YR ALL GONNA BERN
Dec. 21st, 2015 04:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrog[tl;dr commentary from Team Frog Political Conspiracy Mocker-In-Chief Lucky Bensonhurst]
Of all the standard political conspiracy theories, one of my favorites is this:
The Mainstream Media is actively conspiring against my candidate.
I’ve get this one from a number of Bernie Sanders supporters who are convinced Hillary Clinton has the media in her pocket because the polls showing he’s losing are obviously rigged because my Twitter feed of people I follow is full of support for Bernie and a poll of Salon readers shows most people want Bernie to be POTUS so it’s obvious the media is paid by Hillary to rig the polls and write hit pieces on Bernie to make sure his numbers don’t improve because WHAT OTHER EXPLANATION COULD THERE POSSIBLY BE, MAN.
I’m having fun here, so don’t take that summary too seriously. A lot of Bernie fans probably don't say this – at least not verbatim. But I do see a lot of posts that run along these lines. Some of them – like this one here – don’t come right out with the “conspiracy” word, but the gist is that The Mainstream Media is trying to convince you that Bernie is going to lose because they don’t want him to win.
I have a hard time taking guff like this seriously, in part because I spent a lot of time listening to conservative talk radio in the 90s where media conspiracy theories were a daily topic (only it was The Liberal Media, not Corporate Media, but it was the exact same media, so okay). And frankly, Bern supporters who run with the "The Mainstream Media Is In Hillary's Pocket" meme sound awfully similar.
Also, c’mon – I know how people get about politicians they really really support on a deep ideological level. You evaluate everything they do and say – and their chances of winning – based on (1) how much you agree with them and (2) how much you really want them to win – so much so that it becomes INCONCEIVABLE that he/she could possibly be losing fairly.
I’ll note too that many of these accusations tend to come from media outlets with a decidedly blatant liberal bias who have a stake in this game and have made perfectly clear who they want to win (i.e. Bernie Sanders). The Mainstream Media may or may not be biased in favor of Hillary – more than likely they’re biased in favor of whatever generates ratings and clicks, and portraying Sanders as the underdog is one way to do that.
By contrast, however, blatantly partisan media like Salon and Daily Kos are most decidedly (and loudly) biased in favor of Bernie, which I suspect may be why Bernie supporters trust them more than the Mainstream Media. (It’s the same dynamic at play between conservative voters and Fox News, Breitbart, etc, and I would advise liberals to pause and have a careful think about that for a moment.)
It’s also possibly why the people making these allegations typically tend to back up their assertions by, say, pointing out how many Facebook likes/Twitter followers Bernie has, or how Hillary isn’t a REAL liberal like Bernie. Both may be true, but they don’t prove the Mainstream Media is conspiring against him – it just proves they’re not telling the narrative Bernie fans want to hear, or in the way they want to hear it.
Am I saying the polls are right and Bernie is doomed? Not really. It’s certainly true that polls don't decide the election, and as has been pointed out, this isn’t the first time everyone thought Hillary had the Demo nomination locked up until the primaries started. Just as Donald Trump’s fairly consistent lead doesn’t really add up to a sure win, Hillary’s even more consistent lead doesn’t ensure that she’ll win.
However, she does have substantial backing from her own party. And traditionally, that matters. Then again, there’s admittedly very little traditional about this election. It’s always possible that the old rules for predicting likely outcomes no longer apply.
If it helps, West Illinois University declared Bernie the winner of its 2016 mock election, defeating Jeb! Bush by a whopping 404 electoral votes to 114 – which is also being offered as “proof” that Bernie will win and the media won’t admit it, in part because WIU has been doing this since 1975 and they’ve been 100% accurate every time.
The thing is, when you actually look at the WIU site, you learn a couple of details that some Bernie fans forwarding that story neglect to mention:
1. WIU may have been doing this since 1975, but they haven’t done every election in that time period – they only did mock elections for 1976, 1988, 2008 and 2012.
2. For the ’88 election they actually picked Dole over GHW Bush as the GOP nominee (albeit by only one vote). Also, they generally don’t get the number of electoral votes right. So the “100% accuracy” claim is pretty narrowly defined.
In any case, I’m bookmarking that one for future reference, because right now the idea of this being a Bernie vs Jeb! Race is a little hard to believe. And even if the nomination predictions are correct, I don’t believe for a second Sanders can pull 404 electorial votes – not unless the GOP campaign rhetoric escalates into into levels of batshit even GOP members can no longer countenance. Which would be saying something – when you get into “If elected I promise to kill as many innocent civilians as it takes to stop ISIS,” yr pretty much painting yrself into the corner labeled “nuke Syria b/w Auschwitz for Muslims”. And you’d get none of that with a Jeb! nomination, so I doubt Bernie would have that as an advantage.
But could Bernie still win this? Sure.
Is it likely? Not as likely as Hillary winning at this stage, but the odds aren’t so stacked against him that he might as well quit now.
Does the possibility that he could win prove that the polls are rigged and the media is in Hillary’s pocket and actively trying to scuttle Bernie’s campaign to ensure she gets elected?
Only to people so in love with Bernie and his pure ideology that they’re incapable of believing he could lose to the point that they’ll believe just about any conspiracy theory that “explains” his numbers.
– L. Bensonhurst
Of all the standard political conspiracy theories, one of my favorites is this:
The Mainstream Media is actively conspiring against my candidate.
I’ve get this one from a number of Bernie Sanders supporters who are convinced Hillary Clinton has the media in her pocket because the polls showing he’s losing are obviously rigged because my Twitter feed of people I follow is full of support for Bernie and a poll of Salon readers shows most people want Bernie to be POTUS so it’s obvious the media is paid by Hillary to rig the polls and write hit pieces on Bernie to make sure his numbers don’t improve because WHAT OTHER EXPLANATION COULD THERE POSSIBLY BE, MAN.
I’m having fun here, so don’t take that summary too seriously. A lot of Bernie fans probably don't say this – at least not verbatim. But I do see a lot of posts that run along these lines. Some of them – like this one here – don’t come right out with the “conspiracy” word, but the gist is that The Mainstream Media is trying to convince you that Bernie is going to lose because they don’t want him to win.
I have a hard time taking guff like this seriously, in part because I spent a lot of time listening to conservative talk radio in the 90s where media conspiracy theories were a daily topic (only it was The Liberal Media, not Corporate Media, but it was the exact same media, so okay). And frankly, Bern supporters who run with the "The Mainstream Media Is In Hillary's Pocket" meme sound awfully similar.
Also, c’mon – I know how people get about politicians they really really support on a deep ideological level. You evaluate everything they do and say – and their chances of winning – based on (1) how much you agree with them and (2) how much you really want them to win – so much so that it becomes INCONCEIVABLE that he/she could possibly be losing fairly.
I’ll note too that many of these accusations tend to come from media outlets with a decidedly blatant liberal bias who have a stake in this game and have made perfectly clear who they want to win (i.e. Bernie Sanders). The Mainstream Media may or may not be biased in favor of Hillary – more than likely they’re biased in favor of whatever generates ratings and clicks, and portraying Sanders as the underdog is one way to do that.
By contrast, however, blatantly partisan media like Salon and Daily Kos are most decidedly (and loudly) biased in favor of Bernie, which I suspect may be why Bernie supporters trust them more than the Mainstream Media. (It’s the same dynamic at play between conservative voters and Fox News, Breitbart, etc, and I would advise liberals to pause and have a careful think about that for a moment.)
It’s also possibly why the people making these allegations typically tend to back up their assertions by, say, pointing out how many Facebook likes/Twitter followers Bernie has, or how Hillary isn’t a REAL liberal like Bernie. Both may be true, but they don’t prove the Mainstream Media is conspiring against him – it just proves they’re not telling the narrative Bernie fans want to hear, or in the way they want to hear it.
Am I saying the polls are right and Bernie is doomed? Not really. It’s certainly true that polls don't decide the election, and as has been pointed out, this isn’t the first time everyone thought Hillary had the Demo nomination locked up until the primaries started. Just as Donald Trump’s fairly consistent lead doesn’t really add up to a sure win, Hillary’s even more consistent lead doesn’t ensure that she’ll win.
However, she does have substantial backing from her own party. And traditionally, that matters. Then again, there’s admittedly very little traditional about this election. It’s always possible that the old rules for predicting likely outcomes no longer apply.
If it helps, West Illinois University declared Bernie the winner of its 2016 mock election, defeating Jeb! Bush by a whopping 404 electoral votes to 114 – which is also being offered as “proof” that Bernie will win and the media won’t admit it, in part because WIU has been doing this since 1975 and they’ve been 100% accurate every time.
The thing is, when you actually look at the WIU site, you learn a couple of details that some Bernie fans forwarding that story neglect to mention:
1. WIU may have been doing this since 1975, but they haven’t done every election in that time period – they only did mock elections for 1976, 1988, 2008 and 2012.
2. For the ’88 election they actually picked Dole over GHW Bush as the GOP nominee (albeit by only one vote). Also, they generally don’t get the number of electoral votes right. So the “100% accuracy” claim is pretty narrowly defined.
In any case, I’m bookmarking that one for future reference, because right now the idea of this being a Bernie vs Jeb! Race is a little hard to believe. And even if the nomination predictions are correct, I don’t believe for a second Sanders can pull 404 electorial votes – not unless the GOP campaign rhetoric escalates into into levels of batshit even GOP members can no longer countenance. Which would be saying something – when you get into “If elected I promise to kill as many innocent civilians as it takes to stop ISIS,” yr pretty much painting yrself into the corner labeled “nuke Syria b/w Auschwitz for Muslims”. And you’d get none of that with a Jeb! nomination, so I doubt Bernie would have that as an advantage.
But could Bernie still win this? Sure.
Is it likely? Not as likely as Hillary winning at this stage, but the odds aren’t so stacked against him that he might as well quit now.
Does the possibility that he could win prove that the polls are rigged and the media is in Hillary’s pocket and actively trying to scuttle Bernie’s campaign to ensure she gets elected?
Only to people so in love with Bernie and his pure ideology that they’re incapable of believing he could lose to the point that they’ll believe just about any conspiracy theory that “explains” his numbers.
– L. Bensonhurst
