State media’s big challenge

State media—those loving Klaxons of progressive establishment talking points—has its work cut out for it: Hillary is becoming the old flame and Bernie, the new thrill. Can the fling last?

{mosads}Sen. Sanders (I-Vt.) comes across as the loving but angry grandfather who seeks only the betterment of the generations after him, but his formulaic prescriptions are truly of the past and not of the future. There’s nothing new, and little that’s positive. Let’s take a look. On his official campaign website, there are three areas of focus, presumably the most important:

1. Income and Wealth Inequality. He starts by misleading us, stating the economy is much better than when George Bush left office, a suggestion that times were terrible for Bush’s entire tenure. The rest of his verbiage is about the rich getting richer and breaking up the banks. The tiresome socialist implication is there’s only so much wealth and the 1 percent are taking it from the rest of us, a falsehood those on the top rungs of the Darwinian ladder know not to be the case. In his speeches, but not on his website, he says he will tax “the rich” at 90 percent and give a free college education to everyone by taxing each 401k transaction. There isn’t one solitary syllable about good job creation or limiting the illegal, cheap labor influx (which depresses wages and further isolates blacks and the poor).
2. Getting Big Money Out Of Politics. Laudable as this objective may be, Bernie seeks only to overturn Citizens United, which allows corporations to contribute to political candidates. While some may see what the Koch boys propose as a bit over the top, what about contributions by big labor unions, the likes of George Soros, and the incalculable donation of services by “state media” in support of progressive candidates and causes? He doesn’t mention those. Oh, it’s rigged, alright.
3. Climate Change and Environment. Here, Bernie wants to tax carbon and methane emissions, takes credit for opposition to the Keystone pipeline, and dispense several billions for retrofitting buildings. Presumably the last proposal would create the jobs that the first two destroy.

Bernie has roused the young in the same way that Eugene McCarthy did some decades ago, and free college tuition and a clean environment give them something to make noise about. Yet, it is doubtful the legions of college students have wondered if the value of a proposed free college education (no doubt controlled at the federal level) would be the same as say, the current state of public school literacy and achievement in the United States. Too, have many wondered about the greater merit in requiring everyone to finish high school before considering more free stuff of questionable worth? Have many noticed that with voluntary recycling programs supported by over 90 percent of Americans, more has been accomplished to clean up the environment and the air than by government programs?

“State media” has begun to champion Bernie’s crusade because of the vast, nasty aromas emanating from the Clinton caravan. HRC knows that for the general election sixteen months hence, she will have to appeal to centrist as well as base concerns, and Bernie’s noises can only serve to drag her to the left, a position where media mavens will see her as a purer standard bearer—if she survives. One writer has referred to “the media wave lifting Sanders and raising doubts about Clinton…,” a telling acknowledgement that a State Media appellation is just not one writer’s contrivance.

Interestingly, most Americans hope the candidate they choose for the presidency will serve two terms. HRC’s birthday is 10/26/47, which means that just before the election, she’ll turn 69, while Bernie, born 9/8/41, will likewise enjoy his 75^th birthday. They’d leave office at 77 and 83, respectively. The Greatest Generation, they are not. Aricept, anyone?

Warren is a commentator residing in western Pennsylvania. His novels about presidential politics are Turnover and TurnAround.