Sanders and Trump: How the Political and Media Establishment Got 2016 So Wrong

[Uncle Joe]

Perhaps the biggest story coming out of campaign 2016 is not the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, but the fact that the media and political establishment never saw it coming. And the fact that they never saw it coming perfectly explains the rise of Sanders and Trump.

And here’s why: the economic and social wreckage wrought by the Great Recession of 2007-2009, which flatlined the lives and aspirations of so many, barely registered on the lifestyle Richter scale of media and political heavies.

Some of these elites may have seen their bull market portfolios or 401(k) plans dip, and for those trying to sell vacation homes they saw demand soften a bit. But as economic growth recovered so did their assets, and for the most part the recession to them was a talking point, a dinner party topic.

Not so for the vast majority of Americans. The recession’s economic pandemic may have caused the establishment only seasonal sniffles, but it has had an ongoing, debilitating and personal impact on working and middle-class Americans. And to young people raised to believe in a buoyant America and bigger future, a pinched economy is all they have known.

Those who owned homes saw their property values crater and with it the economic security embedded in the American Dream that homeownership used to represent. Eight years after the real estate bubble burst, 13 out of every 100 homeowners remain seriously underwater on their mortgages, meaning that they owe a lot more than their homes are worth.

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http://billmoyers.com/story/sanders-and-trump-how-the-political-and-media-establishment-got-2016-so-wrong/#.VsTjPaGmxNY.twitter

I believe this is an excellent analysis.

[PatrickforO]

1. Everyone expects the game to be rigged to a degree. It always has been,

after all. It's just that people are now profoundly angry at the extent to which the game has become rigged, because it is now nearly impossible to get ahead. See, that's the key. People are willing to work their asses off as long as there's some kind of hope for a better future. But when the economy is as imbalanced as it is now, there is no better future, just lots of hard work to keep from going down the drain.

People are sick of it. They are sick of not having reasonable economic security. They are tired of their purchasing power going down while CEOs yacht around the Mediterranean and tell us that the retirement age must be raised. They are sick of the constant attacks against their pensions, Social Security and Medicare. They are tired of watching their children like so many hamsters running in wheels, going faster and faster but not arriving anywhere. Just tire.

Bernie offers real hope.

[Uncle Joe]

2. Here is a nice video depicting how imbalanced it has become.

[KoKo]

9. ....!

[Senator Tankerbell]

3. Corporate media is a huge problem.

Most of the pundits you see are millionaires. Most of the debate moderators are millionaires. I think there should be a rule that whenever some pundit or "expert" comes on TV, they should have a little graphic pop up showing their net worth, annual income, employers, conflicts of interest, etc. Then we would know where everyone is coming from.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

4. And from what I've seen, a number of Hillary supporters still cling to the idea that

'Obama saved the economy!' and that things are wonderful again, as witness the employment rates. While ignoring the labor participation rates, and the fact that among even those who are employed again, many are employed for far less than they were before, often in more menial jobs. They cannot admit that the path chosen to 'save the economy' was a RW path, designed by Obama's Republican economic team to specifically help the wealthiest first, and drop a few crumbs along the way to the little people.

In my town, property values dropped to 1990's levels, and have never recovered. I've lost 20% in value even though I bought long before prices started bubbling up. And now that I finally found some contract work again, I'm making 30% of what I used to make in salary before Obama was elected, after having made a few thousand total over the first seven years of his Presidency.

The recovery passed a LOT of us by without even a nod.

[Blue_Tires]

5. They never saw Trump coming??

[Jim Lane]

6. Most of the media experts thought that Trump would surge briefly then flame out.

The 2012 race was notable for having a succession of I'm-Not-Romneys, each of whom rose rapidly to the top of the polls and then crashed. People expected Trump to follow the path of Herman Cain et al. (Many of the experts did, and I personally thought they were right.)

Very few experts saw Trump coming close in Iowa, winning New Hampshire, and leading in the nationwide polling for several months after his entry into the race.

[Blue_Tires]

7. Which is why they've been giving him

The lion's share of the spotlight since day one?

[Jim Lane]

8. That's part of the "why", yes. The unexpected tends to get more attention.

More important, though, are factors unique to Trump. First, he was already a nonpolitical celebrity, as a very prominent businessperson and then in his spinoff career as a reality-TV star. The corporate media don't make their coverage decisions by asking, "What would Edward R. Murrow do?" Instead, their motto is: "The public interest is what interests the public." They know that the public is more interested in the doings of a celebrity than in the details of the financial prospects of Social Security 40 years out, or what have you. Covering Trump is how the media outlets get more readers and listeners and viewers and clicks.

A second factor is that, to give Trump his due, he's very skilled at manipulating the media. To people who view campaigns as being, fundamentally, conversations and contests about the direction that public policy should take, Trump comes across as a clown. (This group includes DUers and even some serious conservatives.) For Trump, though, clowning is what works. "Build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it" isn't a serious discussion of immigration policy -- but it's a good bet to get covered on the evening news.