Bernie Sanders for the win.

Hey all one or two of my reader(s).

So I had a swell time drinking coffee and eating tiny spanakopita tarts at the Casbah Cafe dem debate viewing party, one of billions organized by Bernie Sanders supporters.  Bernie is running a campaign that is about drumming up participation in our (maybe not hopelessly rigged, if most people were to vote) political system MORE THAN IT IS ABOUT GETTING ELECTED. There is no arguing with this. Sanders is the real deal. Whether you know it or not, you are witnessing history made here. No one has had the balls to challenge the status quo like this and run it all the way to a White House bid, at least not in my lifetime. Pay attention.

Anyone who has ever been in the same room with me knows I am a steadfast political progressive and should be completely unsurprised to hear of my enthusiastic support of the famous filibustering unkempt anti-corporate union-supporting Vermonter Bernie Sanders. You should also be relatively unsurprised to hear that if Hillary wins the democratic primary I will (slightly grudgingly) vote for her (and be happy that a woman has finally made it to the White House, but will not mistake that for an end to the almost comical American glass ceiling). And if a teletubby won the nomination, I would vote for it rather than whoever ends up on the GOP ticket. If only one person could be coerced into running for president, and as a republican, I would WRITE IN A TELETUBBY rather than vote for a republican.

Not so sure about this Jim Webb character .... but anyhow.

Also it would be pretty funny to see the Onion article entitled "Woman given nation's worst domestic job" or whatever, if Hillary won.

The point obviously, guys, is to win. Everyone debating tonight was on board with this. Let's not let a republican into the White House.  Enough old rich white jerks legislating on women's reproductive rights and voting (invariably!) against equal pay for women. Enough trickle-down economics tall tales. Enough ignoring science, consumer safety, and our nation's poor and legislating for the best interests of Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Oil and the prison industrial complex.  Enough of the Koch Brothers and all their tendrils (ALEC, Americans for Prosperity, & whatever they are "rebranding" themselves these days) - the richest Americans writing legislation that keeps them rich and then handing it to legislators whose campaigns they funded ...  although the only candidate who will actually challenge these conventions (instead of just suggesting that he will and then, once elected, pander to lobbyists and campaign financiers and maybe try in vain to "reach across the aisle" to the cold clammy hand that the GOP will yank away in response) is Bernie. There is no other. It is all about this man.

While I hope everyone will engage with this election, the point of this post is to express a gigantic disconnect I have noticed in campaign reporting.

You know how the media has been doing a great job of more or less ignoring Bernie, painting him as a fringe candidate, in some cases omitting him completely from articles and so on? And then basically gaslighting - or completely ignoring feedback - when people point this out? I have read articles on the democratic race in which ALL OF the reader comments are irritated remarks about how Bernie Sanders is not being represented in the article. ALL. 100% of the comments.  Yet: the best representation of Bernie that you will usually see in a major media article is that he's a nice (if frumpy) whimsical addition to the race because he is going to pull (the not especially progressive) Hillary Clinton a little further to the left.

I have begun to suspect I am not imaging this, that mainstream media is almost conspiring to actually suppress enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders. (Why aren't they doing this with that nutjob Trump? I have heard him referred to without comment as the GOP frontrunner.)

Back to last night's debate. (It will be around 1 a.m. on Wednesday when I post this.) Who won the debate? Funny you should ask. When I typed this query into google, I got Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary Hillary (followed by a positive critique of her stage poise, basically - it wasn't unlike flipping through a post-awards show best / worst red carpet outfits blog). When I typed in: "who won the democratic debate poll" I got something else entirely.

Here are the screenshots of ALL the polls I could find:

For posterity.

Now watch all the morning papers proclaim Hillary as the clear winner. Really, she won ... the mani cam.

Don't forget to vote.

love, Kate