Bernie vs. Hillary: duelling meme’s in the dead of night

Like many of our GMD readers, I was up late last night searching the intertubes for early
comments on Super Tuesday results.

If you are among our saner readers and simply went to bed, you might have missed a couple of contrasting blogposts that deserve greater attention.

The first, by Bernie supporter Cenk Uygur, appeared on HuffPost at 12:56 AM.

The piece focuses on a campaign narrative that I myself sensed was developing last night, but could not possibly have so well-articulated. It is well worth a read.

Hillary (predictably) won in all the deep southern states, but other than that, only Massachusetts went to her, and by the narrowest of margins.  Remember, despite all of her union endorsements, Hillary only scraped by in Nevada because the turnout was poor; and Iowa was a virtual tie.

This Tuesday, Bernie won in every state in which he actually spent some time letting people get to know him. The problem with Hillary’s southern wins is that in almost every case, Donald Trump outdrew her at the polls. . Those states aren’t even likely to be competitive; and when she lost to Bernie,  she lost big time.

In fact, in the states she won, Democratic turnout overall was down from the Obama years.

Her electoral delegate count looks impressive at this point, but so it did against Barack Obama.  The difference of course is that at this point in 2008, lots of super delegates were moving to Obama; but the super delegates are party loyalists like no others.  If they see that Hillary is not as likely as Bernie to win in the general, they will gradually begin to come around.

The second blogpost to consider is by Hillary supporter, Richard Wolffe, writing at 2:39 AM in the Guardian, presumably after reading Mr. Uygur’s earlier post.

I was not familiar with Mr. Wolffe’s reputation but was astonished by the ungracious tone. Mr. Wolffe seemed to have a major bug up his ass, making statements like

‘…it’s only a matter of time before Sanders stops perpetuating his own hoax and looks at the data of the delegate count.’

and

‘…“In Vermont,” Sanders explained, “billionaires don’t buy town meetings.” Well, they would be strange billionaires if they did.’

okay…

This is where all the dark energy goes in the really underground campaign…to seeding the ‘news’ shows, the blogosphere, Facebook and what-have-you with memes that favor your candidate. The Clinton’s are masters of that resource with an impressive network of seasoned operatives and powerful contacts.

What’s interesting is not so much the vitriolic and completely over-the-top attack Mr. Wolffe unleashes on Bernie, but the pushback in the comments section…all 3,282  of them!!   It’s a real reflection of those ‘unfavorable’ numbers we’ve seen for Clinton.

Somewhere in the first page of comments, I came across one that spelled out the connection of the writer to the Clinton campaign, something the casual reader wouldn’t know. Unlike Mr. Uygur, who wore his heart on his sleeve, Mr. Wolffe was not so transparent. Suddenly the angry tone of the article made perfect sense, and I read it in a new light.

Unfortunately, it would be a full time job spotting these things and where they come from.

About Sue Prent

Artist/Writer/Activist living in St. Albans, Vermont with my husband since 1983. I was born in Chicago; moved to Montreal in 1969; lived there and in Berlin, W. Germany until we finally settled in St. Albans.

3 thoughts on “Bernie vs. Hillary: duelling meme’s in the dead of night

  1. Sadly, I can’t find the exact comment now that there are something like 3,800 on the story, but he’s apparently an MSNBC contributor and a big Hillary fan.

    That’s his privilege, of course; rather like Chris Matthews, I suppose. But it was news to me; and I didn’t much like his condescension toward Vermont.

    My point is that there is an underlying media elite going the extra distance to bolster Hillary’s messaging from what looks to the untrained eye like an unbiased perspective.
    She’s ‘connected.’ Bernie is not.

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