Ten years ago this week, Vermont socialist Senator Bernie Sanders formally announced his first bid for the White House. It was the most serious left-wing campaign since Henry Wallace in the late 1940s, with a platform that included massive new spending, oppressively higher taxes, and a crippling $18 trillion in new debt.
By any definition, it was an extremist agenda. Yet while a similarly extreme far-right candidate would have faced withering criticism from the press, the establishment media celebrated Sanders for his “passion” and the “seriousness” of his radical ideas.
“It’s just so wonderful and refreshing to have somebody saying some of these things,” the Boston Globe’s Annie Linskey pronounced a few months after Sanders’s announcement.
“He’s out there raising fundamental questions about the American political system and the U.S. economy,” ABC’s David Wright touted in an early 2016 profile. (Four years later, Wright was suspended for telling Project Veritas, “I consider myself a socialist” — even as he was covering Sanders’s second presidential campaign for ABC News.)
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculated Sanders’s program would add $31.25 trillion in new spending over ten years, burden the economy with $15.25 trillion in new taxes, and add $18.8 trillion to the national debt. According to the Tax Foundation, those increased taxes, along with significantly lower economic growth, meant the after-tax incomes of taxpayers would fall nearly 13 percent.
Yet an MRC analysis in 2015 showed early coverage of Sanders’s campaign was nearly 100% positive, as reporters emphasized his large crowds and rise in the polls, without scrutinizing the candidate’s left-wing agenda. On July 3, 2015 for example, NBC’s Kristen Welker celebrated how “the 73-year-old once self-described socialist is riding a wave of enthusiasm among people who like his populist message.”
Two months later, CBS’s Nancy Cordes similarly talked about how his “progressive message has thrilled many Democrats, who don’t seem to mind that he calls himself a socialist.”
That remained the media narrative throughout Sanders’s 2016 campaign. While his radical policies were rarely challenged, feminists in the media tweaked Sanders for potentially sabotaging Hillary Clinton’s hope of becoming the first woman President. “Do you worry at all that you will be the instrument of thwarting history, as Senator Clinton keeps claiming that she might be the first woman president?” PBS’s Gwen Ifill challenged Sanders at a February 11, 2016 Democratic debate.
Even though Sanders affiliated with the Democratic primary only to run for the presidency, he has since become a major force in liberal politics — mostly due to his strong showing against Clinton in the 2016 primaries, winning nearly two dozen contests and more than 1,800 delegates.
And a major reason for Sanders’s success in 2016 was the lack of critical media coverage of his radical and extreme socialist ideas in 2015. From the NewsBusters’s archives, here are just some of the many quotes showing the liberal media’s adoration of the leftist Senator from Vermont:
■ “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.”
— Ex-New York Times and Washington Post political reporter E. J. Dionne on NPR’s All Things Considered, May 1, 2015.■ “When it comes to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and the 2016 race, it’s clear that he’s getting a raw deal. It’s long since time the press gave him the respect he deserves....The fact that he is utterly fearless in advocating for Scandinavian-style democratic socialism is no reason to treat him like a kook.”
— National correspondent Ryan Cooper writing in The Week, May 26, 2015.■ “A Clinton-Sanders ticket would, of course, put the American right on suicide watch....You’d certainly see right-wing media entities do everything within their power to try to stop a Clinton-Sanders ticket from winning on November 8, 2016. Yet they’d likely fail — and their failure would finally put the corpse of Reaganism into the ground once and for all. Sanders is the living refutation of Reaganism, and the vice presidency would provide an effective bully pulpit to push back against the false arguments made by those who still worship the false idol who was the 40th President of the United States.”
— Washington Monthly blogger D.R. Tucker, June 27, 2015.
■ “She may be the Democratic front-runner, but this morning [Hillary] Clinton is ‘feeling the Bern.’ Challenger Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders seeing a massive turnout at a campaign rally overnight in Maine, that at times felt more like a rock concert. In recent days, ‘Bernie-mentum’ drawing larger crowds than every candidate running in the 2016 race for the White House.”
— Correspondent Cecilia Vega on ABC’s Good Morning America, July 7, 2015.■ “Meanwhile, they have Bernie Sanders out there, you know, stating a case. And many of them probably don’t agree with everything he has to say, but it’s just so wonderful and refreshing to have somebody saying some of these things.”
— Boston Globe national political reporter Annie Linskey on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, August 12, 2015.■ “We, and a lot in the media, were encouraging of Bernie Sanders getting in the race, because the senator from Vermont does provoke a lot of passion from the left part of that party.”
— Co-anchor Chris Cuomo on CNN’s New Day, August 19, 2015.
■ “You’ve been preparing for this your whole life in some ways....You’ve turned out these big crowds. You inspired 200,000 volunteers. You moved people....It is a remarkable thing, as a liberal, to see the success you’re having, the resonance that your message is having and I don’t know what’s going to happen in the campaign long term, but good luck to you, sir.”
— MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to Sanders on The Rachel Maddow Show, September 17, 2015.■ “Eight years ago, Barack Obama offered a message of hope and change, presenting himself as a leader from a new generation. This time around, Democratic imaginations and hearts are fired up by a white-haired 74-year-old socialist who is riding a populist surge.”
— The AP’s Catherine Luce on September 21, 2015.
■ “I actually am aroused by him [Bernie Sanders]. I’m serious. I find him to be eye candy, not ear candy, eye candy....I like an old Jewish guy who’s a socialist. That’s my type of guy. Everybody is talking about O’Malley and how hot he was. But to me, Bernie is hot.”
— The View co-host Joy Behar, October 14, 2015.■ Host Charlie Rose: “I’m the first person trying to argue you away from the idea that you’re a socialist....A lot of people believe what you do about those kinds of issues. They believe there are too many people in jail. There are too many people coming out and not having a place to go and they’re back in jail....There are a whole lot of people who believe the first step towards income equality or to eliminate income inequality is a $15 an hour minimum-wage and that’s been enacted in certain cities already. I’m just saying, these are not radical ideas.”
Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders: “Right. That’s right! They’re not radical ideas.”
— Exchange on PBS’s Charlie Rose, October 26, 2015.■ Correspondent David Wright: “Bernie Sanders’ campaign is on fire right now....Integrity and authenticity are words his supporters use....He’s out there raising fundamental questions about the American political system and the U.S. economy, a system he says is rigged in favor of billionaires and bankers.”...
Senator Bernie Sanders: “There are so many people who are hurting, working longer hours for low wages, and the billionaires are getting richer. And they need a voice.”
Wright: “Bernie Sanders has given them a voice.”
— ABC’s Nightline, February 3, 2016.
■ “I’ve been to Bernie meetings....Bernie meetings are fantastic....Bernie is so much better in the room with 200 people than on TV. He's too effusive on TV. He’s too hot. But in the room, he’s logical and non-ideological.”
— Hardball host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, February 9, 2016.■ “I wrote a little Valentine’s Day poem for you. Would you like to hear it? ‘Roses are red, violets are blue. It’s time to elect a socialist Jew.’”
— Host Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time, February 12, 2016.
■ “Who Would Jesus Vote For? Bernie; Sanders, a secular Jew, is the most Christian candidate in this race”
— Headline and subheadline accompanying a February 17, 2016 USA Today opinion column by Stephen Prothero, a professor of religion at Boston University.■ “I think that Bernie Sanders had a particularly great night tonight. He was charming, he was direct, he felt fresh in his answers. He was very honest with his answers, and I just felt a lot of heart from him....He awoke something in me and it was his ideas, and his decency, and it’s his record, frankly. I mean, this guy is exactly who he’s always been. He’s always been fighting for the little guy, and just today, that just happens to be the very person we need....”
— Actor Mark Ruffalo during MSNBC’s live coverage following CNN’s Democratic presidential debate on March 6, 2016.■ “You used to be a carpenter. Is that right?...And you’re Jewish?...And the Pope loves you, right?...Millions of people come to hear you speak your sermons on mounts. Are you Jesus?”
— Comedy Central’s Nightly Show host Larry Wilmore to Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, April 13, 2016.
■ “I love Bernie. I love the ideas that he’s got. To me, it’s like somebody who went to Woodstock who now is running for President. And it’s all those ideals, let’s just make the world a great place, and legalize this, and free health care, and free college, and going for all of that. Great ideas. But that thing called ‘Congress,’ you know, is a problem.”
— Actor Jeff Daniels on Bloomberg TV’s With All Due Respect, May 9, 2016.■ “The media will be rooting for Bernie....At some point during it, Bernie will give a wonderful soliloquy about people in need, young people or old people or something about health care and everybody’s going to cheer.”
— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, May 26, 2016, speculating about a potential debate between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.
For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
