{"id":20982,"date":"2016-03-29T12:52:27","date_gmt":"2016-03-29T19:52:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=20982"},"modified":"2016-03-29T12:52:27","modified_gmt":"2016-03-29T19:52:27","slug":"not-a-coronation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2016\/03\/29\/not-a-coronation\/","title":{"rendered":"Not a Coronation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just because I think Hillary is more likely than Bernie to win the Democratic nomination, I don;t think it\u2019s over, not do I think it should be a coronation.  It\u2019s not and it shouldn\u2019t.  .Because I have shared some articles that included media bias toward Hillary, I am also sharing the following article that includes bias toward Bernie.  I agree with large parts of it, and will discuss some of the items with which I disagree.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"0329Bernie\"It\u2019s not over. Far from it. The economic and political establishment, which includes the Democratic National Committee (DNC), its Wall Street and corporate backers, and the major media, most of it now owned by a half dozen big corporations, have worked feverishly to turn the Democratic primary process into a coronation for Hillary Clinton.<\/p>\n

Bottom line, they wanted to declare it over before actual voters could vote, but their carefully crafted strategy began to #FeelTheBern.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s ten ways that establishment has sought to orchestrate the results, and why the race has a long ways to go.<\/p>\n

1. Major Media Blackout<\/h6>\n

When Sanders began his campaign, as he often recounts, he had virtually no national name recognition (compared to Clinton\u2019s universal recognition) and trailed her by 60 to 70 points in national polls.<\/p>\n

The major media barely breathed his name, even when he began drawing crowds of 20,000 or more to summer rallies. Partly the result of the obsession with Trump, but also because the conglomerates controlling the media hardly wanted to promote such a fierce critic of Wall Street and the 1 percent.<\/p>\n

In December the nightly news networks had allotted Trump 23 times more coverage than Sanders, on ABC alone 81 minutes to Trump for the year, compared to only 20 seconds for Sanders.<\/p>\n

Even though while Sanders was holding extensive campaign events and press availabilities for months, Clinton was mostly avoiding public events and media avails, with the media largely ignoring its rebuff. (Even today you rarely see it pointed out that Clinton continues to dodge press conferences.)<\/p>\n

2. They\u2019re Debating When?<\/h6>\n

Ironically unlike the Republican National Committee, the DNC manipulated its debate schedule to have the fewest number of debates at the worst times, intended to minimize voter viewing, including setting them on holiday weekends and the Saturday night before Christmas.<\/p>\n

The goal was to restrict voter exposure and side-by-side comparison with other candidates who offered a significant alternative to Clinton, which served to keep name recognition of Sanders and his prescription for change artificially low. Additional debates were only added much later after widespread condemnation of the DNC\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <AlterNet<\/a>><\/p>\n

I shared the first two.  Click through for the other eight.  I especially agree with these two items.    However there are some items with which I disagree,<\/font><\/p>\n

#4 talks about vote rigging in Arizona to throw the election to Hillary, through the small number of polling places in Maricopa county.  There is no evidence that the Republican cut in polling places was better for Hillary than Bernie,  Since the demographic group most effected was Latinos, and since exit polling shows that the majority if those that did vote preferred Hillary, it may well have helped Bernie.<\/font><\/p>\n

#6 calls closed primaries undemocratic, because independent voters tend to favor Bernie.  Primaries are not general elections to chose what independent voters want.  They are elections to determine what the members of a specific political party want.  It is only fair that members of the Democratic Party choose which candidates will represent that party.  In SC in 2010, so many Republican Party members crossed the lines in that state\u2019s open primary that they nominated Alvin Greene, an extreme conservative, as the Democratic nominee for the US Senate.  Also, the Republican Party has a national rule that only registered Republican voters count in all Republican primaries.  They can use that rule as an excuse to declare primary elections in Open Primary states invalid to steal their nomination from Fecal Dump Trump.  Opening primaries to non-party voters is an invitation for disaster.  For those, who insist that they should have their say, my answer is simple.  Join the party in which you want to have your say.  You are under no obligation to vote for the candidates in the general election.<\/font><\/p>\n

#11  claims that \u201cthe math\u201d guarantees that Bernie will win.  The last time I heard that argument was when Karl Rove claimed that \u201cthe math\u201d guaranteed that Little Lord Willard would beat Obama in 2012. \u201cThe math\u201d holds as much water as a sieve.<\/font><\/p>\n

When we know, we\u2019ll know.<\/font><\/p>\n

My big concern is that, no matter who wins, the supporters of the other will feel resentful, pick up their toys, and go home.  Over the years I have seen it many, many times.  This year that cannot be.  This year, whoever wins, we must all go on together.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just because I think Hillary is more likely than Bernie to win the Democratic nomination, I don;t think it\u2019s over, not do I think it should be a coronation.  It\u2019s not and it shouldn\u2019t.  .Because I have shared some articles that included media bias toward Hillary, I am also sharing the following article that includes […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}