Does Bernie Really Think She's Unqualified? More Important, Do You?

I'm not saying I was ever any good at it but when I returned to America after nearly 7 years of living abroad, working as a journalist seemed like a good way to make a living-- at least until I could find a "real job." (I actually started as a photo-journalist but I saw that my editors valued the "captions" more than the photos.) You need some kind of a "license" to be a doctor or a lawyer or a teacher but you don't need anything to be a journalist... other than a pen. Pretty soon I was surrounded with journalists. I had moved to San Francisco and immersed myself in journalism world.

Overall, my colleagues seemed pretty insecure-- people who left their futures were shaky and their credentials were always open to challenge. Even the rebels-- obviously I gravitated to "the rebels"-- often seemed to crave recognition and approval from an Establishment they knew they would never be part of and they knew would always oppress them on some level. I found it an unattractive occupation and was grateful I was eventually able to avail myself of other opportunities.

Wednesday night, I was watching Maddow when I first heard Bernie had declared Hillary unqualified. She pimped it, nearly breathlessly, as "breaking news." Then, after a commercial break, she showed the video of Bernie not really saying anything very different from what he's been saying all along. That's it just below. Would Maddow walk back her sensationalistic intro after the video? Nope; she doubled down on it. And the rest of the corporate media was doing the same thing. This after a full day of Clinton Machine fulminations about "disqualifying" Bernie and a ruthless frontal attack of him ever since it became clear he would swamp her in Wisconsin by all her carefully scripted, unsavory surrogates.



As Sam Stein, a guy who doesn't give in to the insecurities so inherent in American journalism-- I never discovered the traits in British or Dutch journalists-- pointed out Thursday morning, Hillary's own 2008 statement about Obama was far more of what the journalists are trying to attribute to Bernie than anything in Bernie's statement. "I think that I have a lifetime of experience," she said, "that I will bring to the White House." (That's precisely what many Americans, aware of just what that lifetime of experience actually is, fear.) I know Senator McCain has a lifetime of experience to the White House. And Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002." That's Hillary. That's her sly, scripted dishonesty and her default position on qualifications. She was dismissing Obama's experiences as a community activist, as a state legislator, as a failed congressional candidate up against the political bosses she's so comfortable with, and as a U.S. Senator. At the time, her own experience had been primarily being a Republican, a Walmart board member, a corporate lawyer and then a first lady... and a very mediocre-- to be extremely kind-- U.S. Senator. Democratic voters eventually judged Obama's experience to be far more worthwhile than hers-- or, later, her buddy, McCain's.

When Hillary talks about "being a Democrat" (following her years of being a Republican-- of which she still claims she is so proud of and insists shaped where she stands on policy today), she's actually talking about using the Democratic Party apparatus and organization as a vehicle for her career aspirations. When Bernie talks about being a Democrat, he's talking about helping to perfect a set of values and principles that have served to make America great and to make the lives of working families more bearable. She defines what it means to be a DINO. He's the embodiment of what Democrats still were when she was still a Republican running around screaming that Nixon beat JFK and that the Democrats stole the election and then running for and winning the presidency of the Wellesley College Young Republicans.

A conversation Wednesday between Amy Goodman and Van Jones shed some more light on the two wings of the Democratic Party, the one based on careerism and the one based on values.

VAN: New York City is the war to settle the score inside the Democratic Party. The Clinton forces understand there is a rebellion in this party. Under ordinary circumstances, it would already be over, because the big donors would have taken the checks back. There are no big checks. This is a people’s movement. They are going to have to bury this movement in New York City, and they know it. You’re going to see a vetting of Bernie Sanders like you’ve never seen. You’re going to see the mainstream media go after him. Now there’s blood in the water on specifics. They’re going to go after him on specifics, you know, way beyond anything any candidate has had to address. And people are going to have to-- I mean, he’s going to have to step up his game, because you can’t, you know, write excuses for people. He’s got to be able to answer those tough questions.

But also, if you want for this Democratic Party to take progressive causes seriously, now is the time to speak out and get engaged. And for African Americans in particular, I want to say something. We are the only part of the so-called Obama coalition that has to give not 50 percent of our vote, not 60, not 70, not 80, not 90, but 92 percent of our vote in every presidential election, in order for Democrats to win. So, we are beyond a base vote. We are the decisive vote. If we give 85 percent of our vote to the Democrats, Republicans win. And so, we deserve to have a full hearing on all the issues that affect us, and hear from both candidates. And all of the history needs to be on the table to be vetted, for both candidates.

Even a robot knows what the real news was yesterday, which somehow didn't quite seem as sensational nor as worthy to Maddow as her-- and all her lemming-like, insecure colleagues'-- "breaking" non-story: