Sanders: Campaign coverage should focus on issues instead of outrage, gossip and Facebook comments

by Meteor Blades

The senator speaks at “An Economic Agenda for America: A Conversation with Bernie Sanders”
 event in D.C. in February this year.. We're all used to Sen. Bernie Sanders telling the truth whether people—including top-level Democrats—like it or not. He's done it again. Here's Ali Elkin:

“In terms of campaign coverage, there is more coverage about the political gossip of the campaign, about raising money, about polling, about somebody saying something dumb, or some kid works for a campaign and sends out something stupid on Facebook, right?” the Vermont senator said in an appearance Sunday on CNN's Reliable Sources, a program about media. “We can expect that to be a major story. But what your job is, what the media's job is, is to say, 'Look, these are the major issues facing the country.' We're a democracy. People have different points of view. Let's argue it.” [...] “I think that instead of coming up with the next news of the moment, 'Breaking news! There was an automobile accident and a cat got run over,' here's breaking news: For 40 years the American middle class has been disappearing and the rich have been getting richer. Why?” Sanders said.

Sanders knows the answer to that question. He's expressed it many times.   But will the media spread his answer? Or stick to the polls and the horse race?
Here's a synopsis of Sanders's economic recovery proposal. Nothing radical here. Nothing socialist, just a commonsense social democratic program. Sanders himself has pointed out that the list is incomplete. Personally, I'd like to see a federal infrastructure bank and a state bank in the 49 states that don't have one the way North Dakota does. I'd like to see an emphasis on government encouragement of alternatives to corporate structure, worker cooperatives and a much bigger proportion of municipally owned utilities instead of the 15 percent now existing. But there's plenty worthwhile in Sanders's approach:

• Invest in our crumbling infrastructure with a major program to create jobs by rebuilding roads, bridges, water systems, waste water plants, airports, railroads and schools. • Transform energy systems away from fossil fuels to create jobs while beginning to reverse global warming and make the planet habitable for future generations.
• Develop new economic models to support workers in the United States instead of giving tax breaks to corporations which ship jobs to low-wage countries overseas.
• Make it easier for workers to join unions and bargain for higher wages and benefits.
• Raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 an hour so no one who works 40 hours a week will live in poverty.
• Provide equal pay for women workers who now make 78 percent of what male counterparts make.
• Reform trade policies that have shuttered more than 60,000 factories and cost more than 4.9 million decent-paying manufacturing jobs.
• Make college affordable and provide affordable child care to restore America’s competitive edge compared to other nations.
• Break up big banks. The six largest banks now have assets equivalent to 61 percent of our gross domestic product, over $9.8 trillion. They underwrite more than half the mortgages in the country and issue more than two-thirds of all credit cards.
• Join the rest of the industrialized world with a Medicare-for-all health care system that provides better care at less cost.
• Expand Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and nutrition programs.
• Reform the tax code based on wage earners’ ability to pay and eliminate loopholes that let profitable corporations stash profits overseas and pay no U.S. federal income taxes.

A pipe-dream? It doesn't have to be.