Sanders caught in a reflected glare

[ckf]

https://vtdigger.org/2016/05/22/bernie-briefing-sanders-caught-in-a-reflected-glare/

Bernie Briefing: Sanders caught in a reflected glare

May. 22, 2016

 

The Daily Beast‎ created this photo illustration for its commentary “Bernie and Jane Sanders: The Democratic Party’s Thelma and Louise.”

(Editor’s note: “Bernie Briefing” is a weekly campaign-season look at how Vermont U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is playing in the national media.)

Homer Simpson just endorsed Bernie Sanders: “I love his chicken,” the cartoon character declared on his Fox television show. “But out of respect we should refer to him as the Colonel.”

So why isn’t anyone in his campaign laughing?

The senator from Vermont won Tuesday’s Oregon primary and nearly tied with Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton in Kentucky. But Clinton is only 90 delegates shy from scoring the 2,383 needed for the party’s nomination, The Associated Press reported, compared with Sanders’ deficit of 850.

The next votes aren’t scheduled until June 4 in the Virgin Islands, June 5 in Puerto Rico and June 7 in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota. Sanders hopes to secure every delegate he can — if not to win outright, then to help shape the platform of the Democratic National Convention taking place July 25-28 in Philadelphia.

But how the candidate intends to do so is unclear. On Tuesday, Politico offered the headline “Sanders Camp: Bernie Will Work 24/7 to Ensure Trump Not President.”

“He certainly has said that he will do everything — he will work seven days a week, night and day, to make sure Donald Trump is not president, and I’m confident that he will do that,” the story quotes Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver as telling CNN.

Yet by Thursday, The New York Times was reporting “Sanders Willing to Harm Clinton in Homestretch.”

“The only thing that matters is what happens between now and June 14,” said Sanders’ senior adviser Tad Devine, referring to the final primary, in the District of Columbia. “We have to put the blinders on and focus on the best case to make in the upcoming states.”

Other national news outlets are responding either by adding subtleties — Bloomberg is reporting “Sanders, Defiant on the Stump, Quietly Reassures Democrats on Unity” — or scorn — The Week is commenting “Bernie Sanders’ Campaign Isn’t About Ideas Anymore — It’s About Him.”

Meanwhile, the candidate’s wife is facing equally harsh headlines after Burlington College announced it will close this month. The college blamed financial troubles sparked by former leader Jane O’Meara Sanders’ 2010 purchase of its 32-acre campus.

Conservative outlets are showing their teeth, as seen by the headline in the Washington Times: “Extravagant Spending by Bernie Sanders’ Wife Sinks Her Former School.” And the Federalist: “‎Bernie Sanders’s Wife Ran This College into the Ground.” And the Daily Caller: “Bernie Sanders’s Wife Just Destroyed an Entire College.”

Mainstream media headlines are just as sharp, as seen by Politico’s “Real Estate Deal Brokered by Bernie Sanders’ Wife Sinks Vermont College” or The Washington Post’s “Failure of Burlington College Is a Big Problem for Bernie and Jane Sanders.”

“The failure of Burlington College gives credence to two arguments routinely made by the Clinton campaign and its allies,” the Post story begins. “First, Bernie and Jane were insufficiently vetted by the mainstream media. Second, Sanders is making fantastical promises that are unfeasible.”

Politico forecasts the possibility of a brighter future: “Bit Player Sanders Poised to Become Senate Force,” it writes in one headline before adding in a subtitle, “But Democrats Warn He Could Blow His Newfound Clout If He Doesn’t Move to Unite the Party Soon.”

The Daily Beast‎ and Newsweek concur with that last point in their respective commentaries “Bernie and Jane Sanders: The Democratic Party’s Thelma and Louise” and “Get Control, Senator Sanders, Or Get Out.”

“If you can’t even manage the vicious thugs who act in your name,” Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald opines, “you can’t be trusted to run a convenience store, much less the country.”

In response, the candidate, appearing Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” CBS’ “Face the Nation” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” countered that media coverage — specifically what he called unsubstantiated claims that his Nevada supporters have thrown chairs — can exaggerate events.

“What happened is people were rude — that’s not good — they were booing — that’s not good — they behaved in some ways that were a little bit boorish — not good — but let’s not talk about that as violence,” he told ABC. “Do people in Philadelphia, going to Philadelphia or any place else in America, have the right to demonstrate, have the right to express their concerns? I thought that that was what the First Amendment of the Constitution was about.”

And that, Sanders said, is why he’s continuing his campaign.

“If you look at the favorability ratings of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, both of them have very, very high unfavorable,” he told ABC. “We need a campaign, an election, coming up which does not have two candidates who are really very, very strongly disliked. I don’t want to see the American people voting for the lesser of two evils. I want the American people to be voting for a vision of economic justice, of social justice, of environmental justice, of racial justice. That is the campaign we are running.”

[Mainecat]

Keep running Bernie

[Capt.Storm]

I would like to concur.

[Cold War]

Hillary Clinton thanking him for  rousing opposition is the funniest shit I have heard in a long time.

 

What a lying dirt bag she is.

Gmfb