At the start of the Democratic presidential race, the media viewed the contest as a cakewalk. The compassionate and gloriously wonky Hillary Clinton faced no one who could be viewed as her equal. Game over. When Sen. Bernie Sanders made noises about running against her, nobody thought he could be the actual Democratic nominee. He was old, he was cranky, and he wasn’t even a Democrat.
The conventional media wisdom had it that Sanders would be a healthy deterrent to the Clinton tendency to crawl toward the corporatist middle. On NPR, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne saw it as positive: “Let’s list two names who we don’t get to talk about, Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas. This is the most serious socialist candidacy for president since they ran. But Bernie Sanders has a long list of particulars that he wants to put on the table, and I think by shifting the campaigns to economics, he will generally help Democrats.”
Yes, the media elite, which eternally predicts the tea party and the Christian conservatives will destroy the Grand Old Party, could only see better days ahead for Democrats with a self-described socialist contender in the race......
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