DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES’ MEDIA PROBLEM

We are now, mere days away from the important Iowa caucuses that play a major role in who will secure the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in November. That nominee will run against President Trump in the general election; however, some candidates are already feeling the heat of the campaign.

In the last televised Democratic debate, the media made an event out of the alleged incident in which Bernie Sanders told Elizabeth Warren that a woman can’t win as a president. Sanders, a supporter of women in politics throughout his career, denied saying that.

What made rounds in the media was the amount of attention this story got. It felt like some sort of coordinated effort to stir up controversy and drama before the caucuses. 

Since the beginning of his run for president, Joe Biden was the top candidate to attack because of his huge amount of support. Over time, that support has gone down enough for contenders like Warren and Sanders to cut Biden’s lead. His record and policy inconsistency has been on display and attacked by candidates such as Sanders, because their policy ideas are at odds with each other.  

Meantime, dramatic attacks, leaks and faux scandals have been pushed by media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC, particularly with “outsider” candidates like Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard and Sanders. Since announcing his campaign, Sanders has been criticized by those media outlets for reasons that they can’t seem to pinpoint and tell their audience.

It’s easy to criticize Biden because his policy blunders are on display with the Iraq War and the Wall Street bailout, but the media can’t look toward policy inconsistency in order to criticize Sanders. Instead, the media questions his identity as an old white man. Occasionally they ask him the classic “How are we going to pay for all the free stuff?” question in each of the debates, but that question has been answered in every debate by him since the start of the 2016 election. He and all of the other candidates are tired of that question.

It’s no secret that the establishment media and politicians aren’t a fan of Bernie. But, Yang and Gabbard have been largely ignored by the media, going as far as (along with the Democratic National Committee) to not include them in recent debates. The candidates that have cozied up to the media have included Pete Buttigieg, Amy Kloubachar, Biden (somewhat) and Warren. What all of those candidates have in common is that they’ve taken corporate money or are taking big0-dollar donations; the ones who aren’t are the candidates that are ignored.

I predict the results of the Iowa caucus on Feb. 3 aren’t going to matter as much as the amount of drama around it – and, just like last election, this will translate directly to the general election.