[rad-green] The Escalating Class War Against Bernie Sanders

*https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/17/escalating-class-war-against-bernie-sanders
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/17/escalating-class-war-against-bernie-sanders>Common
Dreams          February 17, 2020*





*The Escalating Class War Against Bernie SandersIn American politics, hell
hath no fury like corporate power scorned.by Norman Solomon*

[image: With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass
media are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial
vicinity of average Americans. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)]

*With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass media
are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial vicinity of
average Americans. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)*

More than ever, Bernie Sanders is public enemy number one for power elites
that thrive on economic injustice. The Bernie 2020 campaign is a direct
threat to the undemocratic leverage that extremely wealthy individuals and
huge corporations constantly exert on the political process. No wonder
we’re now seeing so much anti-Bernie rage from leading corporate Democrats
-- eagerly amplified by corporate media.

In American politics, hell hath no fury like corporate power scorned.

Flagrant media biases against Sanders are routine in a wide range of
mainstream outlets. (The media watch group FAIR has long documented the
problem, illuminated by one piece
<https://fair.org/home/for-media-in-new-hampshire-losing-is-winning-and-winning-is-losing/>
 after another
<https://fair.org/home/abc-asking-for-attacks-was-a-lazy-way-to-run-a-debate/>
after
another
<https://fair.org/home/manufacturing-success-cnns-premature-parade-for-buttigieg-in-iowa/>
 after another
<https://fair.org/home/how-corporate-media-make-pete-look-like-hes-winning/>
just
this month.) In sharp contrast, positivity toward Sanders in mass media
spheres is scarce.

Big media are continually amplifying the voices of well-paid reporters and
pundits whose jobs involve acceptance of corporate power, including the
prerogatives of corporate owners and sponsors.

The pattern is enmeshed with the corporatism that the Sanders campaign
seeks to replace with genuine democracy—disempowering great wealth and
corporate heft while empowering everyday people to participate in a truly
democratic process.

Big media are continually amplifying the voices of well-paid reporters and
pundits whose jobs involve acceptance of corporate power, including the
prerogatives of corporate owners and sponsors. And, in news coverage of
politics, there’s an inexhaustible supply of former
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/13/when-cnn-introduces-bernie-bashers-only-former-cnn-lying-you>
Democratic
officeholders and appointees who’ve been lucratively feeding from corporate
troughs as lobbyists, consultants and PR operatives. Their corporate ties
usually go unmentioned.

An important media headquarters for hostility toward the Sanders campaign
is MSNBC, owned by Comcast—a notoriously anti-labor and anti-consumer
corporation. “People need to remember,” I pointed out
<https://www.democracynow.org/2020/2/11/new_hampshire_primary_2020> on
Democracy Now! last week, “that if you, for instance, don’t trust Comcast,
why would you trust a network that is owned by Comcast? These are class
interests being worked out where the top strata of ownership and investors
hires the CEO, hires the managing editors, hires the reporters. And so,
what we’re seeing, and not to be rhetorical about it, but we really are
seeing a class war underway.”

Routinely, the talking heads and go-to sources for mainline news outlets
are far removed from the economic pressures besetting so many Americans.
And so, media professionals with the most clout and largest megaphones are
quite distant from the Sanders base.

Voting patterns in the New Hampshire primary reflected whose economic
interests the Sanders campaign is promising to serve. With 10 active
candidates on the Democratic ballot, Sanders “won 4 in 10 of voters with
household incomes under $50,000 and nearly 3 in 10 with incomes between
$50,00 and $99,000,” the Washington Post reported
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bernie-sanders-is-powered-by-a-loyal-base-but-results-in-iowa-and-new-hampshire-show-the-movement-has-limits/2020/02/14/e10c570a-4296-11ea-b5fc-eefa848cde99_story.html>
.

Meanwhile, a trio of researchers associated with the Institute for New
Economic Thinking—Thomas Ferguson, Jie Chen and Paul Jorgensen—found
<https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/the-new-hampshire-democratic-primary-in-one-graph?link_id=1&can_id=1cd893d5ee51a3f0c9eada62299d1e3f&source=email-austerity-pete-interviews-available&email_referrer=email_723987&email_subject=austerity-pete-interviews-available>
that
“the higher the town’s income, the fewer votes cast” for Sanders. “Lower
income towns in New Hampshire voted heavily for Sanders; richer towns did
the opposite.”

The researchers saw in the data “further dramatic evidence of a point we
have made before: that the Democratic Party is now sharply divided by
social class.”

It’s a reality with media implications that are hidden in plain sight. The
often-vitriolic and sometimes preposterous
<https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/02/08/chris-matthews-slammed-spreading-misinformation-about-sanders-democratic-socialist>
attacks
on Sanders via powerful national media outlets are almost always coming
from affluent or outright wealthy people. Meanwhile, low-income Americans
have virtually zero access to the TV studios (other than providing
after-hours janitorial services).

With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass media
are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial vicinity of
average Americans. Virtually none of the most widely read, seen and heard
journalists are on the low end of the nation’s extreme income inequality.
Viewed in that light—and keeping in mind that corporate ownership and
advertising dominate mainstream media—it shouldn’t be surprising that few
prominent journalists have much good to say about a presidential campaign
fiercely aligned with the working class.

“If there is going to be class warfare in this country,” Bernie Sanders told
<https://www.facebook.com/berniesanders/videos/442665749661408/?v=442665749661408>
the
Iowa AFL-CIO convention last summer, “it’s time that the working class of
this country won that war and not just the corporate elite.”

To the corporate elite, goals like that are unacceptable.

Norman Solomon <https://www.commondreams.org/author/norman-solomon> is
co-founder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org
<http://rootsaction.org/>. His books include *"War Made Easy: How
Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/047179001X?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20>"*
 and *"Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0977825345?ie=UTF8&tag=commondreams-20>."*
 He is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Public
Accuracy.

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