Liberals and Right-Wingers Launch “Bernie Smear Fest” 2019

What makes Bernie Sanders, who in 2016 won more votes of those under 30 than Clinton and Trump combined, less relevant today? Sexism, apparently.

“Bernie Sanders has a problem,” stated a CNN article published at 4:58 AM ET.

“Sexism and Sexual Harassment within his Operation”

In a recent article boldly titled “Bernie has a problem,” Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-Large, wrote that he doesn’t think Bernie Sanders is a “top-tier” presidential contender and “a co-favorite with former Vice President Joe Biden.”

What makes Bernie Sanders, who in the 2016 campaign won more votes among those under age 30 than Clinton and Trump combined, less relevant today, than in 2016?

Cillizza explained:

On Wednesday night, Sanders was asked by Anderson Cooper whether he was aware, during the 2016 campaign, of the allegations — recently published by The New York Times — of sexism and sexual harassment within his operation. ‘I was a little bit busy running around the country trying to make the case,’ said Sanders. That is not a good answer. At all. Ever. And especially not amid the ongoing impact of the #MeToo movement on the culture and political world.

Cillizza was referring to a New York Times article titled “Sexism Claims From Bernie Sanders’s 2016 Run: Paid Less, Treated Worse,” which was published a day before Cillizza’s “Bernie has a problem” piece.

The Times’s article suggested that “Mr. Sanders is no longer an outsider, but an established leader who will be held to a higher standard. And regarding the treatment of women, he must now grapple with the effects of the #MeToo movement.”

The piece weaved first-person narratives from staffers Bernie’s campaign, who experienced sexual harassment and were unfairly treated, with the argument that Sanders must grapple with a new reality should he run for president in 2020.

“Now, as the Vermont senator tries to build support for a second run at the White House, his perceived failure to address this issue has damaged his progressive bona fides,” wrote Sydney Ember and Katie Benner in their piece for The Times.

“And it has raised questions among them about whether he can adequately fight for the interests of women, who have increasingly defined the Democratic Party in the Trump era, if he runs again for the presidential nomination in 2020,” the article continued.

Using a national platform to insinuate that someone can’t “adequately fight for the interests of women” and has a damaged reputation as a progressive is serious business. Nevertheless, while lifting the voices of marginalized people is the right thing to do, turning their stories into a political attack against Sanders 2020 is as low as any media can get in their attacks against the democratic socialist.

But as 2016 showed us, such media spins are expected from establishment political and media circles. Those familiar with the 2016 DNC Leaks saw a glimpse of how Democratic National Committee operatives conspired among themselves, and worked directly with journalists, to insert anti-Bernie talking points into the mainstream news cycle.

As The New York Times itself pointed out at the time of Wikileaks’s publication of the leaks on July 22, 2016:

The breach of the Democratic committee’s emails, made public on Friday by WikiLeaks, offered undeniable evidence of what Mr. Sanders’s supporters had complained about for much of the senator’s contentious primary contest with Mrs. Clinton: that the party was effectively an arm of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. The messages showed members of the committee’s communications team musing about pushing the narrative that the Sanders campaign was inept and trying to raise questions publicly about whether he was an atheist.

“Bernie Smear Fest” 2019 is not that different from the Democratic Party’s propagandist shenanigans during the 2016 elections.

The major difference now is that — lo and behold — Sanders’s huge problem is not socialism, idealism, racism, religion, or his opinion of Clinton and corporate Democrats, but the “sexism and sexual harassment within his operation.”

Faced with these accusations, Sanders had to go on national TV to set the record straight. But as this article illustrates, instead of doing so, he gave more material for CNN, NBC, and other outlets to further the talking point that he is not as viable of a candidate as he was in 2016.

This is what happens when corporate media is judge, jury, and executioner of how the public perceives political matters and leaders. Out of his seven minute interview with Anderson Cooper, Bernie was allowed only the last minute to address The Times’s allegations.

Here’s what Sanders actually said in his “infamous” interview with Anderson Cooper on January 2:

I am not going to sit here and tell you that we did everything right in terms of human resources, in terms of addressing the needs that I’m hearing from now, that women felt they were disrespected, that there was sexual harassment which was not dealt with as effectively as possible. What I will tell you is that when I ran for reelection in 2018 in Vermont, we put forward the strongest set of principles in terms of mandatory training, in terms of women, if they felt harassed, having an independent firm that they can go to. I certainly apologize to any woman who felt that she was not treated appropriately, and of course if I run, we will do better next time.

Unfortunately, this response wasn’t good enough for CNN, so they lifted selected parts of the exchange as further “evidence” for Bernie’s “problem” and blasted them into multiple articles that instilled doubt about Sanders’s 2020 chances.

Just a couple of hours before Cillizza’s article was published, CNN ran another piece on what Bernie said in the last minute of the interview, titled “What Bernie Sanders should have done about sexism in his campaign.” The piece was written by Sally Kohn, a CNN political commentator.

“I’m not saying Sanders and his senior team similarly turned a blind eye to sexual harassment within his campaign, but a pattern of denying responsibility while problems persist is emerging,” Kohn wrote.

“Look, I don’t know what actually went on in Sanders’ campaign. Few of us truly do,” she added later on. “But I know that if Sanders took these allegations seriously, not just for the sake of optics but because he genuinely cares about the culture and climate his leadership creates, he would have been less defensive and would have given a clear, emphatic and heartfelt apology,” she continued.

In her previous articles from 2016, Kohn called Jill Stein “a blasphemous powder keg of progressive self-immolation” and claimed that “conspiracy theories, not facts” were behind people’s discontent with Clinton in 2016.

Given such takes, Kohn’s thoughts on Bernie’s “pattern of denying responsibility,” right after Sanders acknowledged the issue and apologized for what happened, shouldn’t surprise anyone.

Clearly, instances of sexism and sexual harassment have to be cut at the root. But that has little to do with Bernie’s 2020’s run. Yet, virtually all articles about Bernie’s “problem” have insinuated that his potential 2020 presidential bid is somehow threatened by staffers’ 2016 experiences, without bothering to present their case in terms of policy proposals or Bernie’s voting record.

But there’s a twist! An earlier CNN article on the matter (yes, there was at least one more), published a day before Kohn and Cillizza’s, presented a much more neutral account of Sanders’s conversation with Cooper:

“I am not going to sit here and tell you that we did everything right in terms of human resources, in terms of addressing the needs that I’m hearing from now, that women felt they were disrespected, that there was sexual harassment which was not dealt with as effectively as possible,” Sanders initially said to Cooper. The former Democratic candidate stressed that his 2018 Senate re-election campaign had established new protocols for handling sexual harassment allegations. “We put forward the strongest set of principles in terms of mandatory training, in terms of women, if they felt harassed, having an independent firm that they can go to,” Sanders said. “And I think that that’s kind of the gold standard of what we should be doing.” “Of course, if I run, we will do better next time,” he added of a potential 2020 campaign.

Does that sound like a pattern of denying responsibility? If not, then you have to ask yourself why CNN decided to spin a fact-based narrative into “Bernie has a problem, deal with it” in a matter of hours.

From Russia — Without Love

The 2019 “Bernie Sanders Smear Fest” is not limited to a selective use of data that aims to portray Bernie’s “operation” as sexist, or even to mainstream publications.

A featured Medium story, which was also published on January 3, suggested that Sanders has “received support from Russia” and that he “has not yet learned to push his advantage in any other way than going negative.”

The piece is titled “Bernie Sanders’ Ugly Campaigning Is Bad for Democrats — and Great for Trump.”