Media Matters president knocks Bernie Sanders for timing of Fox News town hall

[Hortensis]

1. Sanders helping Fox, Fox helping Sanders. Here's WHY for Sanders:

Sanders is a running a populist campaign that creates divisions along class-loyalty lines (not national like Trump) and is trying to draw those antagonistic to what they see as "the elites," and other groups that draw their hostility, like the Democratic Party dominated by liberals.

In this Democracy Fund Voter Study Group graph, the blue lower left is people who are overall BOTH socially and economically liberal and voted solidly Democratic. The red upper right is BOTH socially and economically conservative and voted Trump.

But see that upper left quadrant? All the people in THAT? Those people are socially conservative and economically liberal, far more resentful than informed, a combination that makes them natural suckers for populist movements. They practically define them. Antagonism's strongly correlated also. Some Democrats fall in that group but aren't exactly happy campers, some decamped to the right in 2016, and some are Republicans.

Basically, these are people who want to kick groups they don't like and eat their Medicaid-For-Me cake at the same time. Right or left, they despise liberal Democrats trying to protect our liberal democracy. In any case, the hostility's in a wide range of degrees, very mild to rabid, but THIS is where Sanders has to go to draw more people to his populist flag. And plenty of those watch Fox.


Howard Schultz is also chumming over there; what he wants out of this is unclear. I think we should pay Sanders due respect when he says he wants a revolution, no fine print to examine.

Btw, this vast group also shows why other, solidly liberal Democratic candidates are making populist noise -- to draw discontented people who want progressive government toward positive goals without posing danger to our democracy. They will vote for someone, and we need most to believe our best, only viable course is to repair and build on what we have.