Bernie Sanders's Fox News town hall wasn't a debate. Bernie won anyway. [View all]

[workinclasszero]

Sanders was sincere with the audience, gracious to his Democratic opponents, and as prickly as ever to his Fox News hosts.

By Dara [e-mail] Apr 15, 2019, 8:57pm EDT

Bernie Sanders’s Fox News town hall, which aired Monday night, showed that contrary to the belief of many of his detractors (and some of his supporters), the Vermont senator really does have more than one rhetorical mode.

It was Bernie’s crowd — to the Fox anchors’ apparent dismay

For one thing, the audience was on his side.

After Sanders answered an audience question about why government-provided versus private-sector health care by outlining his health care proposal, Baier decided to poll the audience about it, asking people if they’d prefer it to their current, private-sector-provided health insurance. (That frame evokes Barack Obama’s famous promise that “If you like your healthcare, you can keep it” — something conservatives and Fox News frequently point to as a symbol of Obamacare’s broken promises.)

The poll ... did not go the way Baier appears to have thought it would.

Link to tweet

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/15/18323347/bernie-sanders-town-hall-fox-news-bret-baier