“Kingmaking II: Confidence Games” on Media Madness

Editor’s note: as part of a project to turn ninaillingworth.com into a central hub for all of my writing (thanks to ongoing censorship of my work by giant tech companies,) I’m spending the next little while cross-posting older material from other platforms. Please accept my apologies for any potentially unwanted email notifications in advance.

 

The Truth is Both Nomination Contests Were Rigged

Look, I’ll be the first person to tell you that both coronavirus and Downmarket Mussolini’s turn towards open, overt fascism, made raging debates about the 2020 Democratic Party nomination contest a little bit obtuse in the immediate aftermath of Bernie’s concession. At some point however, the American left is going to have to look in the mirror and reckon with the reality that the 2020 contest was every bit as rigged as the 2016 Democratic Party nomination contest was, and the establishment got away with it primarily by refusing to call doing the same things they did in 2016 “rigging” this time; even though in some cases, it openly and obviously was.

Take for example this May 16th, 2019 blog post on Media Madness, showing that in the lead up to the 2020 Democratic Party primary, Joe Biden was clocking three times as much coverage on cable news as Bernie Sanders; these would of course be the same cable news networks that spent much of the next six months saying Biden was “more electable” than Bernie Sanders against Trump, even though the polls, consistently said otherwise. The fact is, the liberal establishment worked in concert for the past five years to sell a false narrative about Bernie Sanders, then weaponized that effort to get Biden over the hump at a crucial and terrifying moment in America’s history; Trump and coronavirus are to the democratic socialist rebellion, what the attacks on 9-11 were to the anti-globalization movement – a premature funeral for a nascent revolution.

 

“The problem of course is that politics are not conducted in a vacuum and as with all things involving the corporate, for-profit media in America, class interests generate a tremendous amount of gravity when it comes to the media’s behavior, both in terms of which candidates they choose to cover, and how they’re going to be portrayed in this nomination contest. When you combine Biden’s staggeringly disproportionate amount of (often defensive) cable news coverage, constant efforts to disparage Bernie’s chances of winning the nomination in the mainstream press and absurdly premature corporate media declarations about the perceived inevitability of Joe Biden, a different and far less innocent picture quickly emerges – a picture that will seem eerily familiar to anyone who wasn’t living under a rock during the 2016 Democratic Party nomination contest.”

 

To check it out over on Media Madness, click on the quotation block above, or the header below:

 

Kingmaking II: Confidence Games

 

 

• nina illingworth

 

Independent writer, critic and analyst with a left focus. Please help me fight corporate censorship by sharing my articles with your friends online!

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“It’s ok Willie; swing heil, swing heil…”