CORPORATE MEDIA SHOWED ITS TRUE COLORS IN LAST NIGHT'S PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE

In yesterday’s presidential debate, corporate media asked the candidates about repression by China against the Uighurs and in Hong Kong, but nothing about the recent wave of deadly repression against anti-neoliberal protests in Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti, Lebanon, Iraq, Colombia or the deadly racist governments of Bolivia and Brazil. Nor did the press take up on Bernie's statement about excessive military spending. Nor did it take up on Bernie's and Elizabeth Warren's opposition to Pete Buttigieg and Biden's closed-door fund raising with millionaires, allowing other candidates to attack Warren for being divisive.

CNN classified Bernie as the debate’s leading “loser” because he failed to go beyond attacking the billionaire class. The statement is deceptive because Bernie's discourse attacking corporate wealth and abuse has struck a responsive chord among skeptics, many of whom often do not vote. Bernie pointed that out last night when he said in response to accusations of being divisive and jeopardizing the effort to defeat Trump in 2020: 'I'll tell you how to beat Trump,’ he said. ‘You do it by animating those who don’t vote.’ (He’s talking about 46 percent of the electorate who didn’t vote in 2016.)

But actually CNN has a point. Bernie would do well to broaden his message by emphasizing military spending and the double standards of US foreign policy: international sanctions with devastating effects against Venezuela and Iran while maintaining friendly relations with repressive and undemocratic governments, the number of which is too lengthy to list here.