ANALYSIS: A Classic Case of Casual Anti-Hillary Media Spin

A mainstream media headline about the New York primary (“Clinton Moves Goalposts Again”) is unsupported by the facts of the article.

Last July, HillaryMen warned that insidious process stories in mainstream publications constituted a risk to Hillary’s public image:

Process stories – and the potent anti-Hillary frames they deliver – were one of the single most effective weapons against Hillary in 2008, painting a nefarious image that she was unable to alter or escape. Although Hillary is subjected to the most vitriolic language imaginable, the majority of negative coverage she endures comes in this form: a seemingly innocuous news article, editorial or blog post that manages, paragraph after paragraph, to deliver character-destroying frames.
The overarching point was that these articles are more harmful because they are less obviously negative:

To the casual reader, it may not be entirely obvious how damaging this type of reporting is for Hillary’s candidacy. But in aggregate, articles like this that appear regularly in major media outlets paint a portrait of a scheming, unprincipled politician. That portrait is often reflected back in polls and interviews – and ultimately at the ballot box.
Eight months later, with Hillary closing in on the Democratic nomination, we get this:

cnn spin

Here’s what the article says:

When Hillary Clinton lost the New Hampshire primary to Bernie Sanders in February, Robby Mook, her campaign manager, took the long view and declared the nomination would “very likely be won in March, not February.” The campaign is now taking an even longer view, with April now being the month they hope to put Sanders away.
How exactly does that support the headline Clinton Moves Goalposts Again? It doesn’t say she moved the goalposts twice. The subheader only shows one projection change. So the accurate title would be Clinton Moves Goalposts.

But why even frame this piece so negatively? “Moving the goalposts” is a term typically reserved for someone who is losing and making excuses for their loss. Hillary is clearly on track to win the nomination.

If anything, Bernie Sanders has gone from revolution and momentum to trying to flip superdelegates. If anyone has moved goalposts, it’s the Sanders campaign. But I can’t seem to find a headline about Bernie “moving the goalposts again.”

The reflexive media urge to paint everything as bad news for Hillary continues unabated. It is best illustrated by the pervasive myth of her so-called “enthusiasm gap,” a demonstrably false frame that has been repeated incessantly and now passes for truth.

The damage done to Hillary’s image by these types of stories is hard to measure. It is a testament to her tenacity and her supporters’ dedication that she continues to win.

On top of that, most journalists who echo the Sanders enthusiasm narrative spend a lot of time on social media, and if you do that, then it’s safe to say that it looks like Sanders is inspiring a lot of enthusiasm. There is an explosion of memes and chatter about the “revolution” and sharing every single story they can find that says something positive about Sanders’s chances.

But if you dig in, it also becomes quickly clear that much of the online enthusiasm isn’t really pro-Sanders so much as it’s anti-Clinton. There are thousands, probably millions of social media messages which are more about using Sanders as a cover to harass women and their allies than as legitimate advocacy for the candidate. Remove the mansplaining, harassment, and gotcha trolling, and the amount of Sanders traffic isn’t quite so awe-inspiring in volume.

The online boors aren’t the majority of Sanders supporters, to be clear. On the contrary, this poll and others show that the majority of Sanders supporters are pretty chilled out. But this small percentage of angry men (and a few women) are really loud online and their anti-Clinton vitriol contributes to the false notion that Sanders has the wind at his back.

Clinton isn’t a meh candidate, in other words. She inspires passion, both in her haters and in her supporters.

If you give it a moment’s thought, that Clinton would be such an inspiring figure to her supporters makes perfect sense. She has spent two and a half decades in the spotlight, enduring huge amounts of sexism as every single man in the country who feels threatened by smart women or powerful women projects all his anxieties on her with the passion of a thousand burning suns. But she hasn’t stopped striving. She eats haters for breakfast and keeps smiling, all while more haters are telling her she doesn’t smile enough.

For supporters, especially female supporters, who are sick to the teeth of all this sexist nonsense and sometimes wonder how they are going to keep on fighting another day, Clinton’s resilience is the stuff of legends.

METCALFE: Again, negative conversations about our candidates do nothing to further Sanders’s cause.

YOUNGER: I’m not sure how negative it is to question your voting discretion in spite of overwhelming support. If critiquing Hillary or your apprehension to accurately vote for those you represent is negative, then I’m not sure you’re the one I’d like representing me.

Metcalfe then asked Younger where he lived, and after he responded, he asked her frankly why she’s casting her superdelegate vote for Hillary Clinton despite a vast majority of her state caucusing for Sanders.

METCALFE: Because I believe Hillary Clinton would be a better president. End of conversation.

YOUNGER: And that’s why people get angry. Bernie supporters can be quite vapid. But voting in opposition to what we voted for is only supporting the idea that Hillary and her supporting super delegates are in the pockets of others.

Bernie won in Alaska. End of story. Your personal preferences for president are represented in your vote as a citizen. Not as a representative of your state.

At this point in the conversation, Metcalfe’s tone turned noticeably sour. She patronized Younger, reminding him of her experience as a Democratic Party officer for decades, and essentially told him his opinion on how she should cast her superdelegate vote was invalid, since he was just a voter.

METCALFE: I’m in the pocket of no one. I have no financial connections to Hillary Clinton or any other Democrat. I am a retired union representative. I put in my time in the trenches for 40 years, and I really object to someone like you who has probably done nothing except caucus telling me what to do. I am voting for the best interests of my country. And that would be Hillary Clinton.

With as much time as respected MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has spent cheering on the various aspects of the Bernie Sanders campaign over the past few months, it’s caused many within her audience to question if she’s lost her focus, and some have told us they’ve tuned her out entirely. But that may be about to become a moot point, because Maddow now appears to be losing patience for Sanders as he shifts his tone from idealistic to nihilistic and absurd. In fact Rachel took the Sanders campaign to task for its (false) claim this week that it wasn’t even trying to win in certain states.

The claim, which came from Bernie Sanders senior strategist Tad Devine, was that Sanders has won states in which he invested time and resources, and has lost eight key states because he wasn’t bothering to compete there to begin with. It’s not clear why such a claim was supposed to help the Sanders campaign or make him look good, but as it turns out, the claim is factually and numerically false. Rachel Maddow took particular objection to the claim and tore it apart on-air last night.

Maddow walked through the numbers demonstrating that the Bernie Sanders campaign invested more time and resources than Hillary Clinton in states like Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, and Virginia – yet Clinton won all of those states in whopping blowouts. That left Maddow to conclude that the Sanders campaign will have to “walk back” Devine’s comments for being false. She also suggested that if Sanders continues with his new strategy of trying to pressure superdelegates to hand him the nomination even though he’s far behind in regular delegates, even his own supporters may not follow him down that path.

Generally speaking, Rachel Maddow sounded borderline fed up with the direction the Bernie Sanders campaign has begun taking of late. Considering that she has been one of his biggest on-air allies in all of cable news , this can’t be a positive development for him. Her full nine minute MSNBC segment is available online, but the above referenced commentary begins at about the six minute mark.

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Here's a spreadsheet of 300 superdelegates who have pledged to vote for Hillary despite the wishes of their constituents. Contact them to let them know you want representation! We must be represented! docs.google.com
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The actor-director and his partner Susan Sarandon campaigned for the former North Carolina senator one day before New Hampshire voters go to the polls in a crucial vote that could shape the rest of the primary contests.

He also met regularly with the Young Peoples Socialist League in the student center, where students talked about nuclear disarmament, former Socialist Party Presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, the lessons of the Russian revolution, and how to implement socialism, though his vision did not match up with the already faltering Soviet experiment. He talks today about expanding government programs like social security and Medicare, and tuition-free college. “Should the government be running the restaurant across the street?” says Sanders today. “Obviously not!”

Standing up to bullies will be – or is – an intangible yet concrete strategy of the Clinton campaign. That includes you and me. We have to stay fresh. We have to exude enthusiasm for our candidate. We cannot be diminished or demolished by the bullies.

How to do it? I’ve started by recognizing “bullying” as a tactic of the opposition. I understand why it is done. And I am protecting myself. That’s the best I can do at the moment. We each need this consciousness. As far as mechanisms, I think it’s important that we band together. We can become tribes that congregate, refresh, vent and lend support through the DM option on Twitter. We can call out for help when the gang-bangers attack, and know that our friends will be there. If there’s one trait I’ve noticed thus far, it’s that the bullies gang up on a single individual. We have to deploy the same tactic in a defensive posture. Sounds like war, yes. It is. However, I know we’ll get through it. My visual reminder, at the end of an evening or during an assault, comes from Hillary. I’ll sign off with this empowering reminder.

However, this was just the first round of problems for the campaign committee. When Bernie 2016 filed its report for the month of January, still more donations were flagged.

On 25 February, the FEC sent an RFAI covering January 2016. Once again, impermissible donations from people with addresses outside the U.S. were found. Again, the Treasurer for Sanders’ campaign fund-raiser was reminded of federal laws:

Schedule A-P (see attached) discloses a contribution(s) from an individual(s) who has a mailing address outside of the United States of America. Please be advised that 52 U.S.C. § 30121(a) (formerly 2 U.S.C. § 441e(a)) and 11 CFR § 110.20 prohibit foreign nationals from making contributions in connection with any election for political office or in connection with any primary election, convention, or caucus held to select candidates for any political office.



The FEC ordered Jackson to comply with these laws by 31 March:

If you have received a contribution from a foreign national, you must refund the impermissible contribution to the donor in accordance with 11CFR § 103.3(b). Please inform the Commission of your corrective action immediately in writing and provide a photocopy of your check for the refund. (25 February 2016 RFAI)

On 25 March, Bernie 2016 filed an amended report to the FEC, showing refunds to individuals totaling $684,455.53. The amended report covers several months in 2015. It’s not clear whether the refunds were for excessive contributions or prohibited donations by Foreign Nationals or something else.

Bernie 2016 has yet to report its campaign finance disclosure for February.