With each city Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders visits, the number of supporters he draws to his rallies keeps growing. Since June 1, Sanders has spoken to 100,000 people across seven events.
In Phoenix, Arizona, on July 18, he drew 11,000 people, setting a new record for 2016 presidential candidates. His record continued in Seattle with 15,000 supporters, and then in Portland with 28,000 supporters. In Los Angeles on August 10, Sanders drew about 27,500 supporters, according to the Sanders campaign.
Presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaking to about 27,500 supporters at a rally in Los Angeles on August 10. (photo: Charles Ommanney/Washington Post)
But for Washington Post columnist Philip Bump (8/12/15), those numbers “don’t matter much.”
Bump asserts Sanders’ recent surge in the polls is simply thanks to the low-hanging fruit of the liberal Democratic wing, many of whom support Sen. Elizabeth Warren just as much as they support Sanders. He also writes:
There is Hillary Clinton, and there is Not Hillary Clinton. Not Hillary Clinton used to be named Elizabeth Warren; Not Hillary Clinton is now named Bernie Sanders.
Another Post columnist, Chris Cillizza (8/10/15), also attributes Sanders’ crowds to the cities being majority liberal, writing, “Portland is a known den of progressivism where President Obama drew massive crowds during his 2008 campaign.”
Bump and Cillizza seemed to forget that Sanders had drawn his then-largest crowd of 11,000 people in conservative Phoenix. Most Republican candidates’ largest rallies drew about 5,000 supporters (Policy.Mic, 7/20/15). On August 18, Republican candidate Ben Carson drew 12,000 supporters in Phoenix, the biggest crowd for a GOP candidate (Arizona Republic, 8/19/15).
So far, Clinton’s largest rally had 5,500 supporters (Policy.Mic, 7/20/15). Bump claims Clinton’s lack of large crowds is intentional; she prefers “neatly tailored group[s] of a few thousand” in “a space meant to display an audience that size for the cameras” as part of a strategy to distance herself from the image of being an unapproachable juggernaut. Bump writes:
Could Clinton fill an arena in Los Angeles if she wanted to? Of course she could. Unquestionably…. There are unions in Los Angeles that can fill a stadium on a week’s notice. This is not as big a task as it looks.
Sanders, on the other hand, has filled tens of thousands of seats without leveraging unions to artificially fill seats. Regardless, attracting large crowds has indeed been a big task for Republican candidates.
To be fair, Cillizza and Bump recognize Sanders’ ability to draw crowds with grassroots campaigning and enthusiasm. Cillizza writes, “But, crowds are at some level an indicator of organic energy — it is after all how it became clear in 2006 and 2007 that something major was happening with Obama,” (8/10/15). Bump writes, “Now, I’ll grant that [filling an arena] is probably easier for Sanders — that he has more energy behind him.”
But these statements always come with a catch. Cillizza (8/10/15) framed Sanders’ success in attracting supporters mainly as an irritant to Clinton’s campaign — not because he could win, since “Clinton isn’t in the danger of losing the Democratic nomination that she was in 2008.” Rather, visible enthusiasm for Sanders could create a dangerous “perceived lack of passion” for Clinton:
Republican base voters will be fired up beyond belief to take back the White House — and vote against Clinton — next November. She has to find ways to create that passion for herself within the Democratic base.
A more recent op-ed by Cillizza (8/17/15) rejected the entire premise that Clinton could be overtaken, saying, “It’s too late for Democrats to start rethinking Clinton’s 2016 viability.” He writes Clinton has more political favor than Biden, Al Gore or “your ideal rich-person-with-no-record-and-a-fresh-faced-appeal.” The only mention of Sanders is in the second-to-last paragraph as “the liberal alternative.”
Bump noted that supporters at the LA rally — which he rounded up to 28,000 — are only a tiny fraction of the 2.5 million of LA residents who voted for Obama in 2012, and therefore do not show us how many people will vote for Sanders in 2016. This metric is meaningless; of course the number of people who vote for a presidential nominee is going to be larger than the number of people who attend a rally more than a year before the election.
Cillizza compared Sanders’ 28,000 turnout in Portland in August to Obama’s 75,000 in the same city in May 2008 — even though Obama’s rally, the largest of his 2008 campaign, occurred during the height of primary voting in Oregon, whereas Sanders’ was approximately nine months in advance of the primary.
A fairer comparison would hold Sanders’ rally in LA up to Obama’s LA rally in February 2007, which was about one-third as large. Despite some corporate media naysaying (FAIR Blog, 10/22/08), Obama’s LA rally was highlighted by the Post (2/22/07) as a noteworthy achievement, since 9,000 “is a larger turnout than President Bush usually gets and certainly more than Obama’s rivals in the 2008 campaign are pulling in.”
If Sanders’ rallies, like Obama’s, are signs of a growing movement, why do the Post’s columnists focus their articles on doubting the political potential of that movement and hailing the inevitability of Hillary Clinton?
Michael Tkaczevski is a student at Ithaca College and a FAIR editorial intern.
Messages can be sent to the Washington Post at letters@washpost.com, or via Twitter @washingtonpost. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
It should be no surprise corporate media would downplay Sander’s candidacy. But I also think progressives are reading too much into those turnouts. Remember the great super rallies Ralph Nader had when he ran? And we know where that ended.
In one sense the columnist is correct. Nobody cares that it is Sanders delivering smart policy. We care that the policy makes sense for us and not who delivers it. Are we going to allow corporations to over rule citizens via TPP? No, and Sanders says no.
Are we going to allow our kids to be impoverished by a financial cartel? NO, and Sanders says no.
Are we going to use the power of taxation to pay for our kids public college? Yes and Sanders says yes it is time to tax the purchase of Nike just like we tax the purchase of a pair of Nikes. Back in the day banks paid us interest to use our money, now they charge us fees and call our 401k an investment, but it is really nothing more than an at risk savings account.
It is the policies not the Sanders.
You play a major role in whether a candidate or idea is “viable”
Then proceed to “analyze” same.
Welcome to the corpress circle game.
Answer: Wishful thinking. No, actually it’s more than that. It’s trying to influence voters, steering them toward the next “lesser of two evils” establishment candidate who will maintain the status quo (aka Hillary), while also de-legitimizing the Progressive movement.
Fortunately, despite the Status Quo party’s efforts, the Progressive movement is gaining momentum as mainstream media becomes irrelevant due to the rise of independent media.
Recall that if the rallies of campaigns are held in the same city, but not during overlapping times for the rallies, that it is certainly conceivable that people attend the Sanders Campaign rally and Clinton Campaign rally on the same day. So for Sanders to have more attendance than Clinton in such a situation is significant, and very important for elite media to suppress such significance.
Bernie nails it every time he speaks …
He talks about how it is going to take long term
work and the public waking up and forcing the
changes he can only talk about.
For whatever reason Americans have been content
to allow the corporations and the rich to build a
prison around the rest of us, and force working
people to compete with the starving and ignorant
that can be trained to do manual labor and have
no idea about political traditions other than massive
exploitation and abuse.
It is not the newspapers that will elect and enable
Bernie Sanders … it must be the people.
I have the best hopes for Bernie, I believe sincerely
he is the best presidential nominee in half a
century and the change he talks about is much
needed and almost a century overdue.
I have to also allow for the possibility that there
is more thought and less nefariousness than is
suspected here by the establishment papers.
I have no doubt that if Bernie starts to overtake
Hillary that he will get more acknowledgement,
but I think right now, much as I don’t like to see
it happen, the establishment news wants to
avoid going off on tangents and concentrate
on what they see as the important news.
That is mostly because Americans don’t even
seem to keep up with the news anymore anyway.
Sure, newspaper readers probably do, but right
now I think Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders
hold similar positions in their respective parties,
and the establishment press is loathe to give
them more than their due to keep the peace, so
they give them less.
I am a strong Bernie Sanders supporter. I have
sent Bernie money 4 times already. I am not a
billionaire so it may not be a lot, but it is a lot for
me, and I would feel much better if Bernie were
doing better.
It is up to the Bernie to attract attention and the
people to drive him into office and support his
agenda. It is a difficult agenda, ask Barack Obama
who didn’t have half the agenda of Bernie Sanders
and got “pooped” on every day by the Republicans.
Built into the underplaying of Bernie Sanders is
this fact I think. If we can get Bernie more votes
and some more money that can change. I don’t
think these papers are Orwellian organs of
brainwashing, quite yet.
” ” Remember the great super rallies Ralph Nader had when he ran? And we know where that ended.” ”
Yes, it end up with the Green Party actually starting to look like a viable alternate with a 15% Vote just like he said he was going to do. It ened up with both the Republicans and the Democrats beginning to sweat it for fear a third party would become truly viable, like when the Whigs, Free-soilers, and the No-nothing party were challegened in 1854.
______________________________________
We can not expect the current owners of the Corporate Media to come to aid of the American People any more then we Would have expected the Plantation Owners of the antebellum south to come to the aid of Slaves. The are not longer the solution to the problem, they are part of the problem and nothing will change until we rid ourselves of the Corporate Lords and Master currently in place. This is going to require the “People” of the U.S. to wake up and smell the coffee and try and have another TEA party.
“”This is going to require the “People” of the U.S. to wake up and smell the coffee and try and have another TEA party.””
Sorry, that should read ‘and NOT have another TEA Party’
Comparing Sanders to Nader is invalid because Nader wouldn’t run as a Democrat, thus keeping him out of the debates, thus limiting his exposure to tens of thousands instead of 100 million.