the NH primary; although it could have been after the Iowa caucus.
Why Obama over Clinton in 2008? Doesn’t need any explanation.
I was there (from October of ’02 on). My memory is different from yours. There was no doubt he was for him from the time Dean gave a speech at the ’03 California convention. He added the link that said he got pain, and took it down when he stopped doing stuff, but he was still mostly for him IIRC.
He knew after New Hampshire Dean was toast.
He was able to be reasonably objective for the most part as I remember it.
I remember very few for Gephardt and nobody for Kerry. I was about one of 3 for Edwards (with Dr Franks, who has long since departed).
Clark vrs Dead was to some extent a war between Armando and everyone else as IIRC.
MB said in a thread in ’08 they assumed Clinton would win easily – Obama took Kos and the site by surprise.
That explains not why I memories differ but our real time perceptions differed.
As an Edwards supporter, you would have been more astute in gauging the level of support among individuals Edward supporters. How open or closed they were to switching before the IA caucus and after IA and NH or would vote for Edwards in their primary regardless of the results in the preceding primaries. That’s useful information because if those in the first category are high, it means that a candidate is far from having closed the deal with many supporters. That regardless of the poll numbers, the support is soft.
I was more attuned to that discrimination among Dean supporters and all Edwards supporters seemed alike to me. At dKos, the “soft” Dean support was fairly low but when Kos went into the Dean camp, he never went beyond “soft” and he did move back towards Clark after Dean’s 3/02 CA speech.
Armando wasn’t alone. The last month before IA when I came back in, I couldn’t hold onto my TU status because the Clarkies moved in a packed and kept troll rating me. Later Armando admitted that I’d” kicked his butt” (his words) in our arguments, but he retained the same biases and analytical style that led him to support Clark.
Did surprise me that so many were taken in by Edwards.
When Armando starts repeating himself you know he has lost it.
You are right in this respect: I do remember all of the Dean supporters being the same. I don’s think Edwards people were viewed as a threat – so we avoided the troll wars -it was like being Switzerland.
There weren’t 5 supporters of Edwards as I recall.
Before actually being involved in Iowa in the days leading up to the caucuses and actually being a precinct captain, I had known that they were volatile, but I don’t think I really ever got just HOW volatile they are. The Edwards people were convinced they were in a do or die struggle with Kerry 5 days out and yet I knew no one outside the campaign who thought that was the case. Meanwhile aboutt were buying this spin about Howard when the Edwards people were sure he was cratering (the Edwards made fun of the Dean fascination with their ‘hard count). They were panicked: it was OK to lose to Dean but they didn’t think they could stop Kerry if they lost to him.
In October of 2003 Kerry and Edwards had 16% between the two of them. They wound up 3 months later with 70%.
Not the first time I was taken – I worked for Hart too.
You were all very nice. Too nice because that “Two Americas” played right into your kindness. I’m not that nice; so, was never taken in by Hart or Edwards.
The scenario that Dean supporters failed to consider was that of the insiders coalescing around Kerry and willing to play dirty. So, we too were naive. However, even that reconstruction is naive. Kerry was chosen because he was expected to lose, and Dean and Edwards might have had a chance to win.
It was unfortunate, IMO, that the Edwards’ supporters became so noisy after Kerry secured the nomination. A ticket that looks and acts like a team always has a better chance in the general election, and Kerry and Edwards always looked like two left feet.
I went soft Edwards after Dean was whacked. His Two America’s thing was right but there was always something faintly wrong about him to my senses. I started supporting him in 08 too but switched to Obama. I was lucky in that I was living in Iowa from 2006-2010 so I got face time with a number of the cabdidates. Always easier to judge in person.
Always easier to judge in person.
Not really. While we all like to think that we’re a good judge of character in face-to-face situations, we’re not. That’s why it’s so easy for con-artists to prey on people. Professionally, I preferred to do the objective number crunching and historical analysis of accounts and leave the face-to-face meeting to colleagues. In general, I was a bit better at in-person character read than my colleagues, but also recognized that such meetings reduced the quality of my analysis.
My biggest mistake ever was agreeing to meet the owner of what on paper for me was a “no go” account. The owner was/is a great guy. Necessary but not sufficient for a business owner to expand her/his operation.
… as it is a Dem blog.
Kos has always been a (so-called) realist. Left-wing Democratic candidates tend to make him nervous. Or used to, anyway — I haven’t spent much time over there for a while.
Bernie is a non-person to DKOS. The Vermonter in me wonders if in his days in Burlington Kos caught the distaste some who had been around awhile had for Bernie. Bernie didn’t endorse Howard, Howard hasn’t endorsed Bernie, for reasons that go way back.
Kos might not mention him but the recommended and recent diaries are ALWAYS going Full Bernie. In fact a few weeks ago a diary called him out because Sanders is following Markos’s own suggestions in Crashing the Gate and there was a big stiff after his anti-Sanders piece in I think, the Hill.
It’s great that Bernie is generating all this enthusiasm, but when it turns out he can’t walk on water, most of the folks donating to his campaign will turn on him — just as they turned on Obama. People (not the more educated folks who post here but the less informed masses) have a deep need for a leader, a king essentially, and when the illusion that the new Messiah will lead us to the promised land falls away, those same folks will be disappointed and disillusioned.
I love Bernie; I don’t Hillary — but I’d be satisfied with either because I don’t see it making a huge difference. I don’t see Bernie actually getting us a public option or working wages for the poor or much of anything else. He’ll have his heart in the right place, and that has value. Perhaps he’ll have some success advocating healthy reforms. But my sense is so many people will withdraw their support when they see his limitations, his use of the bully pulpit won’t be particularly effective.
This is the sad reality of American politics. Real change takes commitment to change and a willingness to advance in small steps over a long period of time. It’s hard to maintain coalitions because people are impatience and they want everything to change right now. If it doesn’t, they pick up their marbles and go home.
I think this is absolutely mistaken because anyone who looked at Obama’s record knew he was an anti-Iraq HRC. Hell, even during the campaign the anti-NAFTA lies were shown up. That is very different than Sanders’ long record.
My big reason behind supporting Bernie Sanders is that I think that economic progressivism is the only way for a non-interventionist, social liberally, multicultural party to have even a chance in hell of attracting more than a pittance of the white working class vote in Appalachia, certain urbanizing Southern states, and the Rockies.
The party line among many of the Democratic Party incrementalists/establishment is that the Party will never be able to reach whites already outside of the party (i.e. progressives and urbanites) and shouldn’t even try because as long as the party remains non-interventionist, socially liberal, and multiculture there will be no appeal to the WWC because racism, guns, gays, and God completely override every other concern. So Obama and both Clintons’ economic centrism isn’t an electoral liability so shut up about it we need the money it’s how the game is played.
The thing is, unless the Democratic Party can find a way to do better with the white working class it’s going to be subject to regular midterm drubbings for several cycles to come. Also, there’s more than a whiff of the Nirvana fallacy in the whole thing — I’ve been saying for months that the Democratic Party does not need to win a majority or even a plurality of the WWC, it just needs to stop getting ~40% in the non-Utah Rockies and more than 15-20% in the South.
And you know what? The Democratic Party has made considerable progress with non-Southern whites. You can see this happening in the Midwest (compare 2000 and 2004’s vote totals to 2012), but there’s pockets of hope in other parts of the country, too. I think a significant portion of them are persuadable, it’s just that the Democratic Party needs to find a way to reach out to them.
Bernie keeps talking about domestic policy where the President can do very little without cooperation from Congress, rather than foreign policy, where the President has a much freer hand. Politically, I think this is where Clinton hits him in the debates if he is not ready for it. But all he really has to do is not stumble, because the American people are concerned with their own problems and are tired of worrying about the rest of the world, to which there are no answers as clear as those Bernie offers on domestic issues. What would Bernie do about Syria is a question bound to come up, and it is a very important question. No one’s going to have a good answer for that question, but Clinton is much more experienced at faking it, and Bernie faces a media that will jump on any misstep like a horny dog.
In reality, I suppose Bernie will try to stay out of it, which means letting Russia and allies try to solve it by backing Assad. I don’t know though. That gives Putin quite a position in the Mideast. I think our best option would be to side with Russia and back Assad’s regime,while insisting on some figurehead as a figleaf on the removal of Assad. I don’t think this country is capable of admitting it was wrong and backing Assad, especially since the reasons for doing so would not be Assad’s moral righteousness, and doing so now will require shedding a lot more blood than staying out of it in the first place would have(from Assad), and it would mean backing a secular regime against various Islamisms.
I look forward to the Dem debates in October, which I understand is the month that starts tomorrow. About time. Maybe the debate moderators will carve out 10 minutes for a discussion of FP.
But up to now, there’s been damn little discussion by any of the major candidates from either party about FP. It’s been all Trump, Trump, immigration, Planned Parenthood, Carly, Trump, too many misleading and irrelevant polls, and Hillary’s emails.
There is an opening for Bernie to take a more reasonable, progressive stance on the major FP issues — our stance on Ukraine and Syria and Russia for instance, and on taking a different approach towards fighting ISIS. He won’t be able to out-hawk Hillary, and taking a slightly less hawkish stance would be a disappointment, though I suspect that’s where he’s headed.
He’s a long shot anyway. Why not go bold on FP and take a true progressive position. Which I conclude has to be working with Putin largely along the lines Vlad proposed at the UN, possibly with some compromise about Assad sharing power, but mainly getting back to being true partners with Russia at least in cooperating on destroying ISIS. I doubt if that problem can be resolved if both sides don’t put aside differences and work together. And it’s a hugely important problem that is getting out of hand.
Strongly doubt he’d do that — Putin and Russia have been too demonized in our media for too long, and Bernie already has socialism to defend. But it would be the right thing to do.
I agree except that i don’t think it comes down to hawk vs. dove. The hawk position epitomized by McCain has been to do the maximum to overthrow Assad. Obama didn’t do the maximum, but he went in that direction. So is the dove position to support Assad? Or stay out of it? If we stay out of it and Russia leads an international force that restores Assad and crushes ISIS, what then? Russia will be in no hurry to leave. Crushing ISIS also involves action in Iraq. Will Russia start pulling strings there too? I don’t want to get all cold war here, but Russia is an authoritarian power bitter over the loss of its empire, much of which predated communism. The Mideast is a vital interest to everyone because of the oil. There is no way to see the endgame here, but I have difficulty not seeing it as bright red.
If Russia wants to stick its genitals into a bear trap after watching its rival the United States lose an entire leg to one, I say let them.
The only thing Russia could possibly get, even if things happen according to your best-case scenario, is bloodying the lip of the United States. … in the eyes of the neoconservatives. It’s unclear how much the public at large will actually care, but I’m thinking ‘not very’. The annals of the media skew older and I’m sure that the Russia boogeyman looms large in their eyes, but pretty much any non-Bircher under 35 doesn’t see a large and dominant power; they see an ailing and polluted police state propped up by a shirtless supervillain on a horse.
Let’s say neocon vs progressive, as the term “dove” implies too much pacifism. And, yes, the progressive position here is to join up with Russia and other countries to destroy ISIS in Syria, even if that means our dreams of regime change there in favor of (cough cough) “moderate” democratic forces have to be put aside.
The dark side of Russia’s govt has been much exaggerated over here in our controlled media. I see dealing with them as far preferable to seeing Syria go the way of Libya. And Putin has been a responsible player and broker in our dealing recently with Iran on the nuke deal and a few years ago with Assad on getting rid of his chemical weapons. He’s also been trying to convince Obama that regime change in Damascus would be a disaster for both sides, especially Russia, as ISIS would have a stronghold breeding ground for terrorism in the region.
We deal with plenty of “authoritarian” powers ourselves — Egypt for one. Our ally Israel brutally suppresses its Palestinian neighbors in authoritarian fashion. Putin seems tame and reasonable compared to them.
re: your comment. as is often pointed out, but I guess not in our comments much, Syria is about the distance across the state of PA from Russia’s southern border.
isn’t this already happening? where I am it’s on the news 24 7. not only that, imo since the coalition has been implemented so quickly it’s been long in discussion. as they say, Obama is all out of f’s to give
I’m basically in the same place with Sanders that I was with Obama in 2008 show me you can win.
For Obama it was Iowa and NH, with the bounce back in SC.
This time it will be SC & NV for Sanders. Show me you can win
No true progressive would say such a thing.
Winning is irrelevant. The important thing is to send a message — and look good doing it.
This is true, maybe I should lose my True Progressive card now that I made that comment.
Winning instantly taints you with complicity in the status quo, and the corruption that comes with power.
The thing to do is to win — that shows it’s actually possible to win as a progressive — but then turn immediately around and resign whatever office you won.
Think of the message that would send.
That would be a powerful message.
I assume that’s what Sanders intends to do
The only way to win is not to play.
nice
Win the nomination or the general election?
How does a candidate show you that he can win in Iowa,etc., if everyone is like you and declines to support and contribute to the campaign before then?
By studying the candidates and their campaigns, it was clear enough by mid-Oct 2007 that Obama was competitive with Clinton, but wins for Edwards in IA and SC would have completely changed the dynamics of the race. Possibly resulting in Democrats nominating the only one out of the three that would lose the GE. (My assessment before the “love child” was even suspected.)
I said where I need Sanders to show me he can win, SC & NV
I’ll take his candidacy seriously if he can do that, right now I’m not sold.
That’s similar to where I’m at. His support with white liberal wonkdom (of which I am a member) is great, but I need to see him expanding well beyond that before I find him a credible candidate for the general. My experience as an extremely liberal elected official in a purple area of red/blue alternating state (WI) has very seriously shifted what I think of as possible in terms of left electability–I’m a transplant from a big blue metro, and things are very different here in a ruralish county.
There is but one way that he can win SC. It’s very difficult and if successful won’t be seen until election day. Team Clinton has a lock on the SC DEM power structure (such as it exists) and they have a lock on the DEM primary voters. Personally, a DEM winning the SC primary is a poor criteria for the nomination. The state will remain “red” in the general election, and a candidate and his/her message that will appeal to a majority of voters in the states that comprise 270+ electoral votes wouldn’t appeal to half the DEM primary voters.
NV (2/20) is probably out of reach for Sanders — team Clinton won in raw caucus votes in 2008 and has had eight years replicate Obama’s strategy there. If Sanders if well positioned in a majority of the SuperTuesday (3/1) states, a third of the NV caucus votes is good enough.
However, your cavalier dismissal of IA and NH suggests that you won’t take his candidacy seriously until he wins the nomination.
If he’s for real he’ll be able to pull together a coalition to win and strength in primary contests is not any indicator in general elections so I don’t really care about that. It’s about building a coalition to win
And any candidate for the D nomination needs to prove they can win the base of the party – people of color and women. The blind spot with the predominately white liberal blogosphere is many on it think they are the base of the party and they aren’t.
Gee, when did I last hear that? Thinking — thinking.
I will refrain from arguing with you in the future because you don’t do it in good faith. Seem clueless as to the incubation cauldron every every good idea and good step forward this country has ever made. Not without a few clunkers – nobody’s perfect – but that ratio of good to clunkers so far exceeds that of the US political right and middle wings’ performance that those folks should STFU and listen and learn.
And stop repeating the falsehoods that has no support among POC and women and his campaign is a construct of blind white liberals. Look at the freaking details of the quality polls. POC and women view Sanders favorably — more of those voting sectors may prefer Clinton and that may or may not change in the next four to six months. Election cycles aren’t static time periods which partisan voters in both parties always overlook and then are stunned when they end up losing the general election.
When was it in 2008 that you called the nomination for Obama and then the general election as well?
I said he needed to prove he could win the base of the party – people of color and women. Any candidate for the nomination of the D party needs to prove that, including Obama.
As for Sanders, So far he is not doing that. The latest poll in North Carolina had him at 8% with African Americans. That is a not a good number.
As for when I thought Obama had a shot – when his numbers started climbing in South Carolina and other states with large minority populations. Granted I don’t think they were ever at 8% once he started running but he still had to prove he could win.
As for the base of Sanders support – like it nor not it is still predominantly white. That needs to change and his team really needs to double down on efforts to change it. For example, when he was in Chicago speaking at his Alma mater it was a mistake by his team to not schedule some minority outreach events with African American leaders.
As for you declaration that people need to STFU and listen and learn from progressives that is exactly the type of myopia I am referring to. For example the breathless reaction to Elizabeth Warren’s speech. It was a fantastic speech and I agreed with every word but there is something inherently condescending and myopic in the way the progressive blogopshere called it unprecedented.
It was hardly unprecedented. Black activists and politicians have been making those same points for years. Why did it take Elizabeth Warren standing up and speaking for many on these blogs to actually listen?
False consciousness. They just don’t clearly apprehend what their true position is, and where their real interests lay.
Sanders’ supporters will lay this all out for them, and then they’ll change their minds, most of them.
Oh, so now you’ve moved the goal posts to one PPP NC poll. (I don’t actually care all that much about NC considering who they elected as their Senators and that they chose Romney in 2012. Apparently the “POC and women” base in NC don’t have much power in their state, so why would I want to be guided by their preference?)
Any indication that NC DEM primary voters are paying enough attention at this point in this election cycle to have made thoughtful decisions? Note that the 2008 primary was held in May and until January of that year, Clinton had held the lead throughout 2007. NC has moved the primary up to March this time — but old habits as to primary day and thus when to begin paying real attention don’t change quickly.
538 grades PPP at a B-. Not bad but far from a gold standard. Until the candidate roster is complete (Biden is included in the PPP poll) and there’s been at least one debate, wouldn’t take poll results from any of the states not accustomed to early primary voting to the bank. Please note: that network news (which is still where most people get their information) has so far carried 462 minutes on the election. Of that time only 28% covered Democrats. Clinton received 82 minutes of coverage and Sanders got 8 minutes.
I’m surprised that 9% of AA in NC voters are familiar enough with Sanders as of last week to have settled on him. Looking more closely 44% seem not even to have heard of him. Of among the DEM AA sector, 36% have a favorable impression and 20% have an unfavorable impression. Clinton has an 83% to 13% fav/unfav.
Head to head Clinton v. Carson, Carson gets 48% of the female vote (to Clinton’s 44%), 15% of the AA vote, and 12% of Democrats. I don’t put much stock in hypothetical GE match-ups at this stage in the election cycle. But if the election were today, a majority in NC would choose a religious, borderline crazy man by 12 percentage points. I’ll wait a few months to see if they wake up before I’ll take seriously any numbers from SC. Or would you like to discuss Clinton’s female problem with the NC general electorate?
Republicans have given themselves a significant advantage by essentially walking the walking when it comes to lies. They’ve told the media that facts don’t really matter to their people, and they’ve acted as if they don’t. The media treats that as a given. What matters are impressions, and impressions are mostly whatever they say they are (because that’s “the news”). If Republicans say that there is some scandal about Benghazi, or Planned Parenthood, or emails, and they say that everyday, the media treats that as the story.
I do think there is some deeper issue here that Democrats would learn from. It is not simply that corporate media has a double standard, or that it has a double standard because it has a corporate interest in tipping the scales in favor of Republicans (whether because of ratings, or corporate interests, or class interests). That might be true. The deeper lesson I think is that Republicans have gained an advantage by basically holding the media in contempt (while also constantly creating spectacles expressly for the media). The Republican strategy has notable drawbacks, for instance epistemic closure and vicious circles of extremism. But they’ve been quite successful in normalizing obstructive behavior and extreme pro-corporate attitudes and deference to the super-wealthy.
I don’t know enough to talk about this effectively but what I’m getting at is the old idea that corporate media came out of this idea of post-war consensus in American life. Republicans have recognized that this idea is dead, finished (if it was ever anything more than a fairy tale). Democrats can’t let it go. But so they are constantly on the defensive, constantly trying to carefully position themselves as moderates, sensible, respectable, serious, etc.
Obviously there are various corporate and institutional reasons for this. But Democrats need to stop thinking that their message has to be “mediated” by cable tv and the established newspapers. Republicans created a whole alternative political media, which has its own pathologies but also means that they don’t need traditional media. Traditional media needs them. And both sides know it. I’m not saying Democrats need their own Fox or talk radio. But I think that part of Bernie’s success comes from his premise that he doesn’t need to a priori “moderate” or “soften” or “triangulate” his message. He’ll talk straight to the people. The hypothesis of his campaign might be that he actually doesn’t need to be taken “seriously” by CNN, although he frequently appears on TV. If thumbsucking gatekeepers make passive-aggressive parallels between Bernie and Trump, it doesn’t matter. Those people don’t matter.
It seems as if one of Hillary’s problems (and I still think it is very early) is that she runs her brand like she needs media approval. And the media knows it. And rather than appreciating her play for seriousness or moderation or whatever, the media now has contempt for that idea. It’s like a bullying situation. She needs to stop trying to make her message media-friendly, because it leads to the feeling that her message is only her supposed media-friendliness or “inevitability.” People hate the media and what it represents, so they will hate that. If she has a message, just be all about that message. I think that is part of what people respond to with Bernie (in addition to the fact that his analysis of our problems is mostly accurate and compelling).
Every candidate that can raise a million dollars in a short time should have a media outlet. Last time I checked YouTube and Vimeo are free. These are some clever people so it confuses me that they really don’t go after the both sides narrative that the pundits like to throw out. They can even make jokes about it on the campaign trail.
Hell, they could make fun of the clown car while they’re at it. “Governor Kasich used to stand in for Mister Falafel.” Have some War on Christmas graphics show up during the reading. There are a million ways one can go with this.
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