Bernie Sanders And Pete Buttigieg Had A Good Week On Cable News

[brooklynite]

538

There are 575 days until Election Day, 462 days until the gavel bangs to open the Democratic National Convention, and more than a dozen individuals seeking the party’s presidential nomination.

We’re trying to find the signal in all that clamor by using polls (of course), endorsements and the data hidden in the actual noise coming out of our TVs on cable news.

Two weeks ago, the news was dominated by the Mueller report — or at least by Attorney General William Barr’s miniature capsule summary of it — and most of the Democratic candidates saw depressed coverage on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC as a result. Last week, however, that story had faded somewhat, allowing some candidates to return to the cable news discussion in force.



In absolute terms, Bernie Sanders led the week’s coverage. He was mentioned the most — in a total of 551 clips on the three cable networks, up nearly 300 percent from the week before.2 Pete Buttigieg’s mentions also jumped — the number of clips he was mentioned in went from 60 two weeks ago to 216 last week. Many of the more recent mentions had to do with Buttigieg’s fundraising numbers and with his attempts to distinguish himself as a fresh face in a large field.

In relative terms, last week’s cable news winners were Andrew Yang and Julian Castro — the clips in which they were mentioned increased more than 700 percent and 600 percent week-over-week, respectively. Even still, it remained a small sample — they were only mentioned in a total of 101 clips combined.

[rgbecker]

1. Say what you want about Sanders.

He has completely turned around the coverage since 2016. Back then the coverage of his message was abysmal. He has worked his policy messages regularly since then and has been successful in turning the entire Democratic field into lefty progressives. In a way he already has won!

[delisen]

2. Maybe it is that he benefits from cable not wanting equal coverage for women

Cablemen and cable women march to the tune of the cable masters

The cablemen get visibly excited when they cover male candidates who apparently fit their definition a suit-ble candidate.

We seem to ave gotten past some of the most outrageous games-like burbling about ho some male candidate "lok presidential" but there is a long way to go.

[rgbecker]

3. I hope Warren, Harris, Klobuchar, Gillibrand get on FOX as soon as possible.

Time to show the Neanderthals that women have ideas too!

I can't believe anyone here is opposed to our candidates getting their message out on FOX. They have a regular 6 million viewers.

Having FOX stage a National Democratic Debate is, of course, another matter.