Media Fawn Over Biden's Super Tuesday Wins, Worry Sanders' Base Won't Come Out for Nominee
I never pictured having too much hesitancy seeing socialism get electorally thrashed and watching media talking heads loving it. And yet, there I was Super Tuesday night, strangely of two minds as most of our mainstream media outlets celebrated the Lazarus-like resurrection of Joeseph Robinette Biden.
On one hand, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is an extremely dangerous man. I know Trump fans were pretty excited about the prospect of running against the democratic socialist in November during that one week when we all agreed he was going to be the nominee. To that, I remind you that Hillary Clinton desperately wanted to run against Donald Trump in 2016.
It might be easier for Republicans to beat Bernie. That said, his nomination would also increase the chances a man who openly praised Cuba during a Democratic debate and who’s had kind words for every tinpot Marxist dictator who’s ever taken over a nation would be in residency at the White House.
Sanders getting thumped (along with Sanders Lite, the equally dangerous Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts) is a victory for baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and capitalism.
Seeing the barely contained glee on the faces of every major-network news anchor and pundit Tuesday night, then, should have made me obscenely happy. Instead, I was left wondering why they were obscenely happy that Joe Biden won nine states, including huge upsets in Massachusetts and Minnesota.
It wasn’t hard to guess.
The mood of the night was best exemplified by James Carville making an appearance on MSNBC.
I know, I know — Carville doesn’t pretend to be a voice of objectivity. This is a guy who’s been a vocal, tellin’-it-like-it-is-Cajun vocal moderate liberal Democrat since he helped Bill Clinton get elected in 1992. What am I supposed to expect out of his election night analysis?
Perhaps not that Democratic House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn “saved the Democratic Party” by endorsing Joe Biden before the South Carolina primary. In his appearance, Carville became the latest to magically attribute this single endorsement to literally everything that happened in South Carolina and subsequently on Super Tuesday.
“That guy literally saved the Democratic Party,” Carville said after giving Clyburn a military salute.
“I think we’re going to see obviously Bloomberg and Warren are not long for this world. And I think what we might be starting to see, and I’d like someone on the panel to weigh in on this, we might see Democrats starting to ask Sanders to, ‘look let’s don’t drag this thing out any more than we have to.’
“People want to get on to the general election. They want to get on to defeating Donald Trump. And I think Sanders showing tonight, hardly any showing with the African-Americans, our most loyal constituency, and our most exciting new constituency, and that is these educated white women — he showed nothing. And if we’re going to beat Donald Trump, we can’t be lollygagging around here much longer because it seems like the party is making a decision.”
It’s an interesting take and one that requires a little bit of processing. Why, precisely, did Clyburn save the Democratic Party? What did he save it from?
The answer seems to be he saved it from losing another presidential election. Why would Bernie lose a presidential election? Talking about stuff like that doesn’t seem to be Carville’s bag.
(To be fair, Carville previously struck back at Sanders’ accusation that he was a political hack by saying, “That’s exactly who the f— I am! I am a political hack! I am not an ideologue. I am not a purist. He thinks it’s a pejorative. I kinda like it! At least I’m not a communist.” This, however, seemed to be more out of irritation with the Vermont senator than out of any great disdain for Marxism.)
The barely concealed ebullience on MSNBC’s set is probably best exemplified by stats geek Steve Kornacki, who gave off the air of a guy who maybe had something stronger than espresso:
.@SteveKornacki on Joe Biden leading in Minnesota returns: “If you had polled Minnesota two weeks ago, I’m not sure Biden would have been getting a single delegate out of the state.” #TrackingKornacki pic.twitter.com/BXhWlyWCjD
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) March 4, 2020
“It looks like the Mike-mentum of two weeks ago became Joe-mentum.” — @SteveKornacki #SuperTuesday truth!! #TeamJoe #Biden2020
— Stephanie Kennedy (@WordswithSteph) March 4, 2020
Remember how excited everyone was in November 2016 when it was Donald Trump on the receiving end of all of this surprise electoral manna? No?
Perhaps my hesitancy could best be summed up by a back-and-forth on CNN where the panel discussed young voters’ preference for Sanders and whether they would walk away from the party come general election time.
Jake Tapper, in one of the more sober moments of the night, noted this: “But that schism, the idea that younger people love Sanders and older people love Biden, is one that actually potentially bodes ill for the Democratic nominee. Because one of those guys probably is going to win. But where do those other voters go for?”
“Or do they go?” Dana Bash said. “I mean, that was the question that got answered in a negative way for Hillary Clinton four years ago. Because you had the same generational divide in 2016, and a lot of those voters were so disaffected that they stayed home.”
Later in the clip, we have former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a corporate establishment type, expressing extreme concern over the fact that, “when Pete [Buttigieg] got out yesterday, you know, Sanders called him corporate establishment. That is not the way to build and unify this party.”
There were moments during the night where members of various panels would touch upon the fact that some voters found socialism repellent. They never really touched on socialism being repellent. There’s a big difference between those two.
Bernie Sanders is the first major Democratic presidential challenger to go up on a debate stage and offer qualified praise for Castro’s Cuba. He refused to back down from openly supporting Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, another murderous thug of the left. His fiscal policies are appalling and unsustainable.
Nobody was worried about that. They were worried about party unity. This wasn’t about principles, just that the party was drifting to the left faster than the electorate wanted. This was about getting someone who could beat Donald Trump.
If the liberal media and the Democrat talking heads that dragged out for election nights don’t get why Bernie Sanders’ brand of Marxism is so unelectable, they haven’t been paying attention for the last century or so.
The Democratic Party had better hope that Joe Biden gets it. If not, it’s not going to matter much who’s on the top of the ticket this fall.
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