Sanders on FOX

Zooey wrote:

I thought it was one of Sanders’ more convincing explanations. He often frustrates me in debates by missing (imo) opportunities to make his case more clearly and convincingly.

But here with Chris Wallace, I think he did pretty well, and I think it was good enough that the effect on a FOX audience would probably win him some positive reactions,

rather than reinforce his Scary, Socialist Guy persona FOX paints him with.

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FOX isn’t the only outlet that paints Sanders as “Scary Socialist Guy” who can’t win. The 1st question that George Streptococcus asked in the New Hampshire debate was if Sanders or Mayor Buttcheeks were too big a risk for the Dems if either of those candidates won the nomination….. that topic dominated the 1st 12 minutes of the debate.

New Hampshire debate transcript URL = https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/new-hampshire-democratic-debate-transcript

That was actually, I think, the best Sanders has ever been on TV. Though he was surprisingly really good at, of all places, Liberty University too. He won over some of those young evangelicals that day.

Good to see him go on Fox and say what he said, especially about the climate. Though he could easily have added that scientists are also telling us if we don’t do something mega-radical, aside from the earth becoming basically uninhabitable for most life, it’s gonna cost us trillions (for those concerned with monetary costs). Literally trillions in losses. He hinted at the cost, but he should be explicit. As in, nothing he proposes comes anywhere near the cost of doing nothing, or a little bit, or even a moderate bit. The cost alone will crush us . . .

Also, Sanders is usually really good with his fact-numbers, but he low-balled fossil fuels tax breaks and subsidies. It’s actually not “tens of billions.” It, too, is in the trillions worldwide.

But, yeah. He was excellent, and he’s currently leading the field for the nomination, according to the latest polling.

Billy_T wrote:

What do you guys think of this strategy, which I’ve mentioned before, and never see anyone do in public: When media try to demonize “democratic socialism,” I think Sanders and others should push back list some key socialists: MLK, Gandhi, Einstein, Orwell, Camus, Helen Keller, Dorothy Day, Upton Sinclair, the Dalai Lama and Bertrand Russell, for starters. Orwell, in fact, prefaced his Animal Farm with his advocacy of “democratic socialism” (which the CIA initially removed/censored).

To me, it’s logical, if folks see socialists as scary, to mention great humanitarians, civil rights leaders, philosophers, scientists, etc. etc. who were/are socialists.

Thoughts?

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I dunno, comrad. I dunno. I’m not sure Joe and Jane American care or know about Camus, Russell, Orwell, etc.

For So many decades now the corporate-powers-that-be have SUCCESSFULLY demonized Socialism that its a fucking miracle Bernie has gotten as far as he has.
Figuring out the right strategy for getting another five or ten percent of the public to buy into it….is the conundrum. I got no answers. I got nuthin.
How in the hell does one overcome all that propaganda. Decades and Decades of propaganda. Fruited Plains of Propaganda. Purple Mountain Majesties of it. Amber Waves of it. Shining Seas of it. Spacious Skies…. 🙂

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wv wrote:

Well, but Fox isnt ‘only’ pushing the meme that Sanders is a scary commie. They WILL run will with that IF he is the nominee. But Fox is doin somethin else right NOW. Somethin more subtle. They are giving Bernie some love. They are attacking the Dem-Media for cheating, and lying, and ignoring Bernie. FOX is actually giving bernie more love than the corporate-DEM-press.

There is always a reason. In this case its because Sanders is the ONE democratic candidate that Trump does not fear. In my case this election is not about progressives, moderates, corporate class, liberals, conservatives, etc. Its about TRUMP. That’s it. End of story for me.

I think Dems have a really bad habit of never, ever learning from political history, and they seem incapable of understanding numbers, percentages, etc.

As in, the GOP, at least since Nixon, has won with “appeal only to the base” candidates and strategies. They don’t even try to “appeal to the center.” They don’t even try to push policies that would help the 90%. They’re rather openly for the 1% and just their own team.

Reagan, Bush, Dubya and then Trump, all basically said to hell with the center, with “expanding the tent,” and ran a base-vote campaign on steroids.

But the Dems in the media keep telling us that they (the Dems) have to “appeal to the center,” and they have to “reach across the aisle,” and they have to “attract Republican voters” in order to win, even though their own base is larger than the GOP’s. A good bit larger.

If you put up base versus base, and both “sides” max out, guess who wins 99 out of 100 times? The Dems. And centrist, conservative Dems/moderate Republican types never, ever revv up that base. They, in fact, routinely cause high numbers of potential Dem voters to stay home.

So . . .

Billy_T wrote:

But the Dems in the media keep telling us that they (the Dems) have to “appeal to the center,” and they have to “reach across the aisle,” and they have to “attract Republican voters” in order to win, even though their own base is larger than the GOP’s. A good bit larger…..

So . . .

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Well, if they do want to attract some Reps — which can do that the best? A centrist like Biden? Or an anti-establishment type who is hated by the MSM, like Bernie?

There’s several different factions of Reps. I’d say Bernie had a better chance of peeling away the Reps that are wavering.

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Zooey wrote:

I would have to do some homework to support this theory, but it occurred to me a couple of decades ago that voters tend to go for candidates who are strong where the disagreeable predecessor was weakest. You don’t like a Quisling, you vote for a Hawk. Don’t like a dumbshit, you vote for a wonk. A kind of dialectic thing.

The opposite of a wildly erratic, bullshitfest guy is a consistent, no-nonsense guy.

Sanders 2020.

To some degree, I think your theory holds, Zooey. But, I also think some voter traits override the ping pong effects — at least a bit. I think “strong” remains a big attraction for a large portion of the electorate, and I don’t think that large portion ever likes “wonks.”

So I don’t think we’ll ever go from “too strong” to “too weak,” or “too simplistic” to “too professorial.” I really think voters are just looking for a different style of strong or simplistic, a new spin on traits they seem to like with at least some consistency.

And it’s never been about policy, unfortunately, and the different fates of Sanders and Warren crystalize that, IMO. Most pundits are saying Warren’s rise ended the second she went all in on Medicare for All, and tried to spell out the details. But if that were the case — that the policy itself sent her off rails — then why didn’t this happen to Sanders, who’s even more supportive of the policy?

In America, it’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. And to win in the general, and to maintain power — as Trump has shown — it’s even more than that:

If your party and your allies back you 100%, never back down, ignore the criticisms, forge ahead regardless, then it really doesn’t matter what your agenda is. America loves (the appearance of) personal strength and strong, unbreakable support in solid, sustained numbers. That will overcome most head-winds.

Interesting read, Z.

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

On Tucker Carlson:

We shouldn’t forget that he’s been raging at “the left” for decades, and that he’s a pathological liar when it comes to the subject. He openly despises and demonizes “socialism” and “progressives” at every turn, and when he does have a leftist on air, he trashes them and gives them his patented “WTF” look every other second.

He is not our friend.

The only reason he’s saying anything positive about Sanders right now is that he sees the chance to sow division on the left in general, and among Dems in particular. No one should fall for this nonsense — including K Ball, who should know better. .

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True, he is a Vile Repugnant. Absolutely. Its always a ‘given’ for me, BT. Dont think because i post his vids, i dont see all that. Its…a…given.

But. I think he Genuinely does believe some of the things he says. Sometimes he just says what he really, actually thinks. And i think he genuinely thinks the DNC-establishment (CNN, MSNBC, NYTimes, etc) is smearing/ignoring Bernie.
A rightwinger ‘can’ see all that. They are still rightwingers but they can sometimes see what the DNC is doing, clearly. Heck, I think a LOT of Foxers see it, clearly.

As for K.Ball falling for something — what did she fall for? She went on Fox because she wanted to influence the VIEWERS. Millions of Viewers. At least thats what she said on her show. Makes sense to me. And the fact she was received more warmly on Fox than on CNN or MSNBC is not surprising. And that was her experience.

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WV, I know you know that. I try to preface stuff I say with “public figures” or “pundits” or something to that effect. I’m not talking about the folks here, like you, who have been into this stuff for longer than I have, etc.

I’ll post more about this tomorrow. Have been dealing with eye surgery (recovery), on both eyes, cheap temp glasses, new eye-floaters and all kinds of other fun stuff. It’s time for me to go offline.

;>)

Hope all is well.

Zooey wrote:

I think that FOX gives the Left a bit more room to explain itself than MSNBC and CNN do….

The right, though, can’t really see the difference. Hillary Clinton is a godless communist, and….

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Here’s a question, I’d like to ask Tucker Carlson. He sees that the Dem-Establishment (CNN, Networks, NYTimes, MSNBC, DNC) are smearing/ignoring Bernie and promoting/cheerleading ‘the great centrist hope’ (whoever it might be).

So Tucker (and a lot of other righties) SEE that. The comment on it a lot.

But in their rightwing minds what do they think the REASON for that is?
I mean if they think everyone on the left is a commie, then why would the establishment be against Bernie? He’s just another commie, in a sea of commies.

The righties never really flesh out WHY they think the MSM-Dems hate Bernie.

Of course if they were to say/see that the Dem-MSM hates Bernie because he is far-left and Biden-Klobochex are really pro-corporate-capitalists….well, that would go against their general-election-mantras that “Hillary/Biden are wacko far left commies…”

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WV,

My earlier reply to you was delayed in the spam queue. Hope you’ve noticed it by now, above.

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Anyway . . . we’ve been through this before, and sorry to rehash it, but you and I don’t see the MSM in the same way. I think on most stuff, we’re on the same page. On the same page with pretty much all the important stuff. But I don’t view the MSM as the Dem-establishment at all, if I’m reading you correctly and you do see it that way (?)

Again, tough to express this in a short form. But, if the two parties were given points for bad behavior, and for stuff that real journalists should be exposing, they’d both get a ton. But the GOP would get ten times more points. So when the MSM try their damndest to be “fair and balanced,” they’re actually going a lot easier on the GOP than the Dems. They’re skewing reality. It’s not, in fact, the Dem-establishment. It’s tougher on them than on the GOP (in relative terms), given what each party actually does. That “liberal bias” the right always screams about is nonsense, in my view. They have a conservative bias, and always have. It’s just that conservatives give them a hell of a lot more ammunition via wrong-doing, so they have to cover that stuff more. The Dems give them fewer examples, but they struggle to try to “balance” it all, plus conflict and horse races sell. Lopsided, but truthful description of reality doesn’t.

Not to mention, as I’ve brought up before, networks like CNN and MSNBC are crawling with conservatives, Republicans, Republican operatives, and ex-Republicans, and when they book folks for the Sunday shows, they tend to book more Republicans than Dems.

Also, the media are owned by, as you know, conservative corporations. They prefer the Republicans to the Dems, cuz they get better deals from them. They get really good deals from the Dems, too. But they get great deals from the Republicans.

IMO, the MSM is not the Dem-establishment, or the DNC-establishment. However, Fox and most baldly partisan right-wing media are openly, without apology, arms of the GOP.

That’s the way I see it, anyway.

I still detest both parties. But I see the GOP as a far bigger existential threat, especially to the planet.

wv wrote:

Well, what is your opinion of, say, three specific organizations — lets say, MSNBC, The NYT, and NPR/PBS — Dont you think they are DEM-oriented? Corporate-Dem-oriented. I mean the NYT just flat out endorses Dems for President every four years.

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If we set aside — and we should — Op Ed writers, cuz they cheerlead for both parties . . . no. I don’t think the NYT, MSNBC or NPR/PBS are particularly pro-Dem. In fact, as mentioned, I think they’re tougher on the Dems than the GOP, relative to their respective misdeeds. And that’s key for me. I see both parties in a highly negative light. But the GOP is so clearly worse, I don’t see how any objective news organization wouldn’t spend more time exposing GOP wrongdoing, cuz there’s far more of it, and its effects are far more destructive.

As for endorsing Dem presidents, the above applies. I don’t see any of those organizations cheerleading for the Dems — unlike Fox and its peers with regard to Republicans. I see them as choosing the lesser of two evils when they go for the Dems in that way. In our tragically binary political landscape, it’s the rational thing to do. The evidence supports it. Logic supports it. In a two-party world, rational, intelligent human-beings should choose the Dems. That, to me, is no indication that they’re a part of the DNC. It’s just the logical choice between two rotten options, if one doesn’t except the concept of voting third party.

Case in point: the MSM spent the most time on Clinton’s email story, in the 2016 election. No other story came close. If we weigh and balance the impact of her misdeeds versus Trump’s, should that have been the biggest story? No way. The MSM actually favored Trump because it didn’t cover his misdeeds relative to their existence or impact. It tried to balance the coverage between the two parties instead.

Another case in point: The New York Times withheld key information regarding Bush’s lies about FICA until after the election of 2004, because they said it would have impacted the vote. Withholding the info did just that and helped defeat Kerry.

And remember the MSM coverage in the run-up to the (2003) Iraq invasion? It was decidedly in Dubya’s favor. WaPo, NYT, MSNBC beat the war drums, which helped the GOP and hurt the Dems.