BERNIE SANDERS HAS AN INCONVENIENT MESSAGE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY: “Currently, there is a 2016 presidential candidate barnstorming his way across the country to hyped-up, adoring crowds while caterwauling about the establishment failures of the ruling political class, claiming to be the candidate of the people and the only one in the running that cannot be bought by Washington special interests. His blustery non-conformities are reverberating throughout the fringe base of the party and captivating the media’s attention,” Stephen L. Miller writes at NRO. “I am of course referring to (*ahem* Democratic) socialist Bernie Sanders, who one day out of the blue seemingly just decided to get up and run for president after giving up on the New York Times crossword and Sudoku:”

But the biggest mystery seems to be how Sanders is able to get away with it after seven years of a president whom he ideologically agrees with almost point for point. If a “political revolution,” which Sanders often likes to declare is the goal of his candidacy, depends on the working poor or unemployed, then by definition it needs as many of those people as possible to carry it out. The key to this kind of messaging is mobilization, and in particular the mobilization of the angry and disenfranchised (See Black Lives Matter and the Occupy movement). Saul Alinksy once referred to this dynamic as receiving power in reaction to a threat. If your goal is to get elected on the backs of the young, angry, poor, and unemployed, then the means to your end is not to create less of those kinds of voters, it’s to create more and keep them angry. Beyond this, Sanders’s hyper-populist message is dependent on the media reporting on how popular it seems. At Bernie campaign rallies, media almost always report crowd sizes like they’re reporting on a U2 concert, but the second he opens his mouth the tweets and the stenographing magically stop.

Yes, what on earth could be the cause for the media blackout?
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