January 10, 2016

Tavis Smiley isn't the only one that's sick and tired of hearing the media continually lump Sen. Bernie Sanders and the Talking Yam, fearmongering, racist demagogue who is ahead in all the polls for the Republican presidential nomination.

I'm sick and tired of it as well, so I was very happy to see him stop Matthew Dowd in his tracks on ABC's This Week when Dowd played his usual game of "both sides" with Sanders and Trump. Of course right wing hate talker Hugh Hewitt threw a big stink bomb into the mix, and rather than respond to Smiley's comments on the false equivalence and just what sort of voters both of these men are attracting, he just ignored what they were talking about completely and used the occasion to pretend that Hillary Clinton is going to go to prison over their latest trumped up "scandal" over her email server.

Our corporate media loves to play this little game where they pretend that both men are just tapping into some of the anger over jobs and economic factors among working class voters, while ignoring the fact that Trump is playing directly to the worst instincts and racist tendencies of the Republican base.

I've got my issues with Smiley as well, but he was spot on with his criticism here:

SMILEY: What troubles me, though, is that Trump is still, to my mind, at least, an unrepentant, irascible religious and racial arsonist.

And so what about how Donald Trump is rising in the polls. He can't do that absent the kind of campaign he's running, the issues that he's raising. And for us to just say Donald Trump is rising in the polls and not connect that to the base message that he's putting out there, I think...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, that said, let me just ask you...

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: -- Matthew Dowd, I was surprised this week to talk to a top Republican strategist who said, for the first time, you have to accept the fact that of all the candidates out there, Donald Trump is the most likely to be the nominee based on today's facts.

DOWD: Well, and I said that, you know, because you and I have talked about it, I said this then over the summer. When you look at the data over the course of the primaries that have been held by Republicans, he is most in line with a candidate who's won the nomination, not somebody that's fallen off in the course of this.

But I think it's really important to understand, I think, what's going on on both sides of this. And Donald Trump is represented on one side and Bernie Sanders is represented on the other side of this, for totally different reasons, with totally different supporters.

There is an unbelievable frustration with the duopoly of the two parties in this country and the establishment of the two parties in this country.

People don't like what's happened. The middle class are pissed off. They've been angry for 25 years. They've seen no rise in their income. And they think Washington, DC only serves a small group of people, whatever that may be.

And Bernie Sanders is gaining the benefit of that against Hillary Clinton, the establishment candidate, and Donald Trump, for everything you say about him, for the crazy stuff he says...

(CROSSTALK)

DOWD: -- he does represent a group of voters in this country who are angry at what's going on in Washington...

(CROSSTALK)

SMILEY: I hear your point, Matthew. And I am tickled by the fact that the establishment candidates are not running (INAUDIBLE) issues as strong as they have in the past. I'm OK with seeing somebody from the outside do well.

But I get tired of, respectfully, of us lumping Trump and Sanders in the same group. I take your point. They are two different kinds of candidates. You're right. They're appealing for different reasons.

But one of these guys is being covered, but he's not being condemned. I'm talking, of course, about Donald Trump. That is not the message that Bernie Sanders is putting out. They're two different candidates...

HEWITT: Of course I'm not going to condemn him, Tavis, because he's talking about issues that no one else will talk about. Donald Trump is going to win New Hampshire on the basis of candor, not -- and his combativeness.

SMILEY: And hate.

HEWITT: This morning...

SMILEY: And hate.

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