If you wanted to encapsulate the utter failure of the traditional media over the campaign season AND the ability of millions of people to ignore and tune out the shallowness of the media and soldier on to try to change the country (Cue media complaining “don’t blame us”), you could not find a better example in the events of last night.
Last night, Bernie went on-line to speak to tens of thousands of supporters about the next steps forward in the political revolution (I’m guessing tens of thousands more watched, like I did, on C-SPAN–heck, it’s a lot easier to look at this on a TV screen). He gives a weighty presentation about the future of the movement, the party and the country. You can read his full prepared comments here (and he mostly stuck precisely to the prepared text). He talked about ISSUES.
And he lambasted Donald Trump.
The media paid virtually no attention to the recitation of the issues and the challenges. None. And that’s a fairly good summary of the media’s behavior over the entire year. Go ahead, try this: walk up to any reporter (or as I like to call them, “transcribers of press releases”) and ask them, “can you explain, in any detail, any of Bernie’s policy proposals, or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton’s?”. When I mean in detail, beyond “he’s for free tuition”, for example.
They cannot. Because they don’t bother to read. They only traffic in gossip and the horse race.
And all they cared about was the completely irrelevant question: “when will Bernie drop out and endorse Hillary Clinton, and why didn’t he do that last night?” It’s irrelevant because it does not matter. It does not matter, even in the most narrow inside-the-Beltway, political class calculation, because the Republican Party is imploding every day and, thus, this almost obsessive need to “unify” and sing Kumbaya is entirely besides the point.
But, the reason I am crazily optimistic about the future of the political revolution is how people responded. They basically ignored the obsession by the elites–and the heads exploding from the direction of the status quo candidate’s supporters–about the “endorsement”. Here’s what happened.
During Bernie’s presentation, he said:
We need to start engaging at the local and state level in an unprecedented way. Hundreds of thousands of volunteers helped us make political history during the last year. These are people deeply concerned about the future of our country and their own communities. Now we need many of them to start running for school boards, city councils, county commissions, state legislatures and governorships. State and local governments make enormously important decisions and we cannot allow right-wing Republicans to increasingly control them.
I hope very much that many of you listening tonight are prepared to engage at that level. Please go to my website at berniesanders.com/win to learn more about how you can effectively run for office or get involved in politics at the local or state level. I have no doubt that with the energy and enthusiasm our campaign has shown that we can win significant numbers of local and state elections if people are prepared to become involved. I also hope people will give serious thought to running for statewide offices and the U.S. Congress.
And since last night, 6,700 signed up.
6,700. Please repeat that number: six thousand, seven hundred.
6,700 people said “I’ll think about running for office, to get involved, to change the country”.
6,700 people said they’ve had enough and don’t feel represented or they simply want to make a difference.
You think the media will cover that? This isn’t just crickets. It will be the sound you don’t hear in the void of deep space. For all the ruminations about voting and democracy, they don’t care–at least the coverage will not reflect it.
So, let me bow down once again and thank the activists of the political revolution. You amaze every day.
