2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Maddow (aka Mrs. Selective Outrage) is a LIAR [View all]kristopher
(29,798 posts)1) She misrepresented the right wing Beacon poll in Nevada that was the first to show a tie by describing it as a "push poll". She knows polling and she knows, without doubt, that it was not a push poll but was instead based on a much larger sample size than most news polling.
See: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1251&pid=1240812
2) Here is a case where she lied using a chart to misrepresent that fact that Hillary's lead over Sanders has steadily decreased over the past year: Clinton ethics claim another victim as Rachel Maddow plays chart game
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511257526
I'll limit the sample size to 3).
Here is Hartmann taking Rachel to task for misrepresenting turnout data in New Hampshire:
Don't rely on the media to tell you what's going on.
Bernie Sanders has made voter-turnout history, getting about a third more votes than any other primary candidate in the history of New Hampshire primaries, but much of our media is reporting the opposite; that its no big deal what hes accomplishing.
Rachel Maddow rolled out the latest confused bit of reporting on the evening of Friday, February 12th. Whether this ended up on the air as a Maddow-producer brilliant idea or was suggested by the Clinton campaign is unknown, but the entire piece was confounding.
Rachel started by saying that the rationale for Bernies becoming president and actually getting something done (when Obama had such difficulty) is that Bernies mobilizing huge numbers of new and energized voters. She showed a bunch of examples of his talking about his political revolution and how hes bringing new people into politics.
Then she dropped the anvil, as she does so well.
It turns out that fewer people showed up to vote Democratic in New Hampshire and Iowa this year than they did in Obamas 2008! If thats the case and it is then how could Bernie possibly claim that hes energizing new people? He must be running a con on us, or hes just a deluded old man who dreams of revolution but nobodys really showing up.
Time to doubt both Bernie and his ideas, right?
After all, as Rachel points out, 40,000 fewer people voted in this years New Hampshire Democratic primary than did in 2008, she said. Adding, for emphasis, the three-word sentence: Forty thousand less!
And it was the same story in Iowa last week, Rachel continued. Voter turnout was a record for Republicans in Iowa, but on the Democratic side it was down. Iowa voter turnout on the Democratic side was DOWN from 2008!
Clearly Bernies campaign is running a scam, right? The entire rationale for his candidacy is built on sand. His revolution isnt happening so far, so why might it happen later? Time to doubt that Bernies claims of political change are even possible, much less reasonable.
However
Rachel missed a few facts something unusual for her usually brilliant political analysis...
Want more? I have recommended a lot of right leaning friends and relatives to Rachel's show with the claim that she is excruciatingly honest. Her betrayal of that standard has really pissed me off and I'm just about ready to sit down and make a project of her duplicitous reporting.