PHOENIX, ARIZONA — One reporter for The Tuscon Gazette described the crowd assembled early this week in Phoenix, Arizona to hear Democratic socialist presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as “as an absolute ass-load of people.” Another for The Houston Chronicler and Herald described the audience that Bernie had as “a fully captivated throng of thousands upon thousands of excited people.” Yet another reporter from The Arizona Rambler wrote in her piece that she’d “never seen so many Americans fired-up over Democratic socialism” in her life. All three reporters declared the crowd in Phoenix as massive and the likes of which they’d never seen, and all three also stated the unequivocal, politically scientific fact that Bernie Sanders can’t win the election next year.
“Yeah, I mean it’s crazy how big this crowd is, and no one else on either side is drawing this kind of genuinely enthusiastic crowd,” Glen Bernard, an Arizona reporter for the last 12 years told The Political Garbage Chute, “but since when does a grassroots, tremendously popular person ever really had a chance at winning an election?” Bernard’s was a sentiment that was expressed by every single reporter who was interviewed after the speech that drew over 11,000 people to hear Sanders talk about income and wealth inequality, racial divides and a host of other social and economic issues that are resonating with his supporters.
Susan St. Thomas, a reporter for The Miami-Dade Bugler, told us that she is “blown away by the number of rabid, screaming, smiling people that will clearly not be voting for Sanders a year from now.” St. Thomas also said she was “confused by the size of the crowd” because she “had always been told that socialism was so evil and reviled that no true, red-blooded patriotic American would be caught dead listening to a socialist speak for thirty seconds, much less a 15 or 20 minute campaign speech.”
“I don’t know, maybe a lot of Americans are burned out on the Limbaugh-Hannity doctrine of conservative rhetoric about socialism,” Hank Simonek told us. “Maybe they’ve figured out that socialism and totalitarianism aren’t the same thing, and maybe they’ve also figured out that socialism in one form another — be it Social Security or even the military — has existed in this country since long before most of us were born and it’s really not anything to treat like the Boogey Man,” Simonek asked rhetorically adding that “it probably won’t matter next November when Hillary squares off against Jeb.”
Mary Jones is a writer for The Tempe Tribune and she said that “there is no way these record-setting crowds are going to ever lead to him winning an election” because while “people have to be super-excited and motivated to vote in droves” and Sanders “can get people excited enough to come see him speak over a year before the election” she wonders if he “can get them to stay excited about him, especially if the press keep reminding everyone how futile his popularity is.”
Not everyone who was interviewed shared the belief that Sanders has no chance of winning next fall. Glenda London, a stay at home mother of three says she came out to hear Sanders speak because “Bernie doesn’t sugar coat it, and you know where he’s standing on every issue even if you don’t completely agree with him.” London said that even though she is in favor of stronger gun laws, she “respects” Sanders’ historical position of being more inclined to vote no on gun control measures. “He represents rural constituents who aren’t stockpiling munitions to take over the government or kill government officials they deem tyrannical in their own little minds. So I respect our difference of opinions on guns and would totally vote for him next year.”
One reporter overheard London speaking to us and made sure to interject as she was leaving, “she won’t vote for him next year.” When pressed for reasons why, the unnamed reporter said, “because I’m in the media and I say so, doy!”
“The bottom line,” said one reporter, “is that we in the press get to decide who has a legitimate chance. We get to decide whose opinions you hear, and how loudly you hear them. So if we say it’s going to be Clinton/Bush redux then that’s what it’s going to be. Because we know more than you, since you know, we’re like in the media and stuff, and when has the media ever gotten anything wrong. Just like in 2008 when we said the country was not going to be ready for its first black president in our lifetimes. See? Perfect record. Go us.”
