The press couldn’t write a nice word about him without repeating the lie that he had no Black support-- and it was a lie. SC isn't the only place Black voters live, and he had 10% in Illinois MONTHS ago, for instance. But beat that drum enough, and it became self-fulfilling. 2/20
The press silenced the overwhelming majority of Black South Benders who supported him-- 75%, higher even than his white support in South Bend-- and it was so much more insidious than just ignoring them. They interviewed them and then SHELVED those interviews. 3/20
The press consistently questioned his Black support while never looking at any of the other candidate’s. They pushed the ludicrously non-existent Klobmentum, while never looking at her record, or asking her why she didn’t have any Black support. I STILL don’t understand why. 4/20
Gay pundits said he wasn’t gay enough because he didn’t wear sequined hot pants or make "YMCA” his walk out song or whatever, while uplifting a woman, who has NEVER apologized for being a republican during the AIDS crisis, because she wears a rainbow feather boa once a year. 5/20
The press didn’t believe our movement was real, literally writing articles casting suspicion on Pete's online support, completely disregarding that thousands, representing every single state in the union(!) Barnstormed for him in Iowa, NH, NV, and SC. 6/20
The press didn’t believe his international support was real, embracing and spreading ludicrous conspiracy theories about our world wide supporters (and the CIA?), and revealing their own racism disbelieving Nigerian people could be educated enough to care about our politics. 7/20
The press never corrected the narrative pushed by other candidates that we were supported by billionaires, when they were capped at the same level as the 999,958 of us who donated what little we could. We were completely dismissed by the press as unimportant. 8/20
In debates, the press went out of their way to suppress us, let candidates who had NAME CHECKED US lie about us and go entirely unchallenged. From being on the ground before and after, I KNOW letting Klobuchar’s infantilizing lie go unchallenged in the debate lost us NH. 9/20
The press cast aspersions on internal data that we had in Iowa. We had VOLUNTEER precinct captains in every single precinct in the state. Of COURSE we had valid numbers and knew that we won, plus it was the most public form of voting possible, with press all over the place! 10/20
Instead, the press focused on the fact that a software developer who made our text banking software happened to be the same developer who put together the reporting (NOT VOTING) software in Iowa, giving credence to people who accused us of somehow cheating out in the open. 11/20
The press ignored that Pete won the most Obama-Trump counties in IA and NH, that there were dozens, if not hundreds of not only independents but *republicans* happy to jump into our coalition, who we will need in November, and probably now lost because of their failing. 12/20
Hell, the press not just implied but outright accused him of fixing bread prices while he was a desk jockey at a consulting company, as if he would have had ANY power to do that AT ALL! 13/20
The press gave credence to swift boaters who tried to take away the legitimacy of Pete’s military service, or who made it out to be some kind of desk job photo opp, or twist it into some sick and racist desire to shoot people, which is BEYOND fucked up. 14/20
I’ve been reading @ezraklein’s new book, Why We’re Polarized, as I’ve traveled to NH and SC for Pete, and he talks about how the press really fucked up in how they gave so much space to Hillary’s emails instead of to her policies in 2016. 15/20
@ezraklein The press has done to Pete what they did to Clinton only instead of emails, it was his Black support, his gayness, his authenticity, his experience, because they are so cynical they couldn’t see that a man who was genuinely, truly *good* WASN'T too good to be true. 16/20
@ezraklein The result is the press destroyed the best possible candidate to beat the incumbent president in order to solidify make our choice now between a bunch of straight, white, senior citizens with so much ready to go oppo, who have been playing Trump’s game and will lose at it. 17/20
@ezraklein When Trump wins, they'll have 4 more years of constant stories to fill up their 24 hour news cycle, as he tweets denigrating propaganda and implements more dangerous policy targeting the people they pretend to care about. 18/20
@ezraklein I don’t blame voters. I don’t think that they are “low information” when they are going out of their way to seek news. But the news is just parroting back Twitter nonsense so they can fill up airtime and pages without doing investigative work. 19/20
@ezraklein I do and will FOREVER blame the press for how shoddily they reported on this election, how much they alternately ignored and denigrated a true servant leader who got into this to uplift the tired, sick, and hungry, and twisted him into something else he never was. 20/20
