SAY IT AIN’T SO: Maddow stands with corporate media in class war
Bidding farewell to many of her own fans, Rachel Maddow has been using her show to convince the public that Bernie should give up against Hillary for the Democratic nomination. It started with pro-Hillary editorializing on air and displaying deceitful graphics that pre-counted superdelegates who do not actually vote until the convention in late July. For months, voters got the impression that Hillary’s lead was greater than it was.
Failing to disclose on-air that her parent company Comcast is a Hillary mega-donor, a push to put Sanders away faster would soon take over Maddow’s show. After the Nevada Democratic convention, Maddow started losing fans on Twitter immediately, refusing to show clips of the state party chair outraging attendees by adopting controversial rules. At the same time, she cartoonishly re-dramatized accounts of “thrown chairs” that turned out to be false. Maddow never corrected this, pinning the blame on Bernie supporters right before she welcomed the CEO of Hillary’s SuperPAC on air to humanize Hillary’s “dark money” bundlers.
I CAN’T IMAGINE: Fiercely intelligent Maddow plays dumb when she says she doesn’t understand why Bernie is still running, what he ultimately wants. Bernie voters want an end to corporate control of US politics, so it’s awkward for her as an agent of a bought-and-owned media, either exploited by her 1% bosses, or worse, a personal supporter of Hillary.
WINNING ISN’T EVERYTHING: Apparently, Maddow is only able to see the value of campaigning for President in winning. But she often pointed out in the past that there were many other reasons to run. She mocked candidates like Newt Gingrich for running to amass a large mailing list that he can later peddle wares to.
In particular, Maddow mercilessly mocked Herman Cain’s presidential bid as some unusual new form of “performance art”. We saw for ourselves as Cain suggested we turn over the EPA to the CEO of Shell Oil, that he was simply running a messaging campaign, working for rich corporate donors to get political ideas out into the media. Sadly, this is what Maddow is now doing, abdicating a long career in journalism that started alongside rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy, in a radio show ironically called “Unfiltered”.
Maddow is pretending not to know that Bernie’s movement is all about money-in-politics, a rigged economy and rigged political process. “What does he want?” she constantly asks. Every policy difference between Hillary and Bernie stems from Hillary’s support for the untenable status quo and her long affinity with the corporate-billionaire class.
Maddow could be progressive and use her big network platform to assert that the Democratic party will be in the best position to win in November when Hillary finally rejects Wall Street and PAC money to unify the split party factions. Instead, Rachel is ponderously putting the onus on Bernie to throw away everything accomplished in his historic campaign and fall behind Hillary without expecting her to bend one bit.
Well played, Comcast — the transformation of Maddow is complete. When you acquired the NBC network, I still saw vestiges of a bright-eyed AIDS activist willing to confront the establishment and do reality-based news in the public interest. But a few years and $20 million dollars later, the electrical impulses travelling through her earpiece have neutralized any threat she would help the middle class regain control of US democracy.
FLIPPED THE SCRIPT: That’s how this election was supposed to go — Bernie was always a long shot, but the tsunami of small individual donations changed the course of US elections, showing all present and future presidential candidates that corporate cash was never really needed to compete at the highest level.
Sitting in the catbird seat, Maddow was uniquely positioned as an intrepid muckracking progressive working for a large media conglomerate to stand up for the middle class in crucial backroom debates about how to frame the elections for the viewers at home. She was supposed to say “the die is cast — the people have spoken and corporate-funded campaigns must now be a thing of the past.”
At that point, she needed to rally MSNBC to pressure Secretary Clinton to embrace the middle class, to improve as a candidate, to “earn every delegate” and ultimately strengthen her hand for the general election, running against money-in-politics. Hillary was supposed to realize she couldn’t risk losing the millions of Bernie voters who cannot vote for a corporate shill.
But something went wrong. We’ll never know exactly what happened in the offices of 30 Rock, but we saw what happened on the air. Now, angry tweets tell a story of disillusioned Maddow fans, wondering why she couldn’t at least stay neutral. Even from a newscaster’s standpoint, it’s better to have races drawn out — every night of suspense and primary reporting means more viewers and revenue. MSNBC is so “all in” for Hillary, they don’t even care.
MEDIA MANIPULATION: In making the call for Clinton tonight, the press counted superdelegates before they are supposed to. NBC’s John Lapinski admitted contacting 13 superdelegates who originally wanted to stay quiet so as not to influence the democratic process. But their reporters “softened up” the party insiders, letting them remain anonymous to get the scoop.
Lapinski also admitted NBC was furiously competing against the AP to be the first to call the race, putting the interest of for-profit media ahead of the democratic process and de-valuing voters in six states, including the largest. By calling the race prematurely, the media intentionally skews the final result to benefit the frontrunner, bypasses due process, and alters the discourse preceding a six-week period in which a lot of political curveballs could come down the pipe, from gaffes and scandals to indictments or even assassinations, we’ve seen it all in our history. It’s also not inconceivable Trump nosedives, what happens then?
Naturally, some people don’t vote when it doesn’t matter to the outcome, but Bernie voters in closely-contested California waited a long time to register discontent with our bought election process, only to have their one moment of national attention deflated before the polls even opened.
Unabashed, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell tonight demanded on air that Bernie step aside to unite the party now, asserting “superdelegates have a right to say how the party is run”. If so, should regular voters have the opportunity to petition them to flip?
ON FLIPPING SUPERDELEGATES: Maddow and Chris Hayes call Bernie hypocritical for suggesting he flip the superdelegates who committed to Hillary before he announced his run. It runs counter to the will of the people, they say. But what if it’s the people, not the Bernie campaign that presses them to flip? In the weeks leading up to the Philadelphia convention, a lot can happen, but even if it doesn’t, the process is supposed to afford the opportunity. For example, there were teachers online just today who just realized AFT President Randi Weingarten was a superdelegate and they were unhappy she is supporting Hillary in the face of split support among AFT members.
Many superdelegates indeed will be burning bridges by voting against their constituents. And only after the primaries are complete on June 17 will we see exactly how each candidate did with pledged delegates, popular votes, ever-changing polling, endorsements, volunteers and donations. If there is one worthwhile reason to have superdelegates, it’s because they can change their votes up to the last minute, in case for example the leading candidate has a zero-hour disaster. But this also allows time for deeper conversation on the big issues of the day and this year, the #1 issue is money-in-politics, the one disease undergirding all others.
CONVENTION STRATEGY: Heading into California, Bernie obviously hopes to pull the vote and delegate count much closer. But let’s say we get to Philly and the proportions remain around 55/45 and Hillary’s superdelegates don’t budge, ignoring the criticisms of the flawed process and overlooking Bernie’s arguments about head-to-head polls against Trump, Hillary’s negatives and scandal-ridden past. In that case, Bernie’s only option, facing a loss ultimately decided not by voters but superdelegates, is negotiating unification by offering his support to Hillary, or threatening to withhold it.
The Platform Committee will be doing some of this work, but the question will be whether Hillary and the party will make genuine, substantive change to our political system, including campaign funding and the electoral process. We already know what Bernie is seeking, but we don’t know how far Hillary and the establishment will bend. This will be the most consequential moment of the campaign, culminating Bernie’s valiant, surprisingly effective run in something — or nothing.
Would Bernie take his ball and walk away if Hillary comes up short? In good faith, he’s already signaled no, but did that weaken his hand? Could Hillary really ever dump corporate cash? Even if she said she would, can she be trusted? What, if anything would a large presence of Bernie supporters/protesters at the convention mean? These questions and many others remain unanswered. To be continued…