 |  |
Tim Canova is just one of many progressive, third or fourth party candidates that have an enormous amount of grassroots support at the local level, even without help from mainstream media that; yet even after they get large support and in Canova's case provide a strong challenge to the leader of the Democratic National Committee the media refuses to give them much if any coverage at all.
This isn't because they don't give any national coverage to local candidates at all; they often do. Not to long ago they made a reference to the 2008 campaign and refereed to Barack Obama as the "unknown Senator from Illinois." This isn't close to the truth although some people who don't any attention to politics may not have been familiar with him. I first noticed what seemed like a surprising amount of coverage from the mainstream media for Barack Obama in 2004 when there were quite a few stories about him, first as a keynote speaker at the convention then as a surprise winner in November.
This was followed up by plenty more stories over the next four years and widespread promotion of his book in the media and libraries. Barack Obama had enormous amounts of coverage years before the 2008 election which enabled him to make a strong campaign and become president.
The media also provides enormous amounts of coverage for many conservative candidates like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Tom Cotton and many more giving them the name recognition they might need to run for higher office starting with the offices they won and in some cases major presidential runs; but they never provide much if any coverage for candidates that get support from local grassroots levels opposing epidemic levels of corporate corruption.
This is the standard practice to ensure that the candidates supported by corporations get enormous amounts of coverage, while those that support consumers, workers the environment, or other progressive causes get little or no coverage making it virtually impossible to get elected.
Recently Debbie Wasserman Schultz must have gotten some media coverage when Barack Obama endorsed her but I didn't see any of it, at least on traditional media, even though I was watching it regularly, so they clearly didn't repeat it very often like they do many other obsession du jours. Providing coverage for this endorsement would have drawn attention to the fact that she has a strong challenge from Tim Canova largely because of the enormous amount of outrage for her handling of the debates and giving enormous advantages to Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders as indicated in the following article about how Obama's endorsement turned into a major fund raiser for Canova, not Schultz:
Obama’s Endorsement Of Debbie Wasserman Schultz Brings In Serious Money... For Her Challenger 04/04/2016
Tim Canova, a progressive law professor taking on Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), pulled in more than half a million dollars in the first three months of 2016, according to his campaign — a massive sum for a political newcomer.
Canova raised $557,000, powered by small donations. Nearly 15,300 people donated, for an average contribution of $20. Only six donors gave the maximum amount allowed under law, meaning he still has a significant pool of people to tap into for future donations.
Wasserman Schultz has never faced a serious primary challenger in her congressional career, and as the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, she is a formidable candidate.
Last Monday, Wasserman Schultz scored the official backing of President Barack Obama. It wasn’t entirely surprising, given her leadership position in the party. But it still gave her a high-profile boost and one of the most coveted endorsements in the party. Complete article
Tim Canova, a progressive law professor taking on Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), pulled in more than half a million dollars in the first three months of 2016, according to his campaign — a massive sum for a political newcomer.
Canova raised $557,000, powered by small donations. Nearly 15,300 people donated, for an average contribution of $20. Only six donors gave the maximum amount allowed under law, meaning he still has a significant pool of people to tap into for future donations.
Wasserman Schultz has never faced a serious primary challenger in her congressional career, and as the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, she is a formidable candidate.
Last Monday, Wasserman Schultz scored the official backing of President Barack Obama. It wasn’t entirely surprising, given her leadership position in the party. But it still gave her a high-profile boost and one of the most coveted endorsements in the party. Complete article
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Tim Canova also made local news briefly and wider news on alternative media outlets and the internet when she opposed regulation for predatory payday lenders as indicated in the following article:
Debbie Wasserman Schultz attacked for bank donations and position on payday loan bill 04/0/2016
A law professor running against U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of South Florida says she is in the pocket of big banks and isn’t looking out for consumers who get crushed by debt from payday loans.
"My opponent, after taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks, has voted to prevent the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFTP) from regulating payday loans and addressing racial discrimination in car loans," said Tim Canova on his website.
Canova, a first-time candidate and professor at Nova Southeastern University, is challenging Wasserman Schultz in the August Democratic primary in a Broward/Miami-Dade district. The race has drawn national attention because Wasserman Schultz is the Democratic National Committee chair. Complete article
A law professor running against U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of South Florida says she is in the pocket of big banks and isn’t looking out for consumers who get crushed by debt from payday loans.
"My opponent, after taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks, has voted to prevent the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFTP) from regulating payday loans and addressing racial discrimination in car loans," said Tim Canova on his website.
Canova, a first-time candidate and professor at Nova Southeastern University, is challenging Wasserman Schultz in the August Democratic primary in a Broward/Miami-Dade district. The race has drawn national attention because Wasserman Schultz is the Democratic National Committee chair. Complete article
Tim Canova is just one of a handful of progressive candidates that get virtually no coverage from the media although they have a large amount of grassroots support. Candidates that pretend to support progressive causes while actually supporting policies friendly to corporations get much more coverage from the media like Barack Obama. He convinced an enormous number of people that he would put on a pair of "comfortable shoes" and walk the picket lines if necessary, refuse to hire lobbyists, oppose free trade agreements outsourcing jobs, that he would oppose military intervention in many cases and much more; but then once he got into office he demonstrated that he really meant the opposite on most if not all the major issues he ran on to get elected.
Clearly he was never the progressive he pretended to be in the first place. The real progressives are the ones the media doesn't cover, presumably since we now have a consolidated corporate media controlled by six corporations that are solely interested in maximizing profits no matter how much damage they do to society.
A lot of people seem to have been convinced that Elizabeth Warren might be the exception to the traditional candidates not being progressive; however as I indicated in numerous posts starting with How sincere is Elizabeth Warren? and most recently Elizabeth Warren steals credit from real grass roots efforts Elizabeth Warren isn't nearly as progressive as she appears to be on many issues. Ironically, I'm not the only one that seems to have noticed this and a lot of the people that did notice have been putting a lot of pressure on her; and as a result she often becomes more progressive to live up to her image. However this often only happens as a result of grassroots pressure not because she started out as progressive as the media makes her out to be.
They just cr5itisized Bernie Sanders because he can't unilaterally break up the big banks, which is almost cert6ainly true; however it is also true that all presidential candidates make many promises like that and well informed people know he can't do it alone. The media is much less likely to criticize other candidates for making similar claims; and even if he can't do it alone he can use the presidency as a bully pulpit to draw attention and make it much more likely that action can be taken on this and many other issues.
One of those issues clearly needs to be election and media reform so that the majority of the public can hear from real progressives and they have a better chance to get elected.
But until that happens we need much more help from alternative media outlets promoting many of these progressive candidates so they might be able to take a large segment of the public when they get elected in November. I'm not saying that all of these progressive candidates should be elected but they should get much more attention so that people can recognize their positions on the issues and if there are a handful of insincere candidates among the Berniecrats or progressives they can be exposed with research. I have noticed that many of Bernie's supporters do much better research than Hillary Clinton's or traditional establishment candidates that target complacent voters; so I suspect and hope that most of these candidates are being screened at the local level and we will have much better chances with them.
Edit: since I posted this the following articale came out about some of the progressives taht amy ahve the the best chacne of winning including two already mentioned:
These 5 ‘Sanders Democrats’ Are Proving To Be Real Contenders 04/19/2016
Inspired by the rise of Bernie Sanders, there is a new group of progressive challengers looking to beat out establishment candidates to secure nominations for Congressional seat races in this election cycle in the hope of beating Republicans in general elections.
While this group continues to grow on a daily basis, many are facing established incumbents or candidates with large financial backing.
Out of the many declared challengers, there is a small group of candidates that are currently in strong positions to defeat their opponents and take their place as the beginning of the progressive movement in the political arena.
See Complete article for more details.
Inspired by the rise of Bernie Sanders, there is a new group of progressive challengers looking to beat out establishment candidates to secure nominations for Congressional seat races in this election cycle in the hope of beating Republicans in general elections.
While this group continues to grow on a daily basis, many are facing established incumbents or candidates with large financial backing.
Out of the many declared challengers, there is a small group of candidates that are currently in strong positions to defeat their opponents and take their place as the beginning of the progressive movement in the political arena.
See Complete article for more details.
Here are just a handful of progressive candidates most if not all of whom have endorsed Bernie Sanders:
Tim Canova
Zephyr Teachout
Alex Law
Pramila Jayapal
Lucy Flores
John Fetterman
Thomas L. Fiegen
Steve Stokes
Marcia Moody
Endorse Bernie and progressive Berniecrats twitter account which lists many more progressive candidates.
The Berniecrats Network which lists hundreds of candidates around the country, although there almost certainly many more where that came from that aren't getting nearly as much attention as they should.
In most cases the ones that the media covers are much less sincere than those that rise slowly through the grassroots levels; however there are some exceptions. When reviewing the murder rates in states with Republican or Democratic control I noticed one so called independent who voted for an Ag-gag law in Kentucky who claimed to be standing up to the establishment and multinational corporations, and I'm sure there are hundreds of pretenders like him, which is why people need to do their research and keep them accountable. Those that do the best research won't elect phonies like him.
If a growing number of people get their media from alternative outlets they can elect real progressives and the establishment could be in for a surprise in November.
No comments:
Post a Comment