
Slate‘s William Saletan (4/26/16) told Democrats to ignore polls showing that Sanders had a better chance than Clinton of beating Trump.
There was a debate last spring, when the Sanders/Clinton race was at its most heated, as to whether Bernie Sanders’ consistently out-polling Hillary Clinton was to be taken as a serious consideration in favor of his nomination. Before, during and after the race was competitive, this was the Vermont senator’s strongest argument: He was out-polling Trump in the general election by an average of 10 or so points, whereas Clinton was only slightly ahead. His favorables were also much higher, often with a spread as much as 25 points.
Never mind, the pundits said—Clinton had been “vetted” and Sanders had not:
- “Republicans hate Hillary, Democrats love Hillary and independents are unsure. It may well be that Hillary Clinton has an image problem that she needs to work on, but it’s pretty much the same image problem she’s had forever.” —Kevin Drum (Mother Jones, 9/15/15)
- “All politicians get battered the more they’re known. Maybe that won’t happen to Bernie, but I think it will…. [Sanders] hasn’t spent 25 years in the spotlight being trashed by what I would also call the vast right-wing conspiracy.” — The Nation’s Joan Walsh (WNYC, 3/1/16)
- It’s true that Sanders does better than Clinton in hypothetical matchups against the Republicans…. But that’s not because Sanders is the stronger nominee. It’s because Republicans haven’t yet trashed him the way they’ve trashed Clinton. Once they do, his advantage over her would disappear. —William Saletan (Slate, 4/26/16)
- “It is true, as Sanders pointed out, that polls show him doing better than Clinton against Republicans in November. But it is also true that Clinton has not hit Sanders with a single negative ad. Not one.” — Michelle Goldberg (Slate, 5/2/16) [This statement was false, by the way.]
- “We in media haven’t told you much about Sanders. Esp. anything negative.” MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid (Twitter, 5/24/16)
These arguments suffered from two major problems:
1) As we noted in May (FAIR.org, 5/25/16), Sanders had, demonstrably, been vetted. Despite the many pundits cleverly framing the issue as “GOP attacks”, Sanders had been thoroughly vetted by the establishment center, in equally hostile terms. He’d been grilled about his socialism in the primary debates nine times, been subject to numerous attack ads by Clinton SuperPACs, had a half-dozen negative editorials in the Washington Post, received nonstop criticism from Vox, Slate, New York Magazine and MSNBC.
High-profile pro-Clinton pundits such as Joan Walsh, Joy Ann Reid, Jonathan Capehart, Jonathan Chait and others routinely took to social media to spin for Clinton and dismiss Sanders, and all major papers—New York Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Sun-Times, New York Daily News, LA Times, Las Vegas Sun and Rolling Stone—endorsed Clinton, and in doing so criticized Sanders. To saying nothing of the fact that every article complaining that Sanders had not been vetted, complete with “hypothetical” GOP attacks, were themselves a form of vetting.
The idea that Sanders had not been “properly examined” was pure dogma, asserted by pundits with hardly any critical thought. It was true because Important People in Important Media Outlets simply said it was. Most in the media failed to meaningfully push back against this dogma, and it was a major contributing factor to the Democrats not nominating someone who, by all available measures, was a stronger candidate than Clinton.
2) The corollary, that Clinton had been entirely vetted, was also a fiction. High profile pro-Clinton pundit and editor of the influential liberal Daily Kos blog Markos Moulitsas insisted in May that “current polling has Clinton’s negatives baked in. They are her floor.” But this made little sense. As we noted at the time:
But Clinton also argued this back in January, when she insisted she was “vetted,” and since that time, her unfavorable-to-favorable spread has widened by roughly 14 points. Since she announced her campaign, her favorable/unfavorable gap has increased by almost 20 points. One may argue this is due to increased attention by the GOP and Sanders, but at some point we have a boy-who-cried-wolf problem: Was Clinton fully “vetted” in May 2015, January 2016 or is she now?
While it’s true her unfavorables stayed roughly the same, this didn’t mean waves of consequential negative coverage wouldn’t keep coming: WikiLeaks revelations of campaign collusion with the DNC, questions about her health and a comment calling half of all Trump supporters “deplorables” all lost her several news cycles. The point is not that Clinton as a candidate isn’t allowed to have bad press–it’s that thinking adults claimed, based on some vague notion of “vetting,” that all of her bad press days were behind her.
Then there was the fact that Clinton was currently under FBI criminal investigation. A wild card that made possible the Comey October Surprise—fair or not—but nonetheless was overlooked in the “Clinton has hit her floor of dislike” arguments. How could one possibly argue Clinton had been fully vetted when an entirely secret Department of Justice inquiry, complete with subpoena power and search warrants, was ongoing?

Throughout 2016, polling consistently showed Bernie Sanders defeating Donald Trump by a wide margin. (Chart: Real Clear Politics)
Glaring inconsistencies in these arguments were overlooked with little explanation. Clinton was the party’s choice and everyone had to just get in line, cognitive dissonance be damned. As FAIR noted at the time:
But dismissing a major indicator of popularity like polling—a key tool of campaign journalism in virtually all other contexts—due to vague, handwaving claims of unvettedness comes across as far more a convenient talking point than an earnestly arrived-at conclusion.
And that’s exactly what it was—an empty talking point meant to gaslight readers in the face of overwhelming polling data. “Electability” arguments, it ought to be noted, were also leveled against the current president-elect. These too were based more on mythology than evidence.
Above all, these concepts were far more about simply asserting “truth” than seeking it, in hopes no one would have the time or capacity to push back. The words chose the meaning, not the other way around, and Clinton was “electable” and “vetted” simply by repetition; any deviation or examination of this script was from progressive outlets like Jacobin and Huffington Post. Throughout the campaign, this inevitability posture was a matter of religious conviction that spread largely unchecked–and, as such, may have helped contribute to Trump’s improbable victory.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.







1) As we noted in May (FAIR.org, 5/25/16), Sanders had, demonstrably, been vetted.
I could never understand how this was said with a straight face given that Sanders have been either a Senator or Representative of the state of Vermont for at least 20 years now.
“the Democrats nominating someone who, by all available measures, was a stronger candidate than Clinton.” What a howler this is! The Democrats nominated someone who was “stronger than Clinton” ?! The editors at FAIR need to do some stronger vetting themselves.
More importantly: the Democrats’ successful attempt to throw the Sanders campaign into the rubbish bin was not due to any shortsightedness, too much vetting, or not enough vetting of either of the front-runners, nor of failure to “seek truth”, nor of “religious conviction”. It proves – as if proof were needed – that the ruling Democratic oligarchy is far more afraid of a mass movement which might dare to challenge the capitalist system and its dominant ideology, even from a faux-socialist like Bernie Sanders. They would much prefer an ignorant, semi-fascistic blowhard like Donald Trump to a political mobilization from below which could threaten the status quo.
Just give it a bit more time and we’ll have a fully-fascistic blowhard.
The people who think that they are in control of the propaganda narrative, really are not.
Polls showing Bernie doing much better than Hillary against any Republican candidate were consistent all though the primaries. And two days before the general election a national poll showed that Bernie would have gotten 400 electoral votes if he instead of Hillary had run against Trump.
It’s clear that the Democratic party leadership chose political suicide over supporting a progressive candidate. The Republican party bosses were far more democratic — they allowed a train wreck to become their nominee rather than oppose the will of the people.
Rank-and-file Democrats need to concentrate on clearing the party of the corrupt war-mongers and Wall Street lackeys that have controlled the party since the days of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
Not a chance of that. The Democrats, like their Republican confreres, are a party of big business, Wall Street, the military-industrial-surveillance-“security”- fear complex. They have never been a party of ordinary people and never will be. If you want radical change you need to think “outside the box” – the prison – of the two party system.
A.k.a. the Matrix.
Anthony: Do you really think it was an act of democracy on the part of the republican bosses to let the “will of the people” choose Trump? Democracy has very little to do with an election. I think a better starting point in your analysis would be to realize that whether Democrat or Republican, the ruling class puts forth a limited range of options and lets–at best–the voters choose their next master.
They were pressured to support Clinton over Sanders because of the neocon need to use America’s military for their schemes. Tulsi Gabbard could have won as well, but the whole idea of having the first woman president was only a scam in and of itself.
JB, I agree that both major parties’ presidential tickets are dominated by a single over-riding power. The preponderance of leading war-mongers among the Republican and Democratic party presidential and vice-presidential candidates (Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Joe Lieberman, Dick Cheney, Joe Biden, John McCain, Hillary Clinton) suggests that the overriding power doesn’t care about equal rights, abortion, gay marriage, marijuana, immigration, climate change, or any other hot issue but simply wants to make sure that perpetual war continues. They’ve accomplished that goal by consistently putting a time-tested imperialist either in the office that has for many years usurped the right to declare war, or else in the office that the president knows can take over for him if he fails to follow their agenda.
But there’s a difference this year in that it’s the first time they’ve allowed someone who made strong anti-war statements to be nominated. Trump even criticized wars waged by a president of his own party. That puts him on a level with Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul. Even Bernie voted to support aggressive war when a Democrat was in the White House. On the other hand, Trump is clearly the most impeachable person ever elected president, and his replacement is a reliable hawk. So if Trump follows through on his pledge to stop destroying any nation that resists U.S. hegemony, they can easily fix that. It will be interesting to see what happens.
I’m disappointed that none of the dozens of supposedly progressive organizations that I get bulk e-mail from have commented on Trump’s post-election pledge to stop destroying Syria, and to abstain from Hillary’s pledge to shoot down Russian planes there. They have instead focused on the vile things he said during the campaign but over which a president has very little control.
Robert, Tulsi Gabbard is exactly the kind of leader we need. I assumed she would be Bernie’s choice for running mate. I’m hoping she’ll run in 2020.
Anthony, I’ve said the same thing a lot. This country is a one party state. There are two wings that differ on social issues, but on the issues of imperialism and the oligarchy’s control of the wealth, they are in lock step agreement.
I think you’re giving Trump a bit too much credit, as his foreign policy isn’t particularly consistent or even coherent. But I do think we dodged a bullet for the second time in a decade in not electing a rabid warmonger who abandons even sanity (forget about morality!) in favor of lust for war -the first being Insane McCain, and the second Hillary Clinton. I don’t really expect Trump to fulfill some of the “proactive” positive things he’s pledged, like cutting back on our network of colonial military bases or reigning in the aggressive NATO expansion which has been the #1 cause of problems with Russia. But at least he won’t plunge headfirst into nuclear war over Syria.
MEANSTREAM MEDIA should have their FCC licenses REVIEWED, not necessarily “Revoked” but certainly the FCC should consider ABC, CBS, CNN NBC, MSNBC, AP, Reuters, PBS as being worth investigation into Media BIAS!!! For backlash let’s consider sending notes to ADVERTISERS on those channels and Magazines & Newspapers that like the BDS of Israel for Palestinian Genocide we will NOT buy their products or subscribe for their services.
I am a soon to be 65 year old disabled hippie and had Hillary did me (and ALL Mars enthusiasts) a Favor once: http://commonsensecentral.net/csc_2001/hillary_clinton_visits_ccc.htm
But since that 2000 action, she showed her TRUE colors when she got into the Senate by being Silent on the false Flag of 911, voting for Iraq War, and SHE started the inquiry into Obama’s Birth Certificate NOT Donald Trump. See: http://mycommonsensepolitics.com/
And Libya had the HIGHEST standard of living on the ENTIRE continent on Africa. Qaddafi may have been a bad guy before with the Lockerbie bombing, but he paid reparations, turned his country around. He gave his citizens FREE water, electricity, school, medical care and jobs for anyone willing to work. What got him in Hillary’s cross hair’s was Sydney Bluementhal email to her about his plan to make an African-wide “dollar” similar to the Euro. He had the GOLD to do it, and that threatened the almighty OIL FIAT dollar, so as Secretary of State and the French who found their lost colony succeeding and abandoning their former masters. Hillary the War Hawk she ALWAYS was as Secretary of State sent the CIA in for Regime change into Benghazi and got more than just 4 people killed, there was a weapons to Syrian terrorists chain from there to Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israeli Mossad agents. Like my main site shows General Wesley Clark the DARK GOVERNMENT wanted to overthrow 7 countries in 5 years.
imho, good riddance to Clintons, Bushes, Reagons and the DARK BLACK BUDGET projects, the NSA, DIA, DOD, FBI, Homeland Security should be disbanded and a NEW FULL investigation into the those in Government UNDER OATH in a PUBLIC FORUM. Also there should be a 25 year MAXIMUM on CLASSIFIED ELEMENTS of ANY KIND. This means names, dates, actions, weapons used, etc. 15 years everything MUST be declassified and keeping names blacked out, for 10 years so that those involved in nefarious deeds have a decade to get their act in order and LEAVE the USA, and good riddance.
Obama’s Hope and Change became Despair and Chains.
DRONING a 15 YEAR OLD AMERICAN TEENAGER !!!
Reality must be truthful to be useful
If there’s nothing to hide…why hide the information, objects or gag people or documents or loose emails violating Federal Law?
Say what you mean and mean what you say.
Don’t make promises and policies you don’t intend to keep and to keep the policies and promises you do make.
ACTIONS speak louder than words.
ACTIONS are PROOF of intent.
ACTIONS are the final judgment of character.
It REALLY is that simple.
You are so right on!! Now I’m going to check out your links above.
The Democratic establishment torpedoed a decent grass roots candidate who spoke to the needs of ordinary Americans, crushed the hopes and dreams of millions of voters, mocked those same voters when they weren’t getting with the program, and then wondered why they didn’t show up for the coronation. They have no one to blame but themselves and their despicable nominee.
Unlike all the liberals around me marching in the streets and crying, I actually feel hopeful, not depressed. What would have been truly hopeless and depressing: a Clinton victory. Progressives would be discredited, Mook would be installed as DNC head, neoliberal Clintonites would be negotiating with neocon Republicans on the best way to screw the country and which governments to overthrow for the next 4 years, and then she’d get her clock cleaned in 2020 by an establishment Republican worse than Trump.
Trump’s victory has a huge silver lining. It opens the door for us to clear out the Democratic party of all the neoliberal careerists, and reorganize it to provide an effective alternative in 2020. Already, Keith Ellison is being put forth for DNC chair, and even Chuck Schumer is acquiescing. Good sign. I don’t know if we’ll be able to seize on the chance, but with the Clintons out of the way (hopefully forever), at least we have that chance. The fight for 2020 begins now.
Well said!
Ditto that!
The effective alternative in 2020 won’t be a reorganized Democratic Party; it will be a third party. The 2-party duopoly is too corrupted, too established to be reformed at all.
The Russians aren’t the ones guilty of interfering with US elections. That would be the Oligarchy and their employees which appears to include the United States intelligence apparatus and media.
Bernie would have crushed Trump in any kind of a fair contest. From what we observed during the primary a fair contest simply would not be allowed.
But not to worry because we are moving towards the sounds of tyranny and injustice, lol.
Do you really think the current Republican party and Donald Trump would have given Bernie a fair contest?
Do you think Comey would have?
There are several Reason of winning Trump but the major is Clinton was under investigation of FBI. Clinton was strongest candidate from The Democrats. She was on winning point before the Election Day. But not sure how the situation change and its go verse
But Now Trump is Elected President of United Stat. So we must bear to him
Polls, polls polls. In general, they are highly unreliable, as we just saw.
But it’s pretty easy to see that Sanders would have been a much stronger candidate against Trump.
First, he was talking about all the economic issues that appealed to many of the people in the very places like Michigan which were decisive in the election.
People in those places voted for Trump ONLY because they viewed Clinton as a continuation of the policies that have been so economically devastating for them — policies that Bill Clinton put in place and Hillary acted as a cheerleader for. And trump was promising to overturn the apple cart.
Second, Sanders did not have all the baggage Clinton has (more than most major airports)
Third, Sanders is a likeable person, a sort of grandfatherly figure — much more likeable than either Clinton or Trump. Importantly, he does not talk down to and insult large classes of people (either Mexican Americans or “Deplorable whites”)
But unfortunately, the DNC decided before the primaries even began that Clinton would be their candidate and everything they did was done with that in mind.
All water over the bridge at this point.
Thanks for reviving Bernie. As for vetting, I assume it was proportional to the negative aspects that Bernie possessed. If he was attacked less than any other candidat, the most logical explanation is that there simply was less -if any – muck to rack up. No hidden corporate connections, no flip-flopping in crucial policy matters, no family scandals, no being caught lying, no disgraceful voting for wars. Surely both parties’ establishment will have been digging for muck but apparently could not find it. And there is only so much slander you can invent 100 % without being caught out.
Wrong. It was because Hillary didn’t go full on after him, so as not to alienate his supporters, and the Republicans not only wanted him to beat Hillary, but spent tens of millions of dollars on Hillary-tarnishing ads to directly help Bernie, and said openly that they were doing so. Grumpy Bernie is thin-skinned, and does not respond well to criticism. Were he the nominee, the GOP would have spent hundreds of millions of dollars talking about his socialism, his unpaid-for proposals, that he was married in Moscow, that he said “all women want to be raped” back in the 70s, etc. Hillary lost the election because Comey temporarily breathed new life into a fake scandal. Conservatives don’t need actual scandal – they create them, and Bernie would have been mincemeat, and with his entirely anti-corporate – instead of balanced – attitude, no big money would have stepped in and rescued him.
Yes Trump won in 15 States that Bernie had won in the primaries. That shows how unfavorable Hilary was to the masses. I think it is time that people begin to trust the facts, not just what they are fed by corporate media. Numerous polls showed that Bernie was by far the more favorable candidate. The DNC did this country a huge disservice by supporting their candidate of choice rather than the people’s and we all know the outcome! I hope they will take this as an opportunity to RE evaluate their actions and their poorly thought out decisions!
A Socialist Communist Commie who wants to give away free stuff to lazy Ameicans – or. a Criminal who should be locked up. If the choice was literally between those two, which one would you buy a car from?
let’s start with our ignorance of what a communist is, what a socialist is and what a democratic socialist is.
We can follow up with someone who would believe “free stuff” claims. nothing would have been Free on his web site, it explained on how he suggested paying for it. Now if you look at Trumps plan of Clinton’s plan, you will see that they benefited those who already had money, because you would still have to pay, but you would get tax deductions, only useful if you earn enough to itemize. .Once again subsidizing everyone but the poor.
You really need to read more and learn about things before showing your ignorance.
Bernie was never a candidate in the general election. He was never subjected to the opposition research attacks that Republicans had waiting.
Jane Sander’s college business alone, could have sunk him once those attacks started and reverberated through media. Whitewater redux.
Progressives are all too eager to adopt Republican smears of Democrats, and too eager to provide Republicans with the talking-points red meat they like to throw to their voters.
Do you really think we should decide our candidates based upon whom the politicized FBI wants to smear? Maybe we should just ask a Comey or a Hoover to pre-approve our candidates.
Horrible Clinton voted for the Iraq War Resolution so she was not worthy of the presidency. Of course John Kerry and Joe Biden did also but they were considered worthy.
Hillary Clinton was the first to declare women’s rights to be human right.Too many self-styled progressive do not understand this statement. Instead they are enmeshed in the philosophical mindset of Manism-see males as the center of the universe, and females as a subset-people progressives want to help with “their” issues.
Bernie is a great guy but he has an old-fashioned mind-set. His image of an American is a man-maybe with a family.
Trickle down doesn’t work in human rights anymore than it does in economics.
no, Sanders was subject to the Clinton machine attacks, much like Obama was. The scandal of his wife earning a nice living should not shock you unless you think woman deserve to make less.not even close to whitewater which had to do with property and government favors, Sander’s wife earned a lot of money in her job, lots of people do. still not even a fraction of what Clinton earned for the speeches she kept secret.. They were not in the 1% or even the top 5%.
SOme of the republican smears were stupid and bad, but there were people who believed them, some were actually not smears but questionable practices, that sometimes both parties indulge in.
I talked to people who voted for Trump, some die hard republicans/tea party, some disenchanted democrats, some some independents, and there was always one reason they voted for Trump. They hated Clinton. Now I can understand how it can seem unfair, but it is still a fact, you should never run a candidate that is hated by over half the people. Those that didn’t hate her, had a strong dislike, even some that voted for her. Don’t start an election with a jumping contest where your candidate stands in a 6 foot hole. The DNC discouraged everyone else from running, which is why Sanders stepped in and then Clinton supporters biggest criticism of him was he was not a democrat, they were quite offended by that, well maybe if the DNC did not tell everyone else to not run, you might have had more people to your liking running..
First, it wasn’t the Russian’s work that the DNC hack, it was the guy that Clinton had killed as he was in his way to the FBI to testify against Clinton about the DNC hit on Bernie.
Bernie HAD been an ‘honest’ broker for progressives and COULD have beaten Trump. He might also have flipped the Senate in favor of Dems. Clinton was a WAR HAWK from the moment her umbilical chord was cut, as I mentioned above in my post.
Wikileaks is an Israeli Mossad tool, he NEVER EVER leaks ANYTHING against Zionism.PERIOD. Go through ANY and ALL Wikileaks and find me ANYTHING against Israel…you won’t. Where are the 911 memos from the New American Century? I got a video of Larry Silverstein talking about Building 7 blueprints in April 2000. How the frack did he know he would be BUYING the WTC complex more than 2 years before IT happened?
Bernie WOULD have opened a new investigation into 911, ETI, and moved NASA forward faster than Trump will. The Pentagon and CIA might have taken him out, but he already knew that BEFORE he started running. I doubt ANY ‘dirt’ could be as bad as Clintons or Trump baggage that he brought upon himself,
But…spilled milk and there’s no way I’m licking the floor as Bernie tries to “re-build” the Democracks.
I am trying to build a NEW 3rd party based on Flat Facts and Common Sense. So few people have it sometimes I feel I have a “Superpower” because I see NONE of it in MEANSTREAM MEDIA.
“We create our own future by our own beliefs, which control our actions. A strong enough belief system, a sufficiently powerful conviction, can make anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including our gods. – Reverend Mother Ramallo, Sayyadina of the Fremen”
Bob
Let that be a lesson to you gullible public.
There’s one other argument against the “Sanders hasn’t been vetted” argument: The claim was based on the absurd notion that the Clinton campaign wasn’t using every resource at their disposal to find dirt on Sanders. They definitely tried, doing everything from looking through everything Sanders had ever written (e.g. the article from the 1970’s that they quoted out of context to make him seem pro-rape), to running Levi Sanders through a wringer, to implying that Bernie and Jane were using the money they raised for their campaign to buy themselves a $500K vacation home. None of it stuck.
So the “Sanders hasn’t been vetted” line was created to deal with the inconvenient fact that they didn’t find any dirt on him, by implying that there would be dirt on him if they looked. It’s the same sort of device as “People are asking questions about Obama’s birth”: The absence of evidence is used to imply what actual evidence cannot.
And people bought it, hook, line, and sinker. P.T. Barnum still has it right, apparently.