What Really Happened on Super Tuesday
http://benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/03/02/what-really-happened-on-super-tuesday/
Unlike the British press, which openly acknowledges and parades its biases, many American news outlets like to maintain a pretense of objectivity. But this doesn’t mean that they’re objective, it just means that their biases are more insidious. Many media outlets clearly like Hillary Clinton and dislike Donald Trump, and these views have quietly colored their reporting on the presidential race. Last night Bernie Sanders won as many states as Donald Trump lost, but Clintonites will try to paint the democrats’ race as effectively over while anti-Trumpsters will look for excuses to say that the republicans’ race isn’t finished yet. These media narratives are used to give the press’ favorites “momentum”. If the public believes a race is over, it often is, regardless of whether or not the numbers really make it so. So by crowning a nominee (or refusing to crown one), media outlets exercise power to shape the races grounded in their biases. To understand what really happened last night, we have to look at whether candidates are meeting or exceeding their projected paths to their respective nominations....
But many media outlets helped Clinton stay in the race in 2008 by painting the race as a close contest. Today many of those same outlets are trying to write Sanders off, and if we’re not careful this may become self-fulfilling. It doesn’t help that Super Tuesday in 2016 was dominated by southern states where Sanders is weak. In 2008, the Super Tuesday list was more geographically diverse, and despite being behind in the polls nationally, Clinton won 12 states to Obama’s 11. With the south heavy schedule this year, Sanders trailed on Super Tuesday 7 to 4. It’s important for everyone to remember that Bernie Sanders is not running for president of the Confederacy....
No individual anti-Trump has shown any ability to consistently consolidate support in a region. Cruz was second in the south, Kasich was second in the northeast, and Rubio was mostly third. Carson was irrelevant. The folks who want you to believe that this isn’t over push the “Trump ceiling” fantasy, which holds that if any of these folks drop out, nearly 100% of their supporters will go to an anti-Trump. Only affluent pundits who are disconnected from ordinary republican voters could possibly think this. Trump’s favorability numbers among republicans are about as good as anybody’s:...
Let’s admit the obvious. Barring some freak incident, Donald Trump is going to be the republican nominee. We just don’t know which democrat is going to run against him yet. After reading this terrific piece by Nathan Robinson, I hope for the sake of the country it’s Sanders.
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