Regarding Bernie Blackout

So, many of you may have heard about the recent Vice documentary Bernie Blackout.  I recently saw it, and I have to say it's nice to know other people noticed the same thing as me.  I think they sum it up best with this one chart I grabbed from the show:

Screen clipping from the Vice Bernie Blackout Documentary.

I think it's really telling that every single time one of the news networks started talking about Bernie, it was phrased in a negative light.  For example, all candidates had about 2% of their supporters talk negatively about others online, but because Bernie had more supporters than all others combined, this lead to the invention of a false "Bernie Bro" narrative.  If he won a state, then it was somehow the smallest win in history.  They call this the Carl Rove strategy in the documentary, and I guess so, I don't really know to be honest.

Then there are the three spikes that occur in that bar graph: one the day before super tuesday, one at the end of super tuesday, and one on April 9th.  These are interesting because the largest spike, before super tuesday, the media chose to talk about everyone except Bernie.  Then the other two spikes were the two times where Bernie was talked about more than the others candidates; these were the day the media reported Bernie lost on super tuesday, and the day Bernie announced he was dropping out, proclaiming that Biden "won".

However, Biden didn't really win.  He was propped up by every other candidate that dropped out as well as the media narrative.  It's the same thing that happened with Hillary in 2016.  Bernie was filling stadiums with people he would bring to the Democratic Party; not the anti-Trump crowd that would vote Democrat no matter what, but people who have lost hope in our political system and would have voted for someone who actually believes what they are saying.  Those who are disenfranchised by people like Hillary and Biden.  The people who the Democratic Party doesn't care about.  People who actually believe in democracy.

Overall, I liked the documentary, and I think you should hop on over to Vice and watch it.  I felt that sort of tightness in your chest when someone is preaching to the choir of a repressed group; you know, it just kept tugging on my heart strings.  It pointed out a lot of things I felt were obvious.  Like the fact that people supported Bernie because he was promoting what they believed, not some evil old man putting ideas in their head.  It's why Hillary lost in 2016, and it's why I think Biden lost on April 9th.  Not because Bernie didn't support Biden, but because Biden (Hillary 2.0) doesn't stand for anything.

So, this is where I lose faith in our system again.  The same thing happened in 2016.  I had hopes for a candidate that would actually believe the purpose of government is to serve the people which is represents, but then we ended up with a choice between a douche and a turd sandwich.

Anyway... I guess that's my rant for now.

Later,

     SteveO