2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumThey, the gatekeepers of officially sanctioned political reality, are running low on excuses
They are the professional opinion makers plying a discussion framing trade in the media - some well intentioned and others not. They are the career politicians acclimated to playing by traditional rules on a field of conventional wisdom assumptions - some well intentioned and others not. They are the current donor class long grown accustomed to and comfortable with being the King (and Queen) makers in politics - some well intentioned and others not.
They all have minimized Bernie Sanders' message for all of his long career. They said he was on the fringe, and that his views didn't resonate with average Americans. They used him as a caricature to represent the furthest pole possible in American leftist thinking short of literal Marxism. After Sanders announced for President they all but totally ignored him - despite him being a sitting United States Senator. Then they waited for Bernie to be swept away by America's voters as they had concluded he must be
Now they awake to find Bernie Sanders winning a landslide of historic proportions in the nation's first primary against the no longer presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, and they are down to essentially their last excuse. They say Bernie Sanders has tapped into a deep vein of public resentment against the status quo. They say the electorate is in an angry mood. They say that support for Bernie Sanders is a message to the establishment, a giant wake up call protest vote indicating that their needs are not sufficiently being addressed. Implicit in that assessment is a belief that someone other than Bernie Sanders, someone with, they would say, a more realistic platform, will find the right words to acknowledge the public's dissatisfaction with the status quo and then ride that to their own electoral success. They say that might still be Hillary Clinton, or perhaps Joe Biden or John Kerry in a pinch.
What they do not yet say, and remain unwilling to say unless absolutely forced to by the dawning of a new political day in America, is that maybe, just maybe, voters are actually embracing Bernie Sanders FOR the things that he believes in for America, because they believe in them also.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)"the gatekeepers of officially sanctioned reality" that is perfect.
roguevalley
(40,656 posts)Now, the wankers.
m-lekktor
(3,675 posts)cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
Baitball Blogger
(46,706 posts)will they get booted off DU too?
daleanime
(17,796 posts)one-side debate doesn't accomplish much.
Baitball Blogger
(46,706 posts)Vote for Trump because we don't like Bernie?
Ron Green
(9,822 posts)Thank you.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)Failed in doing their jobs as journalists, representatives, defenders of the Constitution, of American values ...
Voters are so DONE with Establishment institutions that have held them in contempt for the last 40 years.
Mbrow
(1,090 posts)This has been the truth for decades, talked about by the left forever it is the reason the green party came about.
Tom Rinaldo
(22,912 posts)Someone like Ann Coulter of course received a good deal of mainstream media exposure, someone like Amy Gppdman was confined to a leftist media "ghetto" and kept distant from most viewers.
Bernie Sanders has broken through now however. Now they must deal with his message in the full light of day.
SoLeftIAmRight
(4,883 posts)no big deal to them it seems
Punkingal
(9,522 posts)mckara
(1,708 posts)Goodbye to debt slavery and rigged markets!
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Electric Monk
(13,869 posts)kath
(10,565 posts)SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)Cassiopeia
(2,603 posts)Bernie has a strong message that resonates with the voters. Many are voting for him because they believe that message.
Jarqui
(10,125 posts)oldandhappy
(6,719 posts)Hope you distributed it far and wide! Well said.
Tom Rinaldo
(22,912 posts)We'll see it it gets any traction there. Diaries get lost pretty quickly at Kos, but I always post at DU first.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)re-establish the proper order, and all will be business as usual--except maybe extra token bones thrown our way here and there. Like Hillary saying "cut it out, guys!" on a stage with nodding idiots behind her instead of her supposed private admonishment.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)robbob
(3,530 posts)Caught a bit of her speach last night. Paraphrasing, but heard something like "Nobody will work harder then me to get big money out of our election process. Nobody but me has the ability to get big money out of politics...".
I repeat, I'm paraphrasing from memory, but it was along those line, and my jaw just dropped. Ms. Goldman Sachs wants to get big money out of politics? Clean your own house first, thought I.
DUbeornot2be
(367 posts)...top recipient of wall street funds all she has to do is drop out of the race and she accomplishes her goal...
whatchamacallit
(15,558 posts)jwirr
(39,215 posts)dchill
(38,492 posts)mhatrw
(10,786 posts)Response to Tom Rinaldo (Original post)
1000words This message was self-deleted by its author.
DemocraticSocialist8
(396 posts)It'll be interesting to see what the national polling is looking like over the next week & a half. If he starts chipping away @ her lead among POC then her campaign is in trouble.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)Babel_17
(5,400 posts)Everybody's wealth is dependent on the people having faith that the system isn't hopelessly broken, and rigged. Within a few months we'll see just who the people will be willing to abide as being their President.
AZ Progressive
(3,411 posts)So many things become possible when people decide not to believe what the experts say is and is not possible and go and find out for themselves.
Tom Rinaldo
(22,912 posts)This is becoming one of those times when people come out, look around and see each other, and realize this is our world to define. And that we can do this - together.