I'm not so sure that covers it.. We're talking about the top news companies doing this on a constant basis to the runner up of the 2016 primaries. Someone who won more than 20 states and became one of the top primary vote-getters of all time.
They're not doing anything on a constant basis, is the point. As I said, it's very easy to gather a bunch of examples to make points that aren't necessarily true.
That's not somebody who the tops news companies in the country should be constantly "forgetting" about.
I promise that if you open up any major paper, you will see coverage of Bernie. He's not being constantly forgotten. He's not being forgotten at all.
You bring up systematic data, while then please show me other top candidates who've been getting this same treatment with constant "mistakes" being made leaving them out of the conversation. I showed you over 30 examples, you choosing to ignore each and every one of them by saying they're "conveniently picked out" is incredibly disingenuous.
Do you know what I mean when I say you have to look at systematic data? And do you see the issue with accusing someone of being disingenuous here? I'm making a point about how we acquire true beliefs, as opposed to being led astray by propaganda or some natural flaws in how we perceive information. I could say, "OMG, the MSM is obsessed with crickets! Why are there so many stories about crickets, these days? Is the country being overrun?" And you could challenge that, and then (if I were enterprising enough), I could bury you in links to MSM stories about crickets. You wouldn't retract your challenge at that point. You'd just point out that there's a ton of MSM stories, and of course you can find a lot of them about any subject. I encourage you to apply that same thinking here.
How can you call it defensible when the former D.N.C chair herself said it was an incorrect way of reporting it?
I don't share the premise that the former DNC chair is infallible. I can call it defensible because if you want to know the state of the race, that's clearly relevant information. So the question is what is the update supposed to show.
Furthermore, trying to bring up that polls, predictions and presentations don't necessarily help anyone in the elections isn't much of counter argument here.. You're avoiding my major point about this, which is that the majority of American voters were not educated enough to what the hell is a superdelegate and that was fully taken advantage of by combining the delegates who weren't even pledged yet. I've posted a NYT article from 2008 yesterday that shows that they only counted delegates which were official.
I don't know if "counterargument" is le mot juste, but I'm trying to get you to see that the conspiracy doesn't make any sense. There's no benefit--real or perceived--to a media company to misrepresent the state of a race. They're trying to inform the readers/viewers and be the source that those news consumers go to get informed. I'd also disagree with what you call your major point, but I also don't think it's material to the discussion when you consider what you called a "counterargument."
Why did that change? Can you not see how the average voter would look at that and lose motivation to vote seeing such an uphill climb? You're saying this doesn't "necessarily help" and I'm not sure how that's realistic once again.
The average voter might be just as likely to see their favored candidate winning and decide, "guess I don't need to vote." Or to see their favored candidate losing and decide, "shit, gotta make sure to turn out and to encourage everyone I know to turn out." And there were some important differences in the 2008 and 2016 races (most especially that the 2008 race was neck and neck down to the wire, while the 2016 race was never close).
If some fan boy supporters is the biggest issue here, I'm not so sure that needs to be the focus.. Hillary supporters and Biden supporters can come off as nasty and entitled as well. It seems like there's a different set of standards for his supporters compared to everyone else.
Bernie Bros
Bernie Bots
Sexists
Hillary shitting on his supporters at this time..
Meanwhile other supporters can say whatever they feel like and it's just "politics." Enough with the hypocrisy please.
Given the numbers, it's likely that Clinton and Biden had obnoxious supporters, but they weren't visible. Certainly not here, but I also don't think pundits were getting hate mail and death threats, etc. for making observations that were/are arguably unfavorable to those candidates in anything like the volume that they get from Bernie fans. Plus, given the small gap in terms of expectations between Bernie and those other candidates, the rank hatred displayed toward them by Bernie fans comes off as very irrational.
