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When the Washington Post's Paul Waldman (9/18/19) recently attempted to explain Elizabeth Warren's rise in the Democratic primary polls, he attributed it in part to media:
Reporters on the campaign trail have said for some time that she is the one who generates the most enthusiastic response among voters on the ground. A rise in her poll standing inevitably produces stories about what she's doing right, stories that get filled with the impressions those reporters have accumulated.
The resulting positive news coverage encourages more Democrats to feel favorably toward her, or at the very least give her a careful look. Which leads to poll numbers that continue to improve, which leads to more positive press coverage, and the cycle goes on.
It's a logical path from enthusiastic crowds and rising poll numbers to news coverage about what a candidate is doing right. But it's certainly not an inevitable one; media coverage is a product of editorial decisions, not laws of nature. And four years ago, when another Democratic primary candidate was drawing enthusiastic crowds and rising in the polls, it prompted a very different kind of coverage (e.g., FAIR.org, 7/1/15, 8/20/15, 8/21/15).
Why has Warren--who has positioned herself as Bernie Sanders' closest ideological competitor, and a vocal crusader against corporate control over the political system--so far escaped the scathing and skeptical coverage Sanders has received? The answer has to do with both the differences in how the two candidates frame themselves, and the way major media cover elections.
As FAIR has shown over and over, corporate journalists' rolodexes skew heavily toward establishment sources: party officials, strategists and operatives (Extra!, 7-8/14; FAIR.org, 6/1/17), and centrist and right-leaning think tank analysts (FAIR.org, 7/1/13).
Those sources are almost uniformly and vehemently anti-Sanders, and have been at least since his run against Hillary Clinton in the last election provoked their deepest antipathy (FAIR.org, 6/28/19, 8/15/19). But--no doubt in part because Sanders has helped shift the center of the party so much in recent years--many see Warren as a more acceptable alternative.
Even Third Way, the pro-corporate think tank that in 2013 warned in the Wall Street Journal (12/2/13) that Warren was leading Democrats "off a populist cliff," has warmed up a bit to her (Politico, 6/19/19). Politico quoted an attendee at a Third Way conference--who says he likes Warren's consumer protection policies and infrastructure plan--describing the shift: "People are taking a second look at her and saying, 'Hmm. Some of her policies are good. Maybe she isn't like Bernie.'"
"She isn't like Bernie" seems to be the take thus far of much of the Democratic establishment, which, as the New York Times (8/26/19) reported recently, Warren has been working hard to convince she "is a team player who is seeking to lead the party--not stage a hostile takeover of it."
By reassuring the kind of party insiders the media rely heavily on for framing their stories, Warren has largely avoided the kinds of aspersions--often anonymous--lobbed at Sanders. For instance, the Washington Post (6/24/19), under the headline "Sanders Faces a New Kind of Threat in Elizabeth Warren," wrote that Sanders' strategy of
doubling down on his ideological purity and socialist credentials carries risks for the senator from Vermont, other Democrats say. It's enabled Warren to position herself as impassioned but reasonable, while Sanders holds down the leftward flank of the Democratic Party and serves as the ideological outlier in the race.
Later, in an article headlined "Bernie Sanders' Supporters Find Anger Not as Compelling This Time Around," the Post (8/30/19) wrote that Warren offered a new option for voters "who are turned off by his tenor." After describing Warren and Sanders as "more similar than different when it comes to policy goals," the Post explained that "where the candidates --Sanders a democratic socialist and Warren a proud capitalist--diverge is in the tenor of their campaigns." To support this claim that "tenor" is the key difference between the "democratic socialist" and the "proud capitalist," the paper turned to a Brookings Institution fellow who worked for Bill Clinton:
It's not as though [Warren is] content to thunder against the evildoers like an Old Testament prophet. That's much more his mode. Sanders sees [his campaign] as a revolutionary mass movement to upset the established order. While Senator Warren is obviously very dissatisfied with the status quo, she describes her campaign in very different terms, and terms that I think are less scary.
The question this raises, obviously, is who might be scared by those terms? Warren, who emphasizes that she is "a capitalist to my bones," inspires less fear than Sanders, not just among the centrist party insiders who make up a large bulk of media sources, but also, no doubt, among the owners and sponsors of major news outlets.
Moreover, with Biden entering the race as the immediate frontrunner and Sanders as the clearest top rival, given his strong showing against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Warren has drawn less fire from competitors as well--which is beginning to change, as Politico (8/30/19) and the Post (9/18/19) have noted.
In opinion sections, Warren is accumulating a fan club among those meant to represent the left. (The right, unsurprisingly, is taking her as a serious threat--Vice, 9/12/19.) While it's hard to find a columnist in a major newspaper who says positive things about Sanders, many have professed a fondness for Warren.
At the New York Times, the love has been particularly flowing. Nicholas Kristof calls her "serious" (6/26/19), Farhad Manjoo (6/6/19) finds her "impressive," and Gail Collins (8/27/19), defending Warren against right-wing columnist Bret Stephens, pulled out the capitalist card: "Elizabeth Warren is a capitalist. She understands the economic system better than any other candidate."
For the LA Times' Virginia Heffernan (9/20/19), Warren offered a stark contrast to Sanders (and Biden):
At a time when Bernie Sanders is, with few details, caterwauling about revolution, and Joe Biden is turning to incoherent sentimentalism, [Warren's] logic is a breath of fresh air.
Heffernan sees Sanders as antagonistic toward the middle class ("the bourgeoisie, the dread middle class to Democratic socialist Bernie"), whereas "Warren makes it clear she believes that what's greatest about America is the bourgeoisie, and those striving to join it."
And yet, many of Warren's famous plans are still deeply worrying to journalists' main sources (not to mention those news media owners and sponsors). So while Warren is often favorably contrasted to Sanders, she is at the same time the target of "gotcha" articles like the New York Times piece (9/9/19) attempting to paint her as hypocritical for swearing off "big-money" donations for her presidential primary run while still using leftover funds from her Senate race that had made no such vows.
"Admirers and activists praised her stand--but few noted the fact that she had built a financial cushion by pocketing big checks the years before," the Times' Shane Goldmacher wrote. Who were Goldmacher's sources for the premise of the piece? Not any Warren supporters he talked to, who seemed pleased that she had renounced such donations, but "some donors and, privately, opponents" who "are chafing at her campaign's purity claims."
Piling on, the Washington Post gave an op-ed column (9/11/19) to one Times source who seemed to take her new position particularly personally--former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who fundraised for Warren's Senate race and then for Biden's 2020 presidential bid, and pouted that where he once got a "glowing hand-written letter from her for my hard work," he's now being demonized:
It's one thing to fashion a campaign that relies on grassroots fundraising, but it's another to go out of your way to characterize as power-brokers and influence-peddlers the very people whose support you have previously courted.
Likewise, while the op-ed pages might make room for Warren praise, at some of the big papers the editorial board's own stance is decidedly more antagonistic. After the CNN primary debate--in which Warren sharply defended her positions with the widely quoted line, "I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for"--the Post (8/1/19) pushed back against her "ideological grandiosity" under the snide headline, "Why Go to the Trouble of Running for President to Promote Ideas That Can't Work?"
And, unsurprisingly, the Wall Street Journal editorial board (8/9/19) isn't buying what Warren is selling: "She must have a strange definition of capitalism. Every policy she proposes would increase government control over the private economy." (The New York Times editors have yet to weigh in directly on Warren.)
These kinds of takes heavily populate opinion pieces, news stories and debate questions that focus on the progressive policies Warren espouses, with an endless drumbeat of calls for "pragmatism" (FAIR.org, 8/21/19) and warnings against the "risk of political backlash" for moving too far to the left (FAIR.org, 7/2/19).
Moreover, Warren will unquestionably continue to face the same kinds of misogynistic coverage every prominent female politician has long faced about her looks (e.g., CBS This Morning, 7/31/19) and capability (Extra!, 3/01). "Is Elizabeth Warren a Serious Contender After All?" asked New York magazine (5/28/19). "Many Democrats Love Elizabeth Warren. They Also Worry About Her," declared a front-page New York Times headline (8/15/19) over a lengthy article that, more than a year before the general election, highlighted "persistent questions and doubts" about whether Warren is electable, no matter her popularity.
But as long as Sanders is in the race, he will no doubt continue to draw the most intense fire. If Warren ever finds herself without media's bete noire to draft off of--assuming her policy stances remain the same--the media headwinds can be expected to get much more intense for her.
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When the Washington Post's Paul Waldman (9/18/19) recently attempted to explain Elizabeth Warren's rise in the Democratic primary polls, he attributed it in part to media:
Reporters on the campaign trail have said for some time that she is the one who generates the most enthusiastic response among voters on the ground. A rise in her poll standing inevitably produces stories about what she's doing right, stories that get filled with the impressions those reporters have accumulated.
The resulting positive news coverage encourages more Democrats to feel favorably toward her, or at the very least give her a careful look. Which leads to poll numbers that continue to improve, which leads to more positive press coverage, and the cycle goes on.
It's a logical path from enthusiastic crowds and rising poll numbers to news coverage about what a candidate is doing right. But it's certainly not an inevitable one; media coverage is a product of editorial decisions, not laws of nature. And four years ago, when another Democratic primary candidate was drawing enthusiastic crowds and rising in the polls, it prompted a very different kind of coverage (e.g., FAIR.org, 7/1/15, 8/20/15, 8/21/15).
Why has Warren--who has positioned herself as Bernie Sanders' closest ideological competitor, and a vocal crusader against corporate control over the political system--so far escaped the scathing and skeptical coverage Sanders has received? The answer has to do with both the differences in how the two candidates frame themselves, and the way major media cover elections.
As FAIR has shown over and over, corporate journalists' rolodexes skew heavily toward establishment sources: party officials, strategists and operatives (Extra!, 7-8/14; FAIR.org, 6/1/17), and centrist and right-leaning think tank analysts (FAIR.org, 7/1/13).
Those sources are almost uniformly and vehemently anti-Sanders, and have been at least since his run against Hillary Clinton in the last election provoked their deepest antipathy (FAIR.org, 6/28/19, 8/15/19). But--no doubt in part because Sanders has helped shift the center of the party so much in recent years--many see Warren as a more acceptable alternative.
Even Third Way, the pro-corporate think tank that in 2013 warned in the Wall Street Journal (12/2/13) that Warren was leading Democrats "off a populist cliff," has warmed up a bit to her (Politico, 6/19/19). Politico quoted an attendee at a Third Way conference--who says he likes Warren's consumer protection policies and infrastructure plan--describing the shift: "People are taking a second look at her and saying, 'Hmm. Some of her policies are good. Maybe she isn't like Bernie.'"
"She isn't like Bernie" seems to be the take thus far of much of the Democratic establishment, which, as the New York Times (8/26/19) reported recently, Warren has been working hard to convince she "is a team player who is seeking to lead the party--not stage a hostile takeover of it."
By reassuring the kind of party insiders the media rely heavily on for framing their stories, Warren has largely avoided the kinds of aspersions--often anonymous--lobbed at Sanders. For instance, the Washington Post (6/24/19), under the headline "Sanders Faces a New Kind of Threat in Elizabeth Warren," wrote that Sanders' strategy of
doubling down on his ideological purity and socialist credentials carries risks for the senator from Vermont, other Democrats say. It's enabled Warren to position herself as impassioned but reasonable, while Sanders holds down the leftward flank of the Democratic Party and serves as the ideological outlier in the race.
Later, in an article headlined "Bernie Sanders' Supporters Find Anger Not as Compelling This Time Around," the Post (8/30/19) wrote that Warren offered a new option for voters "who are turned off by his tenor." After describing Warren and Sanders as "more similar than different when it comes to policy goals," the Post explained that "where the candidates --Sanders a democratic socialist and Warren a proud capitalist--diverge is in the tenor of their campaigns." To support this claim that "tenor" is the key difference between the "democratic socialist" and the "proud capitalist," the paper turned to a Brookings Institution fellow who worked for Bill Clinton:
It's not as though [Warren is] content to thunder against the evildoers like an Old Testament prophet. That's much more his mode. Sanders sees [his campaign] as a revolutionary mass movement to upset the established order. While Senator Warren is obviously very dissatisfied with the status quo, she describes her campaign in very different terms, and terms that I think are less scary.
The question this raises, obviously, is who might be scared by those terms? Warren, who emphasizes that she is "a capitalist to my bones," inspires less fear than Sanders, not just among the centrist party insiders who make up a large bulk of media sources, but also, no doubt, among the owners and sponsors of major news outlets.
Moreover, with Biden entering the race as the immediate frontrunner and Sanders as the clearest top rival, given his strong showing against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Warren has drawn less fire from competitors as well--which is beginning to change, as Politico (8/30/19) and the Post (9/18/19) have noted.
In opinion sections, Warren is accumulating a fan club among those meant to represent the left. (The right, unsurprisingly, is taking her as a serious threat--Vice, 9/12/19.) While it's hard to find a columnist in a major newspaper who says positive things about Sanders, many have professed a fondness for Warren.
At the New York Times, the love has been particularly flowing. Nicholas Kristof calls her "serious" (6/26/19), Farhad Manjoo (6/6/19) finds her "impressive," and Gail Collins (8/27/19), defending Warren against right-wing columnist Bret Stephens, pulled out the capitalist card: "Elizabeth Warren is a capitalist. She understands the economic system better than any other candidate."
For the LA Times' Virginia Heffernan (9/20/19), Warren offered a stark contrast to Sanders (and Biden):
At a time when Bernie Sanders is, with few details, caterwauling about revolution, and Joe Biden is turning to incoherent sentimentalism, [Warren's] logic is a breath of fresh air.
Heffernan sees Sanders as antagonistic toward the middle class ("the bourgeoisie, the dread middle class to Democratic socialist Bernie"), whereas "Warren makes it clear she believes that what's greatest about America is the bourgeoisie, and those striving to join it."
And yet, many of Warren's famous plans are still deeply worrying to journalists' main sources (not to mention those news media owners and sponsors). So while Warren is often favorably contrasted to Sanders, she is at the same time the target of "gotcha" articles like the New York Times piece (9/9/19) attempting to paint her as hypocritical for swearing off "big-money" donations for her presidential primary run while still using leftover funds from her Senate race that had made no such vows.
"Admirers and activists praised her stand--but few noted the fact that she had built a financial cushion by pocketing big checks the years before," the Times' Shane Goldmacher wrote. Who were Goldmacher's sources for the premise of the piece? Not any Warren supporters he talked to, who seemed pleased that she had renounced such donations, but "some donors and, privately, opponents" who "are chafing at her campaign's purity claims."
Piling on, the Washington Post gave an op-ed column (9/11/19) to one Times source who seemed to take her new position particularly personally--former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who fundraised for Warren's Senate race and then for Biden's 2020 presidential bid, and pouted that where he once got a "glowing hand-written letter from her for my hard work," he's now being demonized:
It's one thing to fashion a campaign that relies on grassroots fundraising, but it's another to go out of your way to characterize as power-brokers and influence-peddlers the very people whose support you have previously courted.
Likewise, while the op-ed pages might make room for Warren praise, at some of the big papers the editorial board's own stance is decidedly more antagonistic. After the CNN primary debate--in which Warren sharply defended her positions with the widely quoted line, "I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for"--the Post (8/1/19) pushed back against her "ideological grandiosity" under the snide headline, "Why Go to the Trouble of Running for President to Promote Ideas That Can't Work?"
And, unsurprisingly, the Wall Street Journal editorial board (8/9/19) isn't buying what Warren is selling: "She must have a strange definition of capitalism. Every policy she proposes would increase government control over the private economy." (The New York Times editors have yet to weigh in directly on Warren.)
These kinds of takes heavily populate opinion pieces, news stories and debate questions that focus on the progressive policies Warren espouses, with an endless drumbeat of calls for "pragmatism" (FAIR.org, 8/21/19) and warnings against the "risk of political backlash" for moving too far to the left (FAIR.org, 7/2/19).
Moreover, Warren will unquestionably continue to face the same kinds of misogynistic coverage every prominent female politician has long faced about her looks (e.g., CBS This Morning, 7/31/19) and capability (Extra!, 3/01). "Is Elizabeth Warren a Serious Contender After All?" asked New York magazine (5/28/19). "Many Democrats Love Elizabeth Warren. They Also Worry About Her," declared a front-page New York Times headline (8/15/19) over a lengthy article that, more than a year before the general election, highlighted "persistent questions and doubts" about whether Warren is electable, no matter her popularity.
But as long as Sanders is in the race, he will no doubt continue to draw the most intense fire. If Warren ever finds herself without media's bete noire to draft off of--assuming her policy stances remain the same--the media headwinds can be expected to get much more intense for her.
When the Washington Post's Paul Waldman (9/18/19) recently attempted to explain Elizabeth Warren's rise in the Democratic primary polls, he attributed it in part to media:
Reporters on the campaign trail have said for some time that she is the one who generates the most enthusiastic response among voters on the ground. A rise in her poll standing inevitably produces stories about what she's doing right, stories that get filled with the impressions those reporters have accumulated.
The resulting positive news coverage encourages more Democrats to feel favorably toward her, or at the very least give her a careful look. Which leads to poll numbers that continue to improve, which leads to more positive press coverage, and the cycle goes on.
It's a logical path from enthusiastic crowds and rising poll numbers to news coverage about what a candidate is doing right. But it's certainly not an inevitable one; media coverage is a product of editorial decisions, not laws of nature. And four years ago, when another Democratic primary candidate was drawing enthusiastic crowds and rising in the polls, it prompted a very different kind of coverage (e.g., FAIR.org, 7/1/15, 8/20/15, 8/21/15).
Why has Warren--who has positioned herself as Bernie Sanders' closest ideological competitor, and a vocal crusader against corporate control over the political system--so far escaped the scathing and skeptical coverage Sanders has received? The answer has to do with both the differences in how the two candidates frame themselves, and the way major media cover elections.
As FAIR has shown over and over, corporate journalists' rolodexes skew heavily toward establishment sources: party officials, strategists and operatives (Extra!, 7-8/14; FAIR.org, 6/1/17), and centrist and right-leaning think tank analysts (FAIR.org, 7/1/13).
Those sources are almost uniformly and vehemently anti-Sanders, and have been at least since his run against Hillary Clinton in the last election provoked their deepest antipathy (FAIR.org, 6/28/19, 8/15/19). But--no doubt in part because Sanders has helped shift the center of the party so much in recent years--many see Warren as a more acceptable alternative.
Even Third Way, the pro-corporate think tank that in 2013 warned in the Wall Street Journal (12/2/13) that Warren was leading Democrats "off a populist cliff," has warmed up a bit to her (Politico, 6/19/19). Politico quoted an attendee at a Third Way conference--who says he likes Warren's consumer protection policies and infrastructure plan--describing the shift: "People are taking a second look at her and saying, 'Hmm. Some of her policies are good. Maybe she isn't like Bernie.'"
"She isn't like Bernie" seems to be the take thus far of much of the Democratic establishment, which, as the New York Times (8/26/19) reported recently, Warren has been working hard to convince she "is a team player who is seeking to lead the party--not stage a hostile takeover of it."
By reassuring the kind of party insiders the media rely heavily on for framing their stories, Warren has largely avoided the kinds of aspersions--often anonymous--lobbed at Sanders. For instance, the Washington Post (6/24/19), under the headline "Sanders Faces a New Kind of Threat in Elizabeth Warren," wrote that Sanders' strategy of
doubling down on his ideological purity and socialist credentials carries risks for the senator from Vermont, other Democrats say. It's enabled Warren to position herself as impassioned but reasonable, while Sanders holds down the leftward flank of the Democratic Party and serves as the ideological outlier in the race.
Later, in an article headlined "Bernie Sanders' Supporters Find Anger Not as Compelling This Time Around," the Post (8/30/19) wrote that Warren offered a new option for voters "who are turned off by his tenor." After describing Warren and Sanders as "more similar than different when it comes to policy goals," the Post explained that "where the candidates --Sanders a democratic socialist and Warren a proud capitalist--diverge is in the tenor of their campaigns." To support this claim that "tenor" is the key difference between the "democratic socialist" and the "proud capitalist," the paper turned to a Brookings Institution fellow who worked for Bill Clinton:
It's not as though [Warren is] content to thunder against the evildoers like an Old Testament prophet. That's much more his mode. Sanders sees [his campaign] as a revolutionary mass movement to upset the established order. While Senator Warren is obviously very dissatisfied with the status quo, she describes her campaign in very different terms, and terms that I think are less scary.
The question this raises, obviously, is who might be scared by those terms? Warren, who emphasizes that she is "a capitalist to my bones," inspires less fear than Sanders, not just among the centrist party insiders who make up a large bulk of media sources, but also, no doubt, among the owners and sponsors of major news outlets.
Moreover, with Biden entering the race as the immediate frontrunner and Sanders as the clearest top rival, given his strong showing against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Warren has drawn less fire from competitors as well--which is beginning to change, as Politico (8/30/19) and the Post (9/18/19) have noted.
In opinion sections, Warren is accumulating a fan club among those meant to represent the left. (The right, unsurprisingly, is taking her as a serious threat--Vice, 9/12/19.) While it's hard to find a columnist in a major newspaper who says positive things about Sanders, many have professed a fondness for Warren.
At the New York Times, the love has been particularly flowing. Nicholas Kristof calls her "serious" (6/26/19), Farhad Manjoo (6/6/19) finds her "impressive," and Gail Collins (8/27/19), defending Warren against right-wing columnist Bret Stephens, pulled out the capitalist card: "Elizabeth Warren is a capitalist. She understands the economic system better than any other candidate."
For the LA Times' Virginia Heffernan (9/20/19), Warren offered a stark contrast to Sanders (and Biden):
At a time when Bernie Sanders is, with few details, caterwauling about revolution, and Joe Biden is turning to incoherent sentimentalism, [Warren's] logic is a breath of fresh air.
Heffernan sees Sanders as antagonistic toward the middle class ("the bourgeoisie, the dread middle class to Democratic socialist Bernie"), whereas "Warren makes it clear she believes that what's greatest about America is the bourgeoisie, and those striving to join it."
And yet, many of Warren's famous plans are still deeply worrying to journalists' main sources (not to mention those news media owners and sponsors). So while Warren is often favorably contrasted to Sanders, she is at the same time the target of "gotcha" articles like the New York Times piece (9/9/19) attempting to paint her as hypocritical for swearing off "big-money" donations for her presidential primary run while still using leftover funds from her Senate race that had made no such vows.
"Admirers and activists praised her stand--but few noted the fact that she had built a financial cushion by pocketing big checks the years before," the Times' Shane Goldmacher wrote. Who were Goldmacher's sources for the premise of the piece? Not any Warren supporters he talked to, who seemed pleased that she had renounced such donations, but "some donors and, privately, opponents" who "are chafing at her campaign's purity claims."
Piling on, the Washington Post gave an op-ed column (9/11/19) to one Times source who seemed to take her new position particularly personally--former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, who fundraised for Warren's Senate race and then for Biden's 2020 presidential bid, and pouted that where he once got a "glowing hand-written letter from her for my hard work," he's now being demonized:
It's one thing to fashion a campaign that relies on grassroots fundraising, but it's another to go out of your way to characterize as power-brokers and influence-peddlers the very people whose support you have previously courted.
Likewise, while the op-ed pages might make room for Warren praise, at some of the big papers the editorial board's own stance is decidedly more antagonistic. After the CNN primary debate--in which Warren sharply defended her positions with the widely quoted line, "I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for"--the Post (8/1/19) pushed back against her "ideological grandiosity" under the snide headline, "Why Go to the Trouble of Running for President to Promote Ideas That Can't Work?"
And, unsurprisingly, the Wall Street Journal editorial board (8/9/19) isn't buying what Warren is selling: "She must have a strange definition of capitalism. Every policy she proposes would increase government control over the private economy." (The New York Times editors have yet to weigh in directly on Warren.)
These kinds of takes heavily populate opinion pieces, news stories and debate questions that focus on the progressive policies Warren espouses, with an endless drumbeat of calls for "pragmatism" (FAIR.org, 8/21/19) and warnings against the "risk of political backlash" for moving too far to the left (FAIR.org, 7/2/19).
Moreover, Warren will unquestionably continue to face the same kinds of misogynistic coverage every prominent female politician has long faced about her looks (e.g., CBS This Morning, 7/31/19) and capability (Extra!, 3/01). "Is Elizabeth Warren a Serious Contender After All?" asked New York magazine (5/28/19). "Many Democrats Love Elizabeth Warren. They Also Worry About Her," declared a front-page New York Times headline (8/15/19) over a lengthy article that, more than a year before the general election, highlighted "persistent questions and doubts" about whether Warren is electable, no matter her popularity.
But as long as Sanders is in the race, he will no doubt continue to draw the most intense fire. If Warren ever finds herself without media's bete noire to draft off of--assuming her policy stances remain the same--the media headwinds can be expected to get much more intense for her.
"In the coming months and years, our job is not just to respond to every absurd statement that Donald Trump makes. Our job is to stay focused on the issues that are of importance to the working families of our country."
On the campaign trail, President Donald Trump posed in a garbage truck and performed a staged shift at a McDonald's as he postured as a champion of the working class.
But Trump "ignored virtually every important issue facing the working families of this country" during his inaugural address, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) noted Tuesday in video remarks recorded after he attended the event, which was packed with prominent billionaires and corporate executives—some of whom the president has chosen to serve in his Cabinet.
"How crazy is that? Our healthcare system is dysfunctional and it's wildly expensive," said Sanders. "Not one word from Trump about how he is going to address the healthcare crisis. We pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs—sometimes 10 times more than the people in other countries, and one out of four Americans are unable to afford the prescriptions that their doctors prescribe. Not one word in his speech on the high cost of prescription drugs."
"We have 800,000 Americans who are homeless and millions and millions of people spending 50 or 60% of their limited income on housing. We have a major housing crisis in America, everybody knows it—and Trump in his inaugural address did not devote one word to it," Sanders continued. "Today in America, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had... but Trump had nothing to say, not one word, about the growing gap between the very rich and everybody else."
Watch Sanders' full remarks:
Upon taking office, Trump immediately launched sweeping attacks on immigrant families, the environment, and the federal workforce, with more expected in the near future.
Trump also rolled back a Biden executive order aimed at lowering prescription drug prices.
In his remarks on Tuesday, Sanders said that "in the coming months and years, our job is not just to respond to every absurd statement that Donald Trump makes."
"Our job is to stay focused on the issues that are of importance to the working families of our country, and are in fact widely supported by the American people," said Sanders, pointing to broad backing for guaranteeing healthcare to all as a right, slashing drug prices, tackling the housing crisis, raising the long-stagnant federal minimum wage, and taking bold action against the climate emergency.
"No matter how many executive orders he signs and no matter how many absurd statements he makes, our goal remains the same," the senator added. "We have got to educate, we have got to organize, we have got to put pressure on Congress to do the right things."
"We cannot quit. We cannot be silent. If we quit, we lose more women," said one mother whose daughter died after being denied care under Georgia's six-week ban.
Congresswoman Nikema Williams joined patients, healthcare providers, and activists—including the mother of a woman who died after being refused abortion care in Georgia—at a Tuesday press conference held a day before what would have been the 52nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and amid fears of a national abortion ban during U.S. President Donald Trump's second term.
"I refuse to stand by while extremist politicians attack our freedoms, our health, and our future," Williams (D-Ga.) told attendees of the virtual press conference, which was hosted by the abortion rights group Free & Just. "Reproductive freedom is about healthcare, it's about dignity, it's about autonomy. It's about ensuring that everyone, every person, has the ability to make the best decisions for themselves and their families without government interference."
Speakers at Tuesday's event included Shanette Williams, whose 28-year-old daughter Amber Nicole Thurman died in 2022 after being forced to travel out of state to seek care due to a recently passed Georgia law banning almost all abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, a period during which many people don't even know they're pregnant.
"I want to send a clear message to men to get off the sidelines and enter the fight for reproductive justice."
Thurman, who was the single mother of a young son, is one of at least several U.S. women—most of them Black or brown—whose deaths have been attributed to draconian anti-abortion laws.
"She left a son, who every day is confused by why his mother is not here," Williams said of her daughter. "I'm here to be that voice, to fight, to push, to do whatever I need to do to help save another life. Because I never want a mother to feel what I feel today."
"We cannot quit. We cannot be silent. If we quit, we lose more women," Williams added. "In November, following reporting from ProPublica, officials in Georgia dismissed all members of the state's Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which investigates the deaths of pregnant women across the state."
Last September, Fulton County Judge Robert McBurney struck down the state's six-week abortion ban as a violation of "a woman's right to control what happens to and within her body," a decision that made the procedure legal up to approximately 22 weeks of pregnancy. Republican Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr appealed the ruling to the state Supreme Court.
Avery Davis Bell, a Savannah mother who had to travel out of Georgia for care after her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition that threatened her own life as well, said during Tuesday's press conference: "I could have been Amber Nicole Thurman. It is important for me to continue sharing my story and advocating for us to be able to build the families we want, protect our lives, and be here for our living children."
Atlanta-area ultrasound technician and abortion care provider Suki O. said during the event that Georgia's ban "has been in place for three years now and it doesn't get any easier."
"To turn women away is the hardest thing for me to do," she added. "How many Black women will die, have died, and will continue to die due to these abortion bans?"
Davan'te Jennings, president of Young Democrats of Georgia and youth organizing director at Men4Choice, told the press conference that abortion "is not just a women's issue, this is a man's issue as well."
"I want to send a clear message to men to get off the sidelines and enter the fight for reproductive justice," Jennings added. "What would it look like for you to have to watch your mother go through this? To watch your sister go through this?"
While Trump has said he would veto any national abortion ban passed by the Republican-controlled Congress, reproductive rights advocates have expressed doubt that the president—a well-documented liar—would actually do so, and warned that his administration could use a 151-year-old law known as the Comstock Act to outlaw the procedure without needing congressional approval.
Critics also note that Trump has repeatedly bragged about appointing three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, the 2022 decision that canceled nearly a half-century of federal abortion rights.
The Trump administration is also widely expected to revive the so-called Global Gag Rule, which bans foreign nongovernmental organizations from performing or promoting abortion care using funds from any source, if they receive funds from the U.S. government for family planning activities.
Conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation-led coalition behind Project 2025—a blueprint for a far-right overhaul of the federal government—have proposed policies including a national abortion ban, restricting access to birth control, defunding Planned Parenthood, monitoring and tracking pregnancy and abortion data, and eviscerating federal protections for lifesaving emergency abortion care.
While campaigning for president, Trump said he would allow states to monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute anyone who violates an abortion ban. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 12 states currently have near-total abortion bans, and 29 states have enacted prohibitions based on gestational duration.
"Trump isn't king, but if Congress capitulates, he could be," warned the leaders of Popular Democracy.
Since U.S. President Trump's return to office on Monday—at an inauguration ceremony full of American oligarchs—as the Republican has issued a flurry of executive orders and other actions, progressive leaders and organizers have expressed alarm and vowed to fight against his "authoritarian" agenda.
On his first day back at the White House, Trump issued 26 executive orders, 12 memos, and four proclamations, plus withdrew 78 of former President Joe Biden's executive actions, according to a tally from The Hill. Those moves related to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, the death penalty, federal workers, immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, prescription drug prices, and more.
"In the last 24 hours, Trump has passed dozens of executive orders—many beyond his powers," said Popular Democracy co-director Analilia Mejia and DaMareo Cooper in a Tuesday statement. "Yet, not one of them has lowered prices or made life better for Americans. Instead, he's focused on eroding democracy, attacking constitutional rights, and spreading fear, cruelty, and chaos.
"Trump has taken aim at the 14th Amendment's rights of equal protection and citizenship—the fundamental American right to live and participate in our democracy—with an executive order targeting birthright citizenship," they noted, referencing a policy that is already facing legal challenges from immigrant rights groups and state attorneys general.
Announcing one of the lawsuits, ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said that "this order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans. We will not let this attack on newborns and future generations of Americans go unchallenged. The Trump administration's overreach is so egregious that we are confident we will ultimately prevail."
Mejia and Cooper said that "his ineffective and inhumane executive orders targeting immigrants misuse military power and double down on damaging our communities."
The group America's Voice similarly expressed concern over Trump's "authoritarian notions of deploying the military on U.S. streets," with the group's executive director, Vanessa Cárdenas, saying that "this is an attack on American families and our American values. Trump's framing of our nation being 'invaded' coupled with the attacks on birthright citizenship and policies that will throw our immigration system further into chaos show that this is a hateful campaign to justify a nativist agenda that seeks to redefine 'American' and move this nation backwards."
Popular Democracy's leaders also called out various other items from Trump's first day that are expected to face legal hurdles—though the Republican spent his first term working with GOP lawmakers to pack the federal judiciary, including the U.S. Supreme Court, with far-right appointees, so the effectiveness of such suits remains to be seen.
"Trump's rollbacks of critical climate policy sell out future generations to the profit of oil and gas polluters, and further endangers the poor, Black, brown, and Indigenous people who have been at the frontlines of climate disaster," they said. Trump not only repealed various Biden-era policies but also declared a "national energy emergency" to "drill, baby, drill" for fossil fuels.
Climate campaigners slammed Trump for invoking "authoritarian powers on Day 1 to gut environmental protections," in the words of the Center for Biological Diversity. The organization's executive director, Kierán Suckling, vowed that "no matter how extreme he becomes, we'll confront Trump with optimism and a fierce defense of our beloved wildlife and the planet's health."
"The United States has some of the strongest environmental laws in the world, and no matter how petulantly Trump behaves, these laws don't bend before the whims of a wannabe dictator," Suckling stressed. "The use of emergency powers doesn't allow a president to bypass our environmental safeguards just to enrich himself and his cronies."
The president's attacks on health are expansive. As Mejia and Cooper detailed: "Trump's sweeping changes to healthcare will rip away access for millions, line the pockets of Big Pharma, and undo strides in reproductive rights. They also single out trans Americans, denying them lifesaving healthcare and the right to live freely and authentically."
Imara Jones, a Black trans woman, CEO of TransLash Media, and an expert on the anti-trans political movement, said in a Tuesday statement that "Trump's recognition of only 'two genders' means a war on trans people, as well as any cis person with a gender expression outside of the gender binary."
"This is not political theater, this is the beginning of a potential authoritarian takeover of the United States, one that starts with targeting one of the smallest and most vulnerable groups: transgender people," Jones emphasized. "They seek to erase trans people from public life and want to see if they can get away with it, as a prelude to much more. This should worry all of us."
Another development that provoked intense worry—and even
led the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Studies and Prevention to issue a "red flag alert for genocide in the United States"—was Elon Musk, the richest person on Earth and a key Trump ally, twice raising his arm in what was widely seen as a Nazi salute during a post-inauguration celebration.
Trump's Monday night decision to pardon over 1,500 people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, an insurrection incited by the president himself as he contested his 2020 electoral loss, elicited similar warnings.
"By granting clemency to these individuals, who sought to overturn the peaceful transfer of power, Trump is signaling that political violence and the rejection of democratic norms are acceptable tactics in service to his authoritarian agenda," said Our Revolution executive director Joseph Geevarghese. "This is a direct threat to the foundations of our democracy and the safety of our communities."
The leaders of Popular Democracy highlighted that "undergirding this extreme authoritarian agenda is a claim that Trump has a mandate to act like a despot—no such mandate exists, much less is acceptable to the American people."
"Trump isn't king, but if Congress capitulates, he could be," they warned, just weeks after Republicans took slim control of both chambers. "Popular Democracy is prepared to push back against Trump's assault on our communities. We will stand up against an unconstitutional power grab, and hold our representatives accountable in this fight."