[rad-green] Factchecking NPR’s Attempted Takedo wn of Bernie Sanders

*https://fair.org/home/factchecking-nprs-attempted-takedown-of-bernie-sanders/
<https://fair.org/home/factchecking-nprs-attempted-takedown-of-bernie-sanders/>*

*FAIR (FAIRNESS & ACCURACY IN REPORTING)          FEBRUARY 18, 2020*
Factchecking NPR’s Attempted Takedown of Bernie Sanders
*BY ROBIN ANDERSEN*
[image: NPR's Mara Liasson]
<https://fair.org/home/factchecking-nprs-attempted-takedown-of-bernie-sanders/>

   -

*by Robin Andersen*

[image: Election Focus 2020] <https://fair.org/topic/election-2020/>The
Iowa caucuses officially began the Democratic primary, and even in this
ongoing, extended battle for the White House, Iowa remains an important
marker for candidates and the media. A close look at a piece by two of *NPR*’s
leading political reporters, which aired just before the caucuses, provides
a view of how journalists speak with authority on issues they seem to know
very little about. The conversation between Mary Louise Kelly and her
partner Mara Liasson, headlined “Where Iowa Falls in the Big Picture of the
2020 Election” (*All Things Considered*, 2/3/20
<https://www.npr.org/2020/02/03/802392319/where-iowa-falls-in-the-big-picture-of-the-2020-election>),
began with Kelly introducing the importance of Iowa for Democrats, but, she
observed, it’s been on the “backburner,” after days of constant impeachment
coverage.

Liasson agreed, then spent most of her introductory remarks on Trump,
presenting him as legitimate as any past president:

Tomorrow night President Trump appears in the well of the House before he
speaks to both houses of Congress for the big curtain-raiser for him, the
State of the Union address. It’s the biggest audience he’ll have all year.
It’s—every president gets to kind of kick off his re-election campaign with
the State of the Union address, and we can expect to hear a campaign
message from him tomorrow.

No mention was made that Trump had flouted the Constitution
<https://fair.org/home/witness-to-a-farce/> by refusing to cooperate with
an impeachment hearing, or that Republican senators would fail to uphold
the Constitution by voting to dismiss impeachment charges after a sham
trial with no witnesses. Liasson’s critical remarks were reserved for the
Democratic Party, both voters and candidates.
[image: NPR: Where Iowa Falls in the Big Picture of the 2020 Election]

*Mary Louise Kelly brought on Mara Liasson (NPR, 2/3/20
<https://www.npr.org/2020/02/03/802392319/where-iowa-falls-in-the-big-picture-of-the-2020-election>)
to talk about what to expect on the “long road ahead between now and
November.”*

*“I see a very unsettled race,” *Liasson told Kelly, and continued,
“Democrats are paralyzed by indecision.” One wonders which race she is
looking at, as both state and national polls show that Democratic voters
are anything but “paralyzed,” and for months have been anticipating the
primary with “an incredible degree of excitement” (*Vox*, 2/3/20
<https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/3/21115983/2020-iowa-caucuses-winner-polls>).
One national Quinnipiac University poll (1/28/20
<https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=3654>) found a
whopping 85% of Democratic voters were either “extremely” or “very”
motivated to vote in the primary contests, characterizing their enthusiasm
as “sky high.”

Liasson claimed that the main issue for the Democratic Party is
“electability”—a fraught term often used to signal ideological orthodoxy
rather than empirical chances of winning elections (*FAIR.org*, 10/25/19
<https://fair.org/home/fretting-about-progressives-electability-establishment-dems-are-really-worried-about-their-power-in-the-party/>).
She asserted that Democrats are “confused,” and “for good reason,” because
Trump remains an “existential threat,” and not only are none of the
candidates “a sure thing,” none even “seem likely to defeat” Trump.

Such handwringing is, again, not founded in facts or data. An *NBC News*/*Wall
Street Journal* poll
<https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/nbc-wsj-poll-country-remains-divided-over-trump-s-impeachment-n1128326?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_mtp>
published
the day before this broadcast—one day ahead of the Iowa caucuses—found that
Trump was trailing all the leading 2020 Democratic candidates, with the top
four candidates ahead of Trump in theoretical head-to-head matchups.
Looking more broadly at polling, the two candidates who were then leading
the Democratic field, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, had beaten Trump in 69
of 73
<https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html#polls>
 and 63 of 68
<https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-6250.html#polls>
matchups,
respectively.

The supposed lack of “electability” was solidified as a media obsession in
mid-April of last year, when Obama’s former campaign manager, Jim Messina,
now a political strategist for corporate Democrats (*Common Dreams*, 2/13/20
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/13/when-cnn-introduces-bernie-bashers-only-former-cnn-lying-you>),
announced on the Powerhouse Politics podcast <http://tun.in/ti3Sz6>  (*ABC*
, 4/17/19
<https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bernie-sanders-beat-donald-trump-2020-obama-campaign/story?id=62455986>)
that “Sanders couldn’t beat Trump.” Messina went on to predict that the
Democratic field would be honed down to Sen. Kamala Harris and former US
Rep. Beto O’Rourke, along with Joe Biden
<https://abcnews.go.com/alerts/joe-biden>, who had not yet entered the race.

Both Harris and O’Rourke dropped out of the race before the first vote was
cast, while Biden’s polling numbers were in free fall after poor showings
in both Iowa and New Hampshire. But despite Messina’s foggy crystal ball,
his *unelectability* trope was adopted by pundits as a platitude. *Vox* (
4/24/19
<https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/4/24/18510756/bernie-sanders-2020-democrats-neoliberals-chill>)
was one of the few to point out a few days later that Sanders actually had
a very good electability record, having “consistently run ahead of
Democratic Party presidential campaigns in Vermont” when he ran for
reelection as a US representative. But “unelectable” is now an overworked
spin pushed by centrist Democrats and their corporate media allies.

*Liasson went on to worry* about the “huge vulnerabilities” all the
Democratic candidates have “for the president to exploit.” No mention is
made of Trump’s mammoth negatives that present Democrats with enough
ammunition to send him running, if they were so inclined. Indeed, corporate
media have been incapable of imagining powerfully pointed, rhetorically
effective, authentically truthful critical campaigns against Trump.
[image: Vox: Bernie Sanders leads Donald Trump in polls, even when you
remind people he’s a socialist]

*Bernie Sanders continues to beat Donald Trump in polls even when you
remind people that he’s “a socialist who supports a government takeover of
healthcare and open borders” (Vox, 1/31/20
<https://www.vox.com/2020/1/31/21113780/bernie-sanders-socialism-electability-primaries>).*

Instead, one of the most feared “vulnerabilities” frequently associated
with post-Iowa front-runner Bernie Sanders is that he is a socialist. So
common is this assertion that Data for Progress decided to explore it,
using the  Lucid <https://luc.id/> survey sampling platform to test three
different versions of a Sanders vs Trump polling question (*Vox*, 1/31/20
<https://www.vox.com/2020/1/31/21113780/bernie-sanders-socialism-electability-primaries>).
The first version mentioned no affiliation, the second identified the
candidate by party, and the third had Trump labeling Sanders a socialist,
in this survey question:

If the 2020 US presidential election was held today, who would you vote for
if the candidates were Democrat Bernie Sanders, who wants to tax the
billionaire class to help the working class and Republican Donald Trump,
who says Sanders is a socialist who supports a government takeover of
healthcare and open borders?

In all three scenarios, Sanders won. He actually did slightly better when
identified as a socialist as opposed to just a Democrat.

This third question also dispatched another of Liasson’s exaggerated
negatives, the issue of “open borders.” But the wording she chose to
represent the issue revealed her slant. Liasson asserted, “Majorities of
voters don’t want to get rid of ICE or decriminalize border crossings.”
What the National Immigration Forum
<https://immigrationforum.org/article/american-attitudes-on-immigration-steady-but-showing-more-partisan-divides/>
found
in November of last year was:

A majority of Americans told pollsters that they thought immigrants
strengthened America, said immigrants have positive attributes such as
“hard-working” and having strong family values, and that immigrants were
good for America. The percentage of Americans who said they want
immigration levels to be reduced is at the lowest level, in two different
polls, since that question was first asked going back to 1965 (in Gallup’s
poll).

These open-minded American attitudes toward immigration hold tight even in
the face of the overt anti-immigrant racism, widely articulated at the
highest levels of government, in an ongoing campaign the likes of which the
US public has not been subjected to in nearly a century. The result is
Trump’s premier accomplishment, a border wall, justified by anti-immigrant
rhetoric. Americans may not be willing to say they favor decriminalizing
the border, but they most certainly recoiled from the brutality of
criminalization so evident on the weaponized borderlands of the American
Southwest.

The *New Republic* (2/5/19
<https://newrepublic.com/article/153750/democrats-win-immigration>)
discussed the post-caravan opinion data, citing a *Washington Post*/*ABC* poll
(4/30/19
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-inequality-poll/majority-of-americans-favor-wealth-tax-on-very-rich-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1Z9141>)
that  suggested that voters opposed Trump’s draconian approach: The wall
“remains extremely unpopular, with two voters opposing it for every one who
supports it.” Most importantly, the survey demonstrated a desire to move
beyond “securing” and further militarizing the border. We can only imagine
what a powerful, careful, progressive Democratic campaign debate on open
borders might actually accomplish.

*As the two journalists* continued to chat, Liasson took closer aim at
Sanders, stating with bold authority that “you don’t even need to do the
research part of oppo-research because his policy positions are opposed by
big majorities of Americans.” Clearly, these journalists did little to no
research preparing for this important broadcast. So many polls have
documented what the public thinks about Sanders’ policy positions, and the
evidence is overwhelming: From a wealth tax to minimum wage, they are
extremely popular.

Last March, a *CNBC*/All-American poll
<https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/majority-of-americans-support-progressive-policies-such-as-paid-maternity-leave-free-college.html>
illustrates
this: support for paid maternity leave, 85%; government funding for
childcare, 75%; boosting the minimum wage, 60%; free college tuition, 57%.
Medicare for all came in at 54%. In October 2019, *The Hill*
<https://thehill.com/hilltv/what-americas-thinking/412545-70-percent-of-americans-support-medicare-for-all-health-care>
reported
on an American Barometer survey that found “70% of the public supported
providing ‘Medicare for All,’ also known as single-payer healthcare.”

Notably, the only issue included in that poll that garnered only a 28%
approval rating was Andrew Yang’s idea of a universal basic income, even
with the slogan “freedom dividend,” something Sanders has not focused on.

Another key policy proposal with broad public support is a wealth tax that
both Sanders and Elizabeth Warren support. According to a *Reuters*/Ipsos
poll (1/10/20
<https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-inequality-poll/majority-of-americans-favor-wealth-tax-on-very-rich-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN1Z9141>),
nearly two-thirds of respondents agree that the very rich should pay more.
Among 4,441 respondents, 64% strongly or somewhat agreed that “the very
rich should contribute an extra share of their total wealth each year to
support public programs.” Support among Democrats was even stronger, at
77%, but a majority of Republicans, 53%, also agree with the idea.

Liasson continued with a carefully selected list of “unpopular” positions
that Sanders has taken: “He wants to ban fracking and somehow win
Pennsylvania.” But a poll released days earlier (*Pittsburgh City Paper*,
1/30/20
<https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/pa-poll-shows-support-for-a-fracking-ban-but-also-some-support-for-natural-gas-drilling-in-state/Content?oid=16660198>)
found that 48% of Pennsylvania voters support a ban on fracking, and just
39% opposed a ban; 49% felt the environmental risks outweighed the economic
benefits, with 38% taking the reverse position.

“Even a majority of Democrats don’t want to end private health insurance,”
she exclaimed. Actually, 77% of Democrats support “a national health plan,
sometimes called Medicare for All, in which all Americans would get their
insurance from a single government plan”—as do 61% of independents (KFF,
1/30/20
<https://www.kff.org/health-reform/poll-finding/kff-health-tracking-poll-january-2020/>
).

What can we take away from this sad story brought to listeners by two
formidable journalists, one who recently received high praise
<https://www.poynter.org/ethics-trust/2020/heres-why-you-should-believe-nprs-mary-louise-kelly-over-secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo/>
for
her hardball questioning (*NPR*, 1/24/20
<https://www.npr.org/about-npr/799381193/mary-louise-kelly-interviews-secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo>)
of Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo? Their ignorance is willful, and
finds its roots in a profoundly ideological position, an ideology adopted
by journalists who favor and are rewarded by corporate arguments promoted
by corporate Democrats.
------------------------------

*ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to NPR‘s public editor here
<https://help.npr.org/customer/portal/emails/new?i=8> (or
via Twitter: @NPRpubliceditor <https://twitter.com/nprpubliceditor>).
Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel
free to leave a copy of your message in the comments thread of this post.*

*Featured image: Mara Liasson*

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