Here's the sequence of events with Tulsi Gabbard's presidential campaign which is important if you believe in running a fair democracy, my fundamental point here.
Gabbard resigned as a rising star DNC VP in 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders over Mrs Clinton who had bought the party off with a cash infusion (largely raised by Weinstein) on the agreement she had control of party strategy and messaging, and could include multiple super delegates at the convention.
Congreswoman Gabbard announced her grass roots funded presidential campaign and has run it from a mini van with volunteers, a very small paid staff and ~$1m budget.
Gabbard got great traction - most searched for via Google - in the first two TV show Q & sixty second answer commercial TV 'debates' and destroyed the Harris campaign with her debating skills in November.
Throughout the campaign, and massively increased in 2020, the DNC media has either subsequently ignored her or run negative messaging to undermine her credibility. The DNC knows reform would come if Gabbard got control.
The DNC changed their debate rules to allow 55x billionaire Bloomberg to 'run' and debate as a presidential candidate, spending incredible sums to obliterate Sanders and others before pulling out again.
The corporate puppet candidates Buttigieg, Klobochar (and subsequently Warren afterwards) pulled out just before Super Tuesday - and after tens of thousands had cast their postal ballots - to endorse Biden, the DNC's preferred candidate.
The debate rules were changed again by the DNC after Gabbard won two delegates to exclude her. The only media Gabbard gets coverage on is Fox News and internet shows and podcasts.
There is a massive disinformation campaign she is constantly fighting (Russian asset, Assad and Modi supporter etc) that undermines her fundamental anti war pro diplomacy platform.
My point: if the DNC give hundreds of millions in free positive media coverage to their preferred candidates and blacklist/ blackout positive coverage of other candidates is it any surprise Gabbard has done so badly, or other future and past candidates? Many many people don't even know she is in the presidential race on ballots that still list long suspended campaigns from Harris and others.
The DNC rely on name recognition and positive media messaging to amplify their preferred candidates. This is not democracy or a level playing field.
The Gabbard platform positions:
www.tulsigabbard.org
They advertised her superdelegate lead before the voting even began. They leaked debate questions to her in advance of the event. They smeared Bernie with unfair accusations and labels. They worked directly with big media outlets to either deny or put out negative coverage of Bernie. The Washington Post put out 16 negative stories on Bernie in one day. There was unregistering of progressives in New York, and a botched delegate counting process in Nevada. They reduced the number of debates before the first primary by at least a third. DNC leads got caught actively cheating, leading to their resignations - Debbie Wasserman Shultz and Donna Brazile. They actually used the excuse in court that the Democratic party is private and has no legal obligation to run fair elections, and could select in a backroom smoking cigars if they wished. They actually said on national television that superdelegates served the purpose of preventing grassroots candidates from winning. I could go on and on. All of these things are easily verified. I can give you more if you'd like, with references.
She won due to superdelegates and DNC corruption as well as media capture. The fact that Bernie did as well as he did in the face of this is a testament to how bad of a candidate she was.
An anti-war candidate like Tulsi will never be allowed to be the final presidential candidate by the DNC. Google and the party work in lock step to make her go away. And they will. You'll get a candidate like Biden or the other awful woman who will do what they're told.
The DNC did suppress Sanders and showed massive bias towards Clinton, the email leaks showed it. Clinton's campaign got debate questions early. They got preferential treatment in the media. Then when Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair at the time, was kicked out because the collusion became public knowledge, the Clinton campaign _immediately_ hired her. If there wasn't massive collusion, then there was at very least an image problem, which Clinton did nothing to help by hiring the very person forced to resign.
Also, the message sent by the two were not identical at all. Sure, if you tallied them all up and compared them by existence they would be very similar, but the difference was in the focus. Sanders' campaign focused on socioeconomic inequality which would have resonated more in rural America, while Clinton's campaign focused more on social issues, which matters more in the urban centers where the economy is less of an issue.
I’m talking about the coverage on news sources aimed at Democrats like CNN/MSNBC that fawned over her and papered over her major flaws as a politician. My personal favorite, as a south Asian, is how the media portrayed her nomination as a major victory for us, despite little enthusiasm for Harris among the group. (Everyone I know who supported her is white.)
This sort of coverage is a liability for Democrats because it insulates them from information. A glaring example of this is Elizabeth Warren. It should have been news from the beginning that she had failed to establish personal networks with Black or Latino voters during her tenure as Senator. Her Super Tuesday supporters were 80% white, for an electorate that was only 50% white. When Democrats win elections by turning out Latinos in the southwest and Black people in the south, Warren won just 5-6% of those voters on Super Tuesday, behind Michael Bloomberg.
Elizabeth Warren was a dead-on-arrival candidate because minorities didn’t like her and they’re 40% of the Democratic Party. That should have been a huge story. Instead, the media fawned over her for months because they personally loved Warren. Super Tuesday this blindsided everyone, even though it should have been predictable given what we knew about Warren from the beginning.
If Biden doesn’t run in 2024, expect to see similar fawning coverage of Harris, focused on her “historic” identity and papering over her flaws as a politician. That creates a very real risk that Democrats nominate someone who their own base doesn’t like very much.
Wow man, a puff piece article written directly before an election of how good and noble one candidate is. Not exactly hard hitting proof there.
Not even counting that the DNC of 2000 is the same in 2018. Or that Hillary was as good (or bad) a candidate as Gore.
Edit: I think a more fair reference would be looking at Clinton's past to see if there was anything ever questionable or sketchy. Like for instance... Did Clinton ask CNN's Donna Brazil to not send any more debate questions that would be asked later that week? No, she didn't.
> It's always convenient for primary losers to blame their loss on party favor like Hillary's case, even though it simply amounts to increased marketing and exposure which, as was evident in the 2016 elections
For the record, it went far beyond "marketing". In this case it was the DNC prepping Hillary's campaign by leaking questions in advance of debates, denying the Sanders campaign access to critical voter data (which they only restored after he filed a lawsuit against them), strategizing with her campaign on ways to turn democratic voters against him (including the suggestion that they attack on the basis of his religion), changed party rules to increase the number of Hillary's delegates, and established a joint fundraising committee to secretly launder money into her campaign.
That's not to say "marketing" wasn't a part of it too. The DNC pressured the media (including MSNBC) to be favorable to Hillary's campaign and leaked information to reporters they hoped with hurt Sander's campaign. The DNC also leaked info they had on Sanders to Clinton's campaign staff and they paid people to attack his supporters online.
They didn't even deny they rigged the whole thing. In a lawsuit filed against the DNC over their actions the lawyers for the DNC stated that they had no legal obligation to follow their own charter and had every right to "go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.”
* polls are over-sampled with pro-Clinton Democrats so badly that they aren't relevant
* Clinton's popularity is so low that she can't fill the venues she campaigns at yet Trump regularly fills them to max capacity (and then some)
* she makes minimal to no public appearances, instead relying on weak public figures (has-been film celebrities, entertainers) to campaign on her behalf
* both current and past DNC heads have been disgraced as shills for Hillary, absolutely destroying her popularity among Sanders' Democrats and independents
* scandals from the email leaks never stop going away, in fact they're getting worse
* evidence of unconscionable pay-for-play continues to mount so much that they cannot be swept under the rug
* the FBI investigation into her criminally negligent national security practices has been re-opened, further destroying her popularity among independents and giving an unrecoverable haircut to her loyalists
* Trump has to make absolutely zero effort to retain Republican voters, nullifying all risk that they will cross the floor to the Clinton camp
Because this is fantasy world is actually the reality you're willfully ignoring.
What? From the summary of your link: "Why was Clinton’s coverage substantially more negative than Sanders’, and why did Sanders get so much less coverage than she did?"
Did I ever claim the media wasn't biased? Of course the media had an effect on the election, and that effect wasn't neutral. The fact that the media has systemic biases does not imply that major media organizations conspired in favor of a candidate, Hillary Clinton, who was actually considered by most to have been negatively impacted in the general election, and according to the link you posted, was covered more negatively than Bernie Sanders.
This is a giant mess conflating DNC problems with fundamental realities of news media with an unproven conspiracy theory. I have always been responding to this: "the corporate media [...] colluded to stop a once in a lifetime opportunity in Bernie Sanders to help their friend and collaborator Hillary Clinton, and so we ended up with Donald Trump." I promise you, that is not the position of the Shorenstein Center or any other academic research organization focused on journalism.
Hillary rigged the DNC and tried to force herself on the American people, essentially leaving them with very little choice. I blame her for Trump more than anyone else.
There was a lawsuit against the DNC for their actions, unfortunately they were able to get the lawsuit dismissed by successfully arguing that they were within their rights to internally choose their own candidate regardless of their own election systems.
The head of the DNC (and Hillary's former campaign manager) giving debate questions to the Clinton campaign is truly outrageous, and it is only the media's extreme hate for Trump that is keeping this from getting more attention. But I agree with your point that it is not damaging her.
Perhaps the other way around. The media was Hillary’s tool. She asked for increased coverage on Donald Trump because she thought she could beat him easier than anyone else (if you don’t like Trump, thank Hillary) asking to the pied piper strategy from the Podesta emails. She was funding the DNC so she could deliver or withhold media access.
Small point and while I agree overall I’m not sure the media ‘selected’ Hillary. I think Obama Admin did, and after all, it was her turn.
The illegal coordination between the Hillary campaign and the DNC was kind of a big deal, and did trigger a wave of corruption getting flushed out of the DNC. I voted for Hillary in 2016, she was by far the better candidate, but I also seeded the fuck out of those Podesta emails because DNC corruption is absolutely inexcusable.
Decades of scandals and corruption might have had something to do with it, too. The Democrat nomination process was rigged from the beginning which was necessary for Clinton to win given her high negatives and the fact that there was a candidate who was largely scandal-free that had generated a huge groundswell of support (Sanders). I personally think Sanders is an idiot, but I respect that he is a principled person in a way few other politicians on any side are.
Then there's Clinton's penchant for insulting large sections of the country every time she opens her mouth (much like Obama). On top of that, the naked prostitution of much of the mainstream media for her campaign. The media has long stopped pretending to be impartial, but this time around they didn't pretend to be anything other than in the tank for Clinton.
Then there's the fact that Clinton simply isn't a likable person. She's old, ill, has a shrill voice and tons of baggage with substantially more coming out every week during the final months of the campaign season with Wikileaks.
These are all things that Obama lacked in 2008 and 2012. There are a lot of lessons for Democrats to learn from this election, but I'm not sure they will learn them. (Ditto the Republicans for that matter.)
Hillary Clinton had a $1.2 billion campaign budget, along with the vast majority of active social media users, the whole of Silicon Valley, and most of the press on her side. If Democrats didn’t show up to vote for her, the root cause wasn’t less than $1 million worth of ads for fake news stories.
The head of the DNC was already fired from CNN for directly colluding with Hillary Clinton (she gave HRC questions for the democratic debates ahead of time).
I have no idea how Bernie still supports her. She literally cheated against him to get the nomination.
This is not speculation. It's direct evidence of corruption in the DNC (and it revolves around guess who---Hillary Clinton).
Things Hillary and her campaign did during the primaries:
- Rigging the primary/caucus schedule so that all the states favoring Hillary would be the first to vote.
- Rigged the debate schedule by purposely scheduling them at odd times when no one would by watching so that Bernie couldn't get his message out.
- Cheated in the debates by receiving the questions in advance, and was given extra time by the moderators.
- Got the media to censor all virtually all coverage of Bernie. E.g. on the days when he had big primary wins, the media covered the speeches of every other candidate except him.
- Illegally disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters in New York and Arizona alone by removing them from the voter roles, or else removing their party affiliation. Disenfranchised millions more around the country by, e.g., forcing California voters to vote provisional and then just throwing out their ballots without counting them.
- Circumvented campaign finance laws by having donors send money to the state parties, but then requiring the state parties to send all of that money to her campaign. All while trashing Bernie for not raising money for the down ticket races.
Gabbard resigned as a rising star DNC VP in 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders over Mrs Clinton who had bought the party off with a cash infusion (largely raised by Weinstein) on the agreement she had control of party strategy and messaging, and could include multiple super delegates at the convention. Congreswoman Gabbard announced her grass roots funded presidential campaign and has run it from a mini van with volunteers, a very small paid staff and ~$1m budget.
Gabbard got great traction - most searched for via Google - in the first two TV show Q & sixty second answer commercial TV 'debates' and destroyed the Harris campaign with her debating skills in November.
Throughout the campaign, and massively increased in 2020, the DNC media has either subsequently ignored her or run negative messaging to undermine her credibility. The DNC knows reform would come if Gabbard got control.
The DNC changed their debate rules to allow 55x billionaire Bloomberg to 'run' and debate as a presidential candidate, spending incredible sums to obliterate Sanders and others before pulling out again.
The corporate puppet candidates Buttigieg, Klobochar (and subsequently Warren afterwards) pulled out just before Super Tuesday - and after tens of thousands had cast their postal ballots - to endorse Biden, the DNC's preferred candidate. The debate rules were changed again by the DNC after Gabbard won two delegates to exclude her. The only media Gabbard gets coverage on is Fox News and internet shows and podcasts.
There is a massive disinformation campaign she is constantly fighting (Russian asset, Assad and Modi supporter etc) that undermines her fundamental anti war pro diplomacy platform.
My point: if the DNC give hundreds of millions in free positive media coverage to their preferred candidates and blacklist/ blackout positive coverage of other candidates is it any surprise Gabbard has done so badly, or other future and past candidates? Many many people don't even know she is in the presidential race on ballots that still list long suspended campaigns from Harris and others.
The DNC rely on name recognition and positive media messaging to amplify their preferred candidates. This is not democracy or a level playing field.
The Gabbard platform positions: www.tulsigabbard.org
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