The Resistance to Sanders Is Led by Cable News Anchors

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by Thomas Neuburger

There are growing signs that the resistance to [Sanders'] campaign will be led by cable news anchors.
—Alex Shepherd, The New Republic

The "Resistance" has been almost clichéd to death these days, bludgeoned into meaninglessness. Nancy Pelosi has been leading a "resistance" to Donald Trump that includes approving all of his spending and expanding all of his war and domestic spying powers.

"Every single day,"she wrote via Twitter, "I find myself asking: what do the Russians have on @realDonaldTrump personally, financially, & politically?" But that doesn't stop her and the rest of Democratic Party leadership from giving him almost all the money and power he wants, stopping only at approving the worst of his policy choices, such as war with Iran.

"Wow!" [Trump] said on Twitter. "All of our priorities have made it into the final NDAA: Pay Raise for our Troops, Rebuilding our Military, Paid Parental Leave, Border Security, and Space Force! Congress – don't delay this anymore! I will sign this historic defense legislation immediately!"

The establishment of the U.S. Space Force as the sixth Armed Service of the United States, under the Air Force, fulfills one of Trump's most high-profile requests.

Despite broad bipartisan support, a handful of left-leaning Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans opposed the measure because it did not include policy planks that would have restrained Trump's war powers, including a ban on support for Saudi Arabia's air campaign in Yemen.

Some "Resistance" to the man Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called "the most dangerous and worst man in the presidency we have ever had in the history of this nation."

The Real "Resistance"

The real resistance by Democratic leaders, of course, is to its own base of anti-Establishment voters, candidates and office-holders, a resistance that's been too well documented to be repeated here. One of those candidates, Bernie Sanders, is right now making a credible threat to take over the Party in the name of that anti-Establishment base — an outcome that all donor-defending Democrats look upon with horror.

But what can they do, aside from the odd and opportune tilting of the balance? If they declare outright war — instead of the obvious but pretend-covert war they're now waging — they risk making a mockery of their own battle cries, Blue No Matter Who and Unity Unity Unity.

Enter the next line of defense, the Party-supporting mainstream press, including and especially cable news channels CNN and MSNBC. The real resistance for now against the Sanders-led revolt against the swamp in which they all swim has been handed off to Chuck Todd, Jake Tapper and all the colleagues and "analysts" who occupy million-dollar seats on TV's cable news stations.

Alex Shepherd is by far the only person to have spotted this, but he's one of the few mainstream writers to point it out. In a piece for The New Republic, Shepherd says:

Bernie Sanders Has an MSNBC Problem

Cable news networks, particularly the "liberal" one, are a growing barrier to his surging campaign.

...Sanders has framed himself as an outsider, taking on the political establishment as a democratic socialist. But as he has surged in the polls—he now leads Biden with all voters—he is increasingly running up against another establishment: the media, and particularly cable news.

Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party was aided by a coup at Fox News. After some early turbulence, Fox quickly got in line and has become something like state TV, an echo chamber for the president’s point of view. Sanders has fewer natural allies in cable TV. In fact, the supposedly liberal network, MSNBC, has become a serious obstacle, pumping out Republican anti-Sanders talking points with increasing frequency.

After last Friday’s Democratic debate, Chris Matthews waxed apoplectic about what electing a socialist could mean for America. “I have an attitude towards [Fidel] Castro,” he said. “I believe if Castro and the Reds had won the Cold War there would have been executions in Central Park, and I might have been one of the ones getting executed. And certain other people would be there cheering, OK?” Matthews’s colleagues pointed out that Sanders was more of a Danish type of socialist than a Castro type of socialist, but to little avail.

Two days later, James Carville, Bill Clinton’s former campaign guru, went on Morning Joe to rant about how a Sanders nomination would bring about the apocalypse. Literally. “The only thing between the United States and the abyss is the Democratic Party,” he said. “That’s it. If we go the way of the British Labour Party, if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it’s going to be the end of days.” The same day, Chuck Todd, who also hosts NBC’s Meet the Press, read from an article from the right-wing website The Bulwark comparing supporters of Sanders, who is Jewish, to “brownshirts.”

And in the lead-up to Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary, Lawrence O’Donnell argued that the real story was that Bernie was losing momentum because his poll numbers were down from the last Democratic primary—even though he is now facing more than a half-dozen opponents, compared to 2016, when he faced one. “The story of the Sanders campaign so far this year is how much ground he’s lost from four years ago,” O’Donnell said. He also ignored the fact that Sanders is leading nationally, which wasn’t the case in 2016.

This is not a new phenomenon....

The Sanders surge is real. Most polling sites give him a greater chance to win the Democratic primary than any of his competitors, prognostications that have been validated by Sanders' clear win in New Hampshire, his arguable win in Iowa despite the obvious and questionable machinations of the Iowa Democratic Party (see "Orwell Goes to Iowa" for more), and the likelihood, as I write today, of his winning most of the Super Tuesday contests, including the one in delegate-rich California.

But as the Sanders campaign ups its game, the Cable News Resistance is upping theirs. Most recently, Chuck Todd has likened Sanders supporters to actual Nazis ("brownshirts"), and Chris Matthews, as Shepherd notes above, publicly fears being hung by the neck by Sanders-supporting "socialists" from a tree in Central Park, America's Place de la Concorde apparently.

The battle is clearly on. Who will win this "primary within the primary," this war of insiders against insurgents? Establishment-defending media, or the mass of voters (the actual real Resistance) who are putting their trust in Sanders to drain the DC swamp of creatures like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and yes, Chuck Todd and Chris Matthews?

Smart money is on Sanders to win the nomination (even David Plouffe agrees with that). If he does, how far will Establishment and donor defenders in the mainstream press, people like Chuck Todd, go to stop him in the general election?

Smart money is sitting that one out.