Remem­ber when the big win­ner of New Hamp­shire was third-place fin­ish­er Amy Klobuchar?

“Bernie Sanders may have come first in New Hamp­shire, but Amy Klobuchar won,” Bloomberg declared (the media com­pa­ny, not the bil­lion­aire can­di­date who owns it). ​“I would almost argue that a third-place fin­ish for Amy would be stronger and more impor­tant than a first-place fin­ish for Bernie,” MSNBC com­men­ta­tor Adri­enne Elrod assert­ed.

That’s not how it worked out, of course; since Feb­ru­ary 14, Bernie Sanders has gone from a 4‑point lead to a 12-point lead over his clos­est rival, Joe Biden, in nation­al polling aver­ages, while Klobuchar remains in fifth place. In the Neva­da cau­cus­es held Feb­ru­ary 22, Sanders got twice as many final votes as No. 2 Biden, whom Sanders was trail­ing in the polls as recent­ly as ten days earlier.

Cau­cus entrance polls found the Ver­mont sen­a­tor was the top choice of both men and women, whites and Lati­nos (though not African-Amer­i­cans, where he was sec­ond to Biden), all age groups except those 65 and old­er, Democ­rats and inde­pen­dents, union house­holds and non-union house­holds, and those with and with­out col­lege degrees. He had the most sup­port among those described as ​“very lib­er­al” and ​“some­what lib­er­al,” and tied Biden among those labeled ​“mod­er­ate or conservative.”

Accord­ing to the Neva­da entrance polls, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden were the only can­di­dates to win any sam­pled group by 6 per­cent­age points or more.

So while there’s still some cov­er­age that might be said to be stuck in the denial stage about Sanders — ​“Neva­da Cau­cus­es Win Would Make Bernie Sanders a Weak Front-Run­ner” was a late entry in that genre — for the most part cor­po­rate media have moved on to the next stage of griev­ing, which is anger.

MSNBC’s Chris Mat­tews noto­ri­ous­ly com­pared Sanders’ vic­to­ry in Neva­da to the Nazi inva­sion of France:

I was read­ing last night about the fall of France in the sum­mer of 1940. And the gen­er­al, Rey­naud, calls up Churchill and says, ​“It’s over.” And Churchill says, ​“How can that be? You’ve got the great­est army in Europe. How can it be over?” He said, ​“It’s over.”

(Sanders com­mu­ni­ca­tion direc­tor Mike Cas­ca respond­ed: ​“Nev­er thought part of my job would be plead­ing with a nation­al news net­work to stop liken­ing the cam­paign of a Jew­ish pres­i­den­tial can­di­date whose fam­i­ly was wiped out by the Nazis to the Third Reich. But here we are.”)

James Carville on MSNBC com­pared the idea that you can win elec­tions by increas­ing turnout to cli­mate denial.

For­mer Bill Clin­ton advi­sor James Carville on MSNBC mocked the idea of win­ning elec­tions by increas­ing vot­er turnout:

The entire the­o­ry that by expand­ing the elec­torate, increas­ing turnout, you can win an elec­tion is the equiv­a­lent of cli­mate denier…. Peo­ple say that, they’re as stu­pid to a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist as a cli­mate denier is to an atmos­pher­ic scientist.

An actu­al polit­i­cal sci­en­tist might point out that turnout has var­ied over the last five pres­i­den­tial elec­tions from a low of 50.3% in 2000 to a high of 58.2% in 2008 — a dif­fer­ence of some 25 mil­lion votes, far more than the pop­u­lar vote mar­gin even in a rel­a­tive land­slide like 2008. Still, Dead­line: White House host Nicolle Wal­lace was impressed: ​“You’re describ­ing what sounds a lot like polit­i­cal sui­cide,” she replied. ​“I think we need a psy­chol­o­gist to under­stand that.”

“I do find it fas­ci­nat­ing that racist lib­er­al whites seem to love them some Bernie Sanders, con­sis­tent­ly,” MSNBC con­trib­u­tor Jason John­son declared on Sir­ius FM’s Karen Hunter Show.

The man cares noth­ing for inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty. And I don’t care how many peo­ple from the Island of Mis­fit Black Girls that you throw out there to defend you on a reg­u­lar basis.

Fred Hiatt, edi­to­r­i­al page edi­tor of the Wash­ing­ton Post, fol­lowed the tired trope of equat­ing Sanders to Don­ald Trump — in this case, because ​“both reject the real­i­ty of cli­mate change.” Trump does so, of course, by reject­ing the real­i­ty of cli­mate change, while Sanders is his mir­ror image in ​“utter unse­ri­ous­ness” with the ​“fan­ta­sy extrem­ism” of his cli­mate plan — because, for exam­ple, he would ban frack­ing. Hiatt’s sole source for his cri­tique of Sanders’ cli­mate plan, incred­i­bly enough, is an oil com­pa­ny CEO—who offered pearls of wis­dom like: ​“Change will not come from chang­ing the source of sup­ply…. You have to reduce demand.”

The Wash­ing­ton Post‘s Fred Hiatt accus­es Bernie Sanders of ​“utter unse­ri­ous­ness” on cli­mate change because an oil CEO doesn’t like his cli­mate plan.

Not to be out­done, the news pages of the Wash­ing­ton Post warned that a Sanders nom­i­na­tion ​“could nar­row the party’s already slim hopes of retak­ing the Sen­ate major­i­ty and fuel GOP dreams of reclaim­ing the House.” The arti­cle offers a vari­ety of lines of attack that might deflect the Sanders threat, includ­ing the asser­tion that ​“Sanders had the worst stand­ing against Trump among col­lege-edu­cat­ed white women,” the (false) claim that he ​“is propos­ing to take away the health­care of 180 mil­lion peo­ple,” and the asser­tion that ​“Bernie Sanders is a social­ist who sup­ports un-Amer­i­can, big gov­ern­ment plans that will spend tril­lions of dol­lars, lead to high­er tax­es, and destroy our way of life.”

To tout the effec­tive­ness of such attacks, Mike DeBo­nis and Michael Scher­er inac­cu­rate­ly report­ed that ​“the sen­a­tor from Ver­mont has not yet been sub­ject­ed to a neg­a­tive paid adver­tis­ing effort.” In fact, in Iowa and Neva­da, the AIPAC-allied super PAC Demo­c­ra­t­ic Major­i­ty for Israel spent a total of $1.4 mil­lion on neg­a­tive ads tar­get­ing Sanders — focus­ing not on his crit­i­cism of Israel, but on his social­ism and health issues. (By com­par­i­son, Klobuchar spent a total of $2.5 mil­lion in adver­tis­ing in these states.)

The New York Times like­wise laid out a litany of attack lines against Sanders:

In the ear­ly years, there was his com­men­tary on gen­der rela­tions fea­tur­ing a rape fan­ta­sy, his sup­port for the San­din­istas and his hon­ey­moon in the Sovi­et Union. Once he entered Con­gress, there were votes to shield gun man­u­fac­tur­ers, a com­mit­ment to remain­ing uncom­mit­ted to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, and secret plans to mount a 2012 pri­ma­ry chal­lenge against Pres­i­dent Obama. And more recent­ly: the FBI inves­ti­ga­tion into his fam­i­ly, the heart attack, the resis­tance to detail­ing the costs of his sig­na­ture pol­i­cy pro­pos­al, ​“Medicare for All.”

The New York Times pub­lished anoth­er in a long line of attacks on Bernie Sanders that insist that he’s nev­er been attacked.

In what has become a trade­mark of arti­cles attack­ing Sanders, the arti­cle assert­ed that there have been no such attacks: ​“He has not faced the same vet­ting and scruti­ny that oth­er front-run­ners have faced,” reporter Lisa Lerer claimed, quot­ing the head of the Big Tent Project, anoth­er dark mon­ey group run­ning ads against Sanders. The real­i­ty is that Sanders has been repeat­ed­ly attacked — by rivals and by cor­po­rate media — going back to the 2016 race and con­tin­u­ing through to the cur­rent race. Remem­ber the Wash­ing­ton Post’s 16 neg­a­tive sto­ries about Sanders in 16 hours?

Accord­ing to Joe Lock­hart, for­mer press sec­re­tary for Pres­i­dent Clin­ton and more recent­ly a cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions con­sul­tant whose clients have includ­ed Microsoft, Ver­i­zon, Pfiz­er, the Sau­di gov­ern­ment and the US Tele­com Asso­ci­a­tion, what’s need­ed are more such attacks on Sanders, and pron­to. In an opin­ion piece for CNN, Lock­hart insisted:

Bloomberg needs to use the next $400 mil­lion in ad spend­ing to attack Sanders on his poten­tial weak­ness­es in a gen­er­al elec­tion and high­light how far left his cam­paign is. Hit­ting him on his past record on guns is a must…. Sanders’ praise of Sovi­et-backed regimes is ripe for polit­i­cal attack ads.

Joe Lock­hart urges Bloomberg to real­ize that his ​“ene­my is not Trump. It’s Sen. Bernie Sanders.”

Lock­hart is open about Bloomberg hav­ing only a mon­ey-based strat­e­gy: ​“With his dis­as­trous per­for­mance in the Las Vegas debate, it appears he won’t be build­ing any organ­ic momen­tum in this race. He has to buy it.” Bloomberg, in turn, has made it clear that his plan is not to get the nom­i­na­tion by get­ting the most votes in the pri­maries, but to deny Sanders a major­i­ty of del­e­gates and then become the choice of the con­ven­tion with the help of unelect­ed superdel­e­gates. As Politi­co reported:

Mike Bloomberg is pri­vate­ly lob­by­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty offi­cials and donors allied with his mod­er­ate oppo­nents to flip their alle­giance to him — and block Bernie Sanders — in the event of a bro­kered nation­al convention.

Now, the prospect of a recent­ly Repub­li­can bil­lion­aire launch­ing a scorched-earth attack on the party’s most pop­u­lar politi­cian to buy the nom­i­na­tion seems like a recipe for elec­toral dis­as­ter — promis­ing not only a Trump re-elec­tion, but a Repub­li­can recap­ture of the House and a sweep of state­hous­es that would ensure ger­ry­man­dered GOP dom­i­na­tion of pol­i­tics at least through 2030. Is that enough to dis­suade the Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment from fol­low­ing such a path?

There are already signs that some cor­po­rate Democ­rats might see a Trump vic­to­ry, at least, as a small price to pay for a Sanders defeat. ​“I think I might find it hard­er to vote for Bernie than for Trump,” for­mer Gold­man Sachs CEO Lloyd Blank­fein , a backer of Hillary Clin­ton and a fre­quent vis­i­tor to the Oba­ma White House, told the Finan­cial Times ​“At least Trump cares about the econ­o­my,” said the bil­lion­aire, who wants to be described as ​“well to do” rather than rich.

And MSNBC’s Matthews point­ed to a sil­ver lin­ing for cor­po­rate Dems in Trump’s re-elec­tion. ​“I’m won­der­ing if Demo­c­ra­t­ic mod­er­ates want Bernie Sanders to be pres­i­dent?” he said. ​“Do they want Bernie to take over the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty in per­pe­tu­ity? Maybe they’d rather wait four years and put in a Demo­c­rat that they like.”

Trans­la­tion: After four more years of Trump, Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers will set­tle for any­one who’s not Trump, like par­ty elites think they ought to.

This arti­cle first appeared in FAIR.