Campaign Conventional Wisdom Is Dead

Bloomberg’s Jonathan Bernstein just published a new piece called, “Is Bernie Finished?” Citing Iowa poll numbers that show poor Sanders “essentially in a three person race for second” (he actually is in second, but whatever), its premise is that Bernie now rests “at the fringes of plausibility.” Worse, he could “fail to reach the delegate threshold” in Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina.

Citing poll wizard Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, Bernstein paints a dire picture:

“While Sanders is faring somewhat better nationally, that’s mainly because almost all the other candidates remain unknown to voters. As Nate Silver points out, only 8% of Democrats say they’re definitely supporting Sanders…”

This is absurd, and the absurdity isn’t confined to coverage of Bernie Sanders. It’s early, and stupid, to be making pronouncements about any candidate’s viability.

It was silly back in December when a spate of pundits suddenly decided to run “worries abound” stories about Elizabeth Warren whose campaign months later is doing, surprise surprise, just fine.

It was absurd for New York magazine to run “Joe Biden May Be Less Electable Than He Looks” stories in April as he jumped to a big lead in the polls.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/campaign-conventional-wisdom-dead-2020-election-sanders-846978/

This is the kind of stuff that annoys me about campaign coverage. When the media has be a pundit or prognosticator. Just report where the candidates stand on issues and I'll decide.