How the mass media increases the Trump disaster

Sam Smith - Although channels like MSNBC spend an inordinate amount of time telling us how bad Trump is, they forget to offer us one key fact: who is the alternative and what would they do. A good example is to compare the media attention given Mitch McConnell vs. Bernie Sanders.  In the past month, McConnell has gotten 65,300 news hits on Google while Sanders has gotten only 1,670.

But according to a new poll:

 Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has the lowest favorability rating of any elected official with a national profile, according to a new Harvard-Harris poll provided exclusively to The Hill.

McConnell scores just a 19 percent favorable rating in the national poll, worse than President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.)

... Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is at 28 percent favorable and 34 unfavorable, with Democrats viewing him positively by a 2-to-1 margin.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (R-Calif.) posts a negative 31-47 split, but is viewed favorably by a majority of Democrats.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) remains the most popular politician in the country and is the only national figure in the poll that a majority of voters view favorably.

In other words, the most popular politician in the country has gotten less than three percent of the news coverage of the most unpopular politician in the country. This is pretty pathetic journalism.

Now Sanders may not actually lead the country out of Trump era; that honor is more probably going to some who are younger. Checking one possibility, 36 year old Rep. Joseph Kennedy III finds that he got just over 3% of the coverage the media gave McDonnell.

Part of the reason Trump is in power is because the mass media is extremely down on true progressive politics.

And all of us, not just the media, have got to start thinking about building a post-Trump era and obsessing on the guy you want to rid ourselves of won't  take us very far.