This piece was orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on FAIR​.org.

The objective is, of course, to further stigmatize Sanders’ ideas and platform goals—all of which are deeply antithetical to the editorial and financial bottom line of the paper and its sole owner, Jeff Bezos.

Sure­ly one study can’t be this important?

It’s not news that the Wash­ing­ton Post​’s edi­to­r­i­al board has been lob­by­ing against Sen. Bernie Sanders since the begin­ning of his improb­a­ble pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. Some­times this edi­to­r­i­al ethos seems to extend to oth­er parts of the paper, as it did in March, when the Post man­aged to run 16 neg­a­tive sto­ries about Sanders in 16 hours.

While the Post has pub­lished the occa­sioinal pro-Sanders piece, the Jeff Bezos – owned pub­li­ca­tion was back at it yes­ter­day when it pounced on a tax study by the Urban Insti­tute, run­ning four pieces (two by Post writ­ers, one by the edi­to­r­i­al board and one by the AP) in one afternoon:

The study was irre­sistible for edi­tors look­ing for viral out­rage: huge, scary nation­al debt num­bers by a tax-and-spend lib­er­al (entire­ly with­out any con­text), com­plete with innu­en­do that the cam­paign had been lying about its projections.

Indeed, the Wash­ing­ton Post loves to frame dif­fer­ing opin­ions about pol­i­cy costs as decep­tion, with an edi­to­r­i­al back in Jan­u­ary tabloidish­ly head­lined ​“Mr. Sanders Needs to Come Clean About the Fund­ing for His Health­care Plan”. He can’t just have dif­fer­ent num­bers in good faith; he must be hid­ing something.

This pre­sump­tion of bad faith was on dis­play with the first hot take—​“Sor­ry, Bernie Fans. His Health­care Plan Is Short $17,000,000,000,000”—by Max Ehren­fre­und. (Dozens of arti­cles were pub­lished on the Urban Insti­tute study on or around 1 pm East­ern, indi­cat­ing that the sto­ry was embar­goed until that time.) The Wash­ing­ton Post doesn’t usu­al­ly write out all the zeros in large fig­ures, but it’s impor­tant that big, scary num­bers look as big and as scary as possible.

From the smug, provoca­tive head­line to the uncrit­i­cal write-up of the study, the over­ar­ch­ing theme that Sanders was hid­ing the true costs of his social pro­grams was sim­ply tak­en for grant­ed. Since pro­gres­sives aren’t sup­posed to care too much about deficits, the story’s hook had to be the impli­ca­tion of decep­tion — that some­how Sanders was con­ceal­ing his social­ist plot.

For con­text, when the Urban Institute’s Tax Pol­i­cy Cen­ter did a break­down of Hillary Clinton’s tax poli­cies on March 3, the Wash­ing­ton Post ran two sto­ries, both broad­ly pos­i­tive, like the study itself. Since the Insti­tute also released a cri­tique of Sanders around the same time, the Post also ran com­par­isons, but none sole­ly focus­ing on Clin­ton that were critical.

Depend­ing on the tar­get audi­ence, the ide­ol­o­gy of the study’s pub­lish­er, the Urban Insti­tute, also changed. To the Post, it’s ​“non­par­ti­san,” while the nom­i­nal­ly hip­per Vox (​“Study: Bernie Sanders’ Sin­gle-Pay­er Plan Is Twice as Expen­sive as He Says,”) described them as being ​“left-lean­ing” — though to depict an orga­ni­za­tion fund­ed by the likes of Bill Gates, Pete Peter­son and JPMor­gan Chase as lean­ing ​“left” is to ren­der the descrip­tion meaningless.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, the Urban Insti­tute has been con­sid­ered ​“lib­er­al,” but this has always been a loaded notion, that pro-Demo­c­rat equat­ed to pro­gres­sive. The Urban Institute’s pres­i­dent, Sarah Rosen Wartell, worked in the Bill Clin­ton White House and co-found­ed the Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress in 2003 with Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and Hillary Clinton’s cur­rent cam­paign chair, John Podes­ta. The State Depart­ment, while under Clinton’s charge, donat­ed mil­lions to the Insti­tute (as it did before and after her tenure).

Con­sid­er­ing Sanders is express­ly run­ning against the ​“Demo­c­ra­t­ic estab­lish­ment,” it’s no sur­prise that a scion of this estab­lish­ment like the Urban Insti­tute would oppose Sanders’ (rel­a­tive­ly) rad­i­cal measures.

Stephen Stromberg joined Ehren­fre­und in the hot take depart­ment with his con­fi­dent­ly head­lined ​“Con­firmed: Sanders Is Sell­ing a Fan­ta­sy Agen­da” . The piece sim­i­lar­ly recapped the Urban Insti­tute study uncrit­i­cal­ly. Nei­ther writer includ­ed com­ment from the Sanders campaign.

Miss­ing as well from any of the pieces was any mean­ing­ful crit­i­cal analy­sis of the study’s high­ly con­testable cost pro­jec­tions, as David Him­mel­stein and Steffie Wool­han­dler — two of the nation’s lead­ing experts on health­care finance, and co-founders of Physi­cians for a Nation­al Health Pro­gram — laid out in the Huff­in­g­ton Post. Him­mel­stein and Wool­han­dler called the Urban Institute’s cost esti­mates ​“ridicu­lous,” say­ing they ​“ignore the exten­sive and well-doc­u­ment­ed expe­ri­ence with sin­gle-pay­er sys­tems in oth­er nations — which all spend far less per per­son on health­care than we do.”

Him­mel­stein and Wool­han­dler note that the Urban Insti­tute report assumes there will be 100 mil­lion more doc­tor vis­its per year, despite the fact that the plan does not involve an increase in the num­ber of doc­tors. The Urban Insti­tute report sup­pos­es that the US sin­gle-pay­er sys­tem would pay 50 per­cent more for pre­scrip­tion drugs than Med­ic­aid cur­rent­ly pays, and ignores or min­i­mizes admin­is­tra­tive sav­ings from a uni­fied sys­tem that add up to $6 tril­lion over ten years.

While hon­est peo­ple can dis­agree on these fig­ures, read­ers were not clued in that there are legit­i­mate health­care experts who back up Sanders’ num­bers. Instead, on the basis of one report, the Post paint­ed his plan as at best fan­tas­ti­cal and at worst a cyn­i­cal effort to deceive the pub­lic on its ​“true cost.”

The Post also ran a nom­i­nal­ly straight AP report on the study, whose open­ing read like it was writ­ten by Grover Norquist:

Sen. Bernie Sanders’ tax and spend­ing pro­pos­als would pro­vide new lev­els of health and edu­ca­tion ben­e­fits for Amer­i­can fam­i­lies, but they’d also blow an $18-tril­lion hole in fed­er­al deficits, pil­ing on so much debt they would dam­age the economy.

This was accom­pa­nied by a sin­is­ter pho­to of Sanders leer­ing over an audience.

Final­ly, at around 8 pm East­ern, the paper itself pro­vid­ed the dénoue­ment with its edi­to­r­i­al, ​“Sanders’ Plans Aren’t Just Too Good to Be True; They’re Also Fis­cal­ly Dan­ger­ous”. It’s here that the edi­tors of the Wash­ing­ton Post tip their hand:

That’s an inter­nal mat­ter for Democ­rats, to be sure, but also of inter­est to any­one who believes that polit­i­cal par­ties should offer real­is­tic solutions. In that sense, the prospect of a Sanders-ized plat­form is cause for con­cern. Mr. Sanders’ offer­ings to the Amer­i­can peo­ple are, quite sim­ply, too good to be true, and much less fea­si­ble, polit­i­cal­ly or admin­is­tra­tive­ly, than he lets on. More expen­sive, as well.

Why would so much ink be spilled on a can­di­date who, by the Post​’s esti­ma­tion, can’t pos­si­bly win? The objec­tive is, of course, to fur­ther stig­ma­tize Sanders’ ideas and plat­form goals — all of which are deeply anti­thet­i­cal to the edi­to­r­i­al and finan­cial bot­tom line of the paper and its sole own­er, Jeff Bezos, whose net worth is over $45 billion.

It’s not enough for Sanders to lose, as the Post​’s edi­to­r­i­al board has been express­ly root­ing for for months; his ideas and the influ­ence he main­tains in the par­ty must be snuffed out as well.