Sad to see Rachel Maddow join in with the corporate establishment insider narrative concerning how Bernie Sanders can't possibly win. As Thom Hartmann points out in a recent article, Rachel sold this false narrative via a misrepresenting of the IA and NH voter turnout figures.
| Tom Hartmann: Rachel Maddow rolled out the latest confused bit of reporting on [2/12/2016]. Rachel ...by saying that the rationale for Bernie's becoming POTUS and actually getting something done (when Obama had such difficulty) is... Bernie's mobilizing huge numbers of new and energized voters. She showed a bunch of examples of his talking about his "political revolution" and how he's bringing new people into politics. [However, Rachel says] It turns out that fewer people showed up to vote Democratic in NH and IA this year than they did in Obama's 2008! ...how could Bernie possibly claim [there is a] revolution? ...as Rachel points out, "40k fewer people voted in this year's NH Democratic primary than did in 2008". [Repeating] for emphasis... "40 thousand less!" "And it was the same story in IA last week", Rachel continued. "Voter turnout was a record for Republicans in IA, but on the Democratic side... turnout... was DOWN from 2008!" [Rachel is saying Bernie can't win. But she] missed a few facts ... [Most importantly re] the numbers [she presented] in an astonishingly confusing fashion... The 2016 turnout on the Repub side was bigger than in 2008 in both NH and IA – because, in large part, the Repubs were running more candidates this year than last cycle. Dems, on the other hand, are running fewer candidates. In 2008, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson all had on-the-ground get-out-the-vote operations (GOTV) running in both NH and IA. This year, instead of 7 well-funded, well-staffed GOTV operations running in those states, there were only 2... And looking at votes by candidate (something Maddow... ignored), Bernie, with 151k votes in NH, shattered the prior record of 112k in 2008, a record set by... HRC. Bernie got more votes this year in NH than Al Gore and Bill Bradley got combined in the 2000 NH primary. In other words, Bernie is turning out voters, just as he said he could. (Bernie's Political Revolution Is Actually Happening, Although the Corporate Media Won't Tell You That by Thom Hartmann. AlterNet 2/14/2016). |
So, was this slanted anti-Sanders reporting by Rachel Maddow wholly her idea, something suggested by the msnbc bigwigs, or something Rachel understands she needs to do to keep her job? Whatever the case, it is sad to see. However, with msnbc committing to going even more corporate, it's certainly possible that Rachel got the message - tow the corporate line or get fired like Ed Schultz (SWTD #305).
On the other hand, Rachel apparently said that she finds it "hard to imagine him [Sanders] still being there at the convention" (MSNBC's Rachel Maddow: "Hard to imagine" Bernie Sanders winning). So both Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews (who speculates that Bernie might be a Soviet-style socialist that wants government to own the means of production) are in the bag for HRC. And I've also heard that Chris Hayes is attacking Bernie as well (and no, I'm not only talking about Hayes calling the VT Senator "Bernie Sandwiches").
SWTD Tags: 2016 Election, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton.
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