The Media Is Waking Up to a Possible Bernie Victory. Get Ready for the Backlash.
Mainstream pundits have recently realized what the rest of us have known all along: Bernie Sanders could actually win this thing. Don’t be surprised that every institution invested in the status quo will soon do everything possible to prevent both a Bernie Sanders nomination and a general election victory.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a town hall at the National Motorcycle Museum on January 3, 2020 in Anamosa, Iowa.Stephen Maturen / Getty
For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, something unusual occurred in the final weeks of 2019. As the Democratic nomination race finally spluttered towards Iowa and New Hampshire the media’s posture towards Bernie Sanders — typically some mix of erasure and downright contempt — seems to have turned ever so slightly towards the positive.
Though hardly the fawning treatment some of the contest’s other candidates have received, there has been a small but discernible shift in both television and newspaper coverage of the Sanders campaign (or, at any rate a brief lull in the usual media hostility).
The most likely explanation is that the nation’s poll-obsessive pundits have finally started to heed the numbers the rest of us have been staring at for months and are coming around, however dimly, to the reality that Sanders does indeed have a real shot — perhaps a very good shot — at winning the Democratic nomination.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.