Bernie Sanders flounders in 2016 vs Hillary Clinton, blames the media

By Will Stabley | May 26, 2015

Bernie Sanders has been given every opportunity to deliver his 2016 campaign message in the media, and now that it still hasn’t helped him in the polls against Hillary Clinton, he’s blaming the media for his flailing campaign. Liberals who admire him, no matter what they think of his ill fated campaign, must hate watching him unravel like this. He’s been invited onto every talk show and given a chance to share his good ideas. But he’s a fringe candidate with no chance of winning his own party’s nomination. He expects the media to decide his ideas are the best, tell the public to vote for him, and run his campaign for him.

Sanders would do well to take a look at Elizabeth Warren, who largely shares his views, and similarly would have no chance of winning a presidential election under current finance rules. Neither is willing to accept the corporate contributions required in order to fund a proper campaign and get their message out through television ads. But while he’s wasting time running a campaign that no one in the mainstream is listening to, she’s quietly using her power behind the scenes to steer the actual democratic candidate Hillary Clinton toward more progressive stances on economic reform. That’s actual, tangible change which will end up benefiting real people if and when Hillary wins.

On the other hand Bernie Sanders doesn’t seem to understand how politics and influence work. Just because you have the best ideas in a vacuum, it doesn’t mean you win, or that people are even willing to listen to you. Instead of using his accumulated influence as a senator to steer the party closer to his ideas, he’s decided he’s the only one who can single handedly change things. He’s suddenly riding around like Don Quixote and can’t figure out why so few are taking his windmill-tilting seriously.

It’s probably not a coincidence that so many of the people cheering on his candidacy don’t seem to understand how politics works either. They think if they just believe in him strongly enough, he’ll magically win. They’ve put no thought into what happens to the real election once his campaign predictably folds after not having made a dent, other than convincing themselves and some fellow liberals that Hillary Clinton is too imperfect to be electable. The rest of the democratic base can only hope once they’re done tilting at windmills of their own, they’ll come back to reality and conclude that Hillary is significantly closer to their views and values than any republican candidate.