Comrades! Commissar Milbank has exposed Bernie Sanders as a false revolutionary! (image: Reuters video accompanying Dana Milbank’s column)
The day before the New Hampshire primary, the Washington Post (2/8/16) ran a column headlined:
Bernie Sanders Is No Revolutionary
—written by Dana Milbank, that noted expert on revolutionary movements.
“For a guy running against the establishment, Bernie Sanders sure seems to crave its approval,” wrote Milbank. “Sanders portrays himself as an iconoclast, an anti-politician. But he behaves in many ways like a conventional pol.”
Exhibit A for this supposedly conventional behavior:
In New Hampshire last week, the Democratic presidential candidate put out an ad touting his endorsements that gave the false impression that two local newspapers—the Nashua Telegraph and the Valley News—had endorsed him.
Actually, the ad clearly distinguishes between the endorsements it cites—using the word “endorsed” or “endorses” in narration and displaying an onscreen “Endorsed By” label—and the positive quotes from newspapers that didn’t formally endorse Sanders, which are prefaced by “declares” or “says” instead. (An earlier version of the ad, never broadcast and quickly pulled from YouTube, did label the newspaper quotes “Endorsed By”—a mistake, the campaign said.)
Milbank appears to be cribbing from FactCheck.org—or maybe great minds just think alike. FactCheck (2/4/16) wrote that the ad “misappropriates the credibility of two New Hampshire newspapers” and “leaves the misleading impression that the Nashua Telegraph and the Valley News endorsed him.” It’s a shabby trick of pseudo-factcheckers to put words in someone’s mouth and then declare those words to be false.
As another example of how Sanders’ actions are not those of a revolutionary, Milbank notes:
Sanders has often boasted that he doesn’t have a super PAC. But, as the Post’s Matea Gold has noted, an ad hoc network working to elect Sanders “is also employing professional political tactics, such as the use of entities that can raise and spend unlimited sums.”
If you follow that link, you find an important caveat in Gold’s story:
Although these entities can accept massive checks from individuals and corporations—a practice Sanders abhors—they do not appear to be doing so, relying instead on small donations from grass-roots supporters.
Dana Milbank adores Bernie Sanders, honest. (photo: Matthew Bradley)
A few short weeks ago, Milbank (1/26/16) was professing to “adore Bernie Sanders,” and to “share his outrage over inequality and corporate abuses.” That must have come as a surprise to longtime readers of his columns, who remembered him redbaiting the Progressive Caucus, mocking left-wing critics of Obama (whom he portrayed as “their spiritual leader”) and accusing Elizabeth Warren of launching a “left-wing analogue to the Tea Party” to go after Democrats who are “inadequately doctrinaire.”
Despite his newly proclaimed radical sympathies, however, Milbank still wrote in his January piece that “Democrats would be insane to nominate” Sanders as their presidential candidate. Why? Because he’s a democratic socialist, basically:
I doubt Democrats will make an anti-immigrant bigot the president by nominating a socialist to run against him…. He embraces the “socialist” label…. Republicans will…portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods…. Socialists don’t win national elections in the United States…. Are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.
Of course, that was last month, before Sanders nearly tied Hillary Clinton in Iowa and beat her by 22 percentage points in New Hampshire—which clearly has Milbank worried that maybe Democrats are insane enough to nominate a socialist, after all. So now Sanders’ problem isn’t that he’s too radical; it’s that he’s not radical enough.
Whatever works, eh, Comrade Milbank?
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. Follow him on Twitter: @JNaureckas.
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First time ever I follow a US presidential election – and last time I hope, as it generally is a terrible waste of time, if it weren’t for Bernie Sanders. I’m close to 70 yrs old and never thought I would still live to see a politician who is a human being and not an over-aged Barbie doll automaton, thinks before he answers a question rather than reel of some prefabricated sound bites and evidently is someone who stand for something else and much more than personal career. Long before this campaign, his name would sometimes flicker through some press article on a different subject and it would always catch my eye as unexpectedly positive.
As the US president in fact claims power over the whole world, maybe that ‘rest-of-the-world’ should also be allowed to vote for the US president?
Mine would most certainly go to Bernie.
The Washington Post keeps making up names and insults for Bernie.
I’m sick of it, and every time they to a big cake of BS seems to slide off the status quo revealing the real greed, hate and fascism of those behind.
I am so proud of Bernie Sanders being one man and having the courage and energy … at his age … to take on the world and stand his ground. And he does not need a firearm to do it.
Go BERNIE … I am behind you, ALL THE WAY TO THE WHITE HOUSE!
Fair is behind Bernie “all the way to the White House.” So, apparently, are 1000 newspapers, Corporate TV networks and radio stations. So is nearly every post sent to every internet Chat Room in this country, supporting the Bern, with a fanaticism and obduracy I have not seen in politics, in my life. The internet Sanders-junkies, are for him by an astounding ratio. Why don’t Fair writers ever mention these strange behaviors. If you read these brainless posts, they favor Sanders by a 19 to 1 ratio over Hillary. These chatrooms are literally in a state of Shock and paralysis, because there are so many Bernie supporters. How are they behaving? The filth, and that’s no overstatement, directed against Hillary would shame Bill Maher, another Bernie supporter. You’re a truly “authentic” bunch.
Dear John, you make amazing statements without any factual support. The one who is behind Bernie “all the way to the White House” is not FAIR, but ‘Brux’. As for the 1000 plus news outlets who – apparently – support Bernie, I’d be curious to know which ones they are, as I have not come across even a modest fraction of those. In case you wish to hide behind the ‘apparently’, maybe you’d better first check before making such sweeping statements? You of course are welcome to defend Mrs Clinton, whose supporters I suppose are lilly white and never fling mud at Bernie on internet sites? May the most capable, honest and reliable one win. Would that be OK?
Great title, Jim. Made me laugh because It captures the farcical posturing of Milbank and co. What clowns.
Excellent expose blasting a ridiculous hack rationalizer for what he is. This is why I donate to FAIR on monthly autopsy. So much better than mainstream media garbage that masquerades as news.