The Media Bubble Bursts

     At about 2 A.M (EDT) March 23rd just as the cable news anchors and pundits were going to bed, they finally began to smell the leak in their bubble.   Arizona was tighter than it first appeared; Sanders’ percentage of votes cast had jumped to 40 percent and he might walk away with 31 delegates. In Utah his big margin of victory seemed to take them by surprise, at 80 percent he was winning 24 delegates. Same story in Idaho: 78 percent of the votes going to Sanders together with 17 delegates.

      When the punditocracy next got out of bed (that's today) Bernie had won more total delegates than Hillary, 72 to 62 in the combined three states of Arizona, Utah and Idaho.

       This journalistic embarrassment seems more than a fluke or a too hasty conclusion, revealing instead the stakes for media establishment ownership (a central target of Bernie Sanders’ critique).  Reporters like all the rest of the human race must keep an eye on what their paymasters want and what the big media entrepreneurs seem to prefer is predictability and good connections.  

       Therefore happily Clinton’s large victories in the south were reported as closing the deal for her. But a dangerous leak in the balloon was already in the air. Throughout early March, according to Politico, the total margin in three states between Hillary and Bernie was only 55,000  (1,585 in Missouri), (34,898 in Illinois); (18,427 in Michigan).  In the same period Sanders had won 269 delegates in spite of his big losses in the south. This seemed not to deter the dominant media narrative on cable news channels (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, PBS) where, together with the New York Times, all had become habitually dismissive of Sanders’ campaign, constantly reiterating his hopeless position and Hillary’s sure path to the nomination.  Would we be wise to understand that at least at the unconscious level the media establishment is not amused by Sanders’ constant harping about inequality and the corruption implicit in one percent controlling the 99 percent?

       The huge Sanders rallies across the Western states all this week and his growing delegate count suggest a rising Pauline-like tide aimed at the “powers and principalities of this present darkness.” After all, Paul the Apostle, was also a good Jew, like Bernie Sanders. [See Ephesians 6:12]

       Stand by for the battle of the truth-tellers and the power-holders this Saturday in Washington State, Alaska and Hawaii.