In a recent CounterPropa.com article, I explain that President Obama either bombed, sanctioned or sent American soldiers to the seven nations on President Trump’s travel ban. Thus, the precedent for Trump’s stance on refugees correlates directly to policies from the Bush and Obama years. These policies helped create the refugee crisis that Trump has so awkwardly addressed with his draconian executive order.
From Trump’s travel ban of Muslim majority nations to allegedly belligerent phone calls with world leaders, media and Democrats have reacted with outrage and disbelief. It’s as if the Democratic Party and loyal “lesser evil” voters didn’t think cheating Bernie Sanders would lead to such political turmoil. When Debbie Wasserman Shultz resigned from the DNC and friendly journalists covered-up the crime, it was too late; Bernie was forced out of the primary. The only chance for Democrats to defeat a populist Republican nominee, during an anti-establishment year in American politics, was destroyed along with Hillary’s yoga emails and Anthony Weiner’s self-portraits. Instead of addressing the causes of Clinton’s monumental collapse, Democrats have blamed Russia for influencing voters away from a candidate who faced endless scandal. In another CounterPropa piece, I highlight twenty-five reasons Democrats can’t blame Russia for Clinton’s loss to Trump.
The “most” qualified Hillary Clinton, complete with FBI criminal investigations and abysmal favorability numbers would eventually lose to a reality show star. Republicans now own Congress and the White House, all because Democrats and liberal media pushed with all their might for a losing candidate. Clinton was never positioned to defeat Trump, and I spent over one year warning the world in The Hill, Salon, and The Huffington Post.
These warnings were not only met with hostility, but any attempt at awakening the legions of Hillary supporters resulted in bullying, verbal harassment, and other vapid attempts at intimidation. Correct the Record didn’t spend $1 million for nothing.
So, enjoy President Trump, because Democrats worked hard to get him into the White House.
Take for example one of the Democratic Party’s most loyal journalists, Kurt Eichenwald. Before Democrats attacked Trump, they set their sights upon the only candidate capable of defeating the New York billionaire. Nothing epitomizes Democratic politics better than Mr. Eichenwald’s Newsweek article titled GET CONTROL, SENATOR SANDERS, OR GET OUT:
Violence. Death threats. Vile, misogynistic names screamed at women. Rage. Hatred. Menacing, anonymous phone calls to homes and offices. Public officials whisked offstage by security agents frightened of the growing mob. None of this has any place in a political campaign. And the candidate who has been tolerating this obscene behavior among his supporters is showing himself to be unfit for office. So, Senator Sanders, either get control of what is becoming your increasingly unhinged cult or get out of the race. Whatever respect sane liberals had for you is rapidly dwindling, and the damage being inflicted on your reputation may be unfixable. If you can’t even manage the vicious thugs who act in your name, you can’t be trusted to run a convenience store, much less the country.
…But Sanders has increasingly signaled that he is in this race for Sanders, and day after day shows himself to be a whining crybaby with little interest in a broader movement. His vicious—and often ridiculous—attacks on the party whenever he doesn’t win a contest have inspired a level of ignorant fanaticism among a large swath of his supporters that is becoming more akin to what might be seen at an out-of-control rally for Donald Trump. Signs are emerging that the Sanders campaign is transmogrifying into the type of movement through which tyrants are born.
Vicious thugs? Not many people would categorize Bernie’s campaign as “the type of movement through which tyrants are born.” In addition to the hyperbole, Eichenwald failed to provide the number of Bernie delegates arrested for violence and mayhem in Nevada.
This isn’t journalism. It’s public relations. It’s also the reason Democrats lost to Trump.
Every controversial decision Trump makes and each executive order should be correlated to Bernie Sanders being hounded by a “liberal” media beholden to Clinton. In addition to Eichenwald’s fantasy novel in Newsweek, The Washington Post’s David Fahrenthold wrote a piece titled How Bernie Sanders would transform the nation:
In the America that Bernie Sanders wants to create, tuition would be free for every student at every public college.
Which, of course, is another way of saying that the government would pay for it.
And with the government paying for college, colleges would run by government rules. Sanders’s rules. For one thing, Sanders thinks student centers are a waste of government money. He would make sure they did not get any more of it.
If he becomes president, Sanders would spend an enormous amount of money: $3.27 trillion. At the very, very least.
He is not just a big-spending liberal. His agenda is not just about money.
It’s also about control.
Bernie’s college plan was about control? Really? It’s amusing how Fahrenthold called Sanders a “big-spending liberal” without ever condemning Clinton’s decision to back free public college. Even long-time Clinton backer Robert Reich wrote articles defending Bernie Sanders from Fahrenthold’s faulty logic.
The key to understanding how Democrats win in 2018 and 2020 is to never forget what happened in 2016. There’s a reason states that voted for Obama twice chose Trump over Hillary, and these reasons have nothing to do with Vladimir Putin. Rather than ignoring the lessons of 2016, Democratic voters should always correlate President Trump with Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
In addition to Eichenwald and Fahrenthold, American media was full of friendly journalists eager to undermine Bernie in favor of Clinton. The list of hit pieces and condescending articles are endless, but let’s focus on The Daily Beast.
The Daily Beast is the most loyal of all the public relations firms associated with Hillary Clinton. To say its writers live in a centrist neoliberal bubble (where Hillary never called black youth superpredators or engaged in racist tactics against Obama in 2008) would be an understatement. This cult-like mentality surrounding Clinton’s candidacy is exemplified by a Michael Tomasky piece titled It’s All Over but the Shouting: Hillary Clinton Crushed Bernie Sanders:
It’s time for the guy with some of the Democratic vote to gracefully give way to the woman with much more of it.
So forgive me for being a little confused about why these margins give Bernie Sanders such “leverage” in what we presume to be his looming negotiations with Hillary Clinton over the future of the party of which he’s not a member.
Is there precedent for the losing candidate demanding that the winning candidate prove her bona fides to his voters? I sure can’t think of any.
Hillary didn’t “crush” anyone, the DNC cheated Bernie. Someone should remind Daily Beast writers that Debbie Wasserman Schultz reigned from the DNC for a reason; they were never neutral. We’ve yet to see Hillary Clinton face Sanders in a neutral Democratic Primary, without debate questions being leaked to Clinton. The woman with “more of the Democratic vote” eventually spent $1.2 billion dollars losing the Electoral College to a man who was caught on tape making disgusting remarks about women. It must be tough being part of the Democratic public relations machine, knowing that every Clinton scandal resulted in a Trump presidency. Combine that with the knowledge that Bernie Sanders was cheated for a candidate who lost to Trump and we have the autopsy of an election buried with regret.
The fact that Clinton didn’t address the concerns of Bernie voters is one of the many reasons Democrats lost. In addition, Bernie Sanders would have defeated Trump because Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania haven’t voted for a GOP candidate since the 1980’s. With a united Democratic Party around a populist candidate like Bernie Sanders (if that’s possible with a Democratic Party influenced by neocons and corporate lobbyists), these states would have again voted Democrat.
Have Democrats learned? Hardly. Now Chelsea Clinton is poised to take control of the Democratic Party, as I explain here. With the Clinton dynasty one of the causes of Trump’s White House, it’s bizarre to see Democrats rally around Chelsea Clinton.
Ignoring the past means repeating the same mistakes in the future. If Democrats elect a centrist in 2020, America will get eight years of Trump. Remember during the media frenzy of the next four years all the reasons Hillary Clinton lost to Trump. Before attacking Trump, Democrats attacked Bernie Sanders. Now we have President Trump, when we could have had President Sanders. Blame Democrats, not Vladimir Putin or WikiLeaks for the DNC cheating Bernie and rallying around a candidate under FBI criminal investigation.
H. A. Goodman is the creator of CounterPropa.com and the thoughts above are inspired by his new publication.
