Turned out, “WWE SmackDown” was the perfect lead-in.
“SmackDown,” the pro wrestling show, aired Tuesday at 8 p.m. on the USA Network. Then, at 9 p.m. on CNN, came the main event: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) in a made-for-TV debate on the future of the Affordable Care Act.
CNN’s promotional material even looked like a fight poster. The two protagonists in grim closeup, their names in stark bold print: “SANDERS vs. CRUZ.” Mano a mano! You can’t miss it!
A pro wrestling match is a gymnastics routine in the guise of mortal combat. A good fight gives the impression of danger while preserving the safety of the combatants. And that’s pretty much what we got between the two senators on Tuesday: experienced, talented masters of their genre, showing off their moves and doing no real damage.
Sanders and Cruz performed well. They’d obviously spent serious time preparing for the encounter. They played their respective roles to the hilt. They hit their marks, made their points and rarely exceeded their time limits. There was the occasional heated exchange — usually, conveniently, just before a commercial break.
It all seemed so … scripted.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Democrats in the U.S. Senate were continuing their spirited battle against the nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for attorney general. Sanders’ ally, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), was being officially silenced for daring to read a letter written by the late civil rights icon Coretta Scott King from the Senate floor.
Sanders was also AWOL during the Democrats’ 24-hour floor protest against Betsy DeVos, nominee for education secretary. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) was among the speakers, but Sanders’ office confirmed that the junior senator was not.
Ironic, considering that his political organization, Our Revolution, was putting out fundraising appeals tied to the Democratic caucus’ action.
Lately, Sanders has been openly critical of the Democratic Party for playing “politics as usual.” At the same time, he’s made appearances on cable news and the Sunday talk shows, he’s penned an op-ed piece for the Washington Post, and he made time for that farce of a debate with Ted Cruz.
It all has the distinct stench of politics as usual.
Honestly, we would love to know what Sanders means by “politics as usual” and how he differentiates his own actions from those of the Democrats. But we can’t tell you, because Sanders is unavailable for comment.
Not to home-state media, anyway.
As usual.
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I really appreciate your writing on most issues, but you go way off the rails whenever you talk about Progs and Bernie Sanders. Do you honestly think someone with the profile of Bernie Sanders should be going out of his way to sit down with Vermont media? If you cannot see the difference between what Bernie is doing and what the national Dems are doing, that is utterly delusional. If you fail to see the importance of Bernie’s position in national politics at this time and the impact that he (and Our Revolution) is making, its no wonder that he cannot find time to sit down with you.
And for the record, Bernie is taking part in a webinar on climate change and local activism hosted by VPIRG, VNRC and Rights and Democracy tonight at 7pm.
I get how it would be nice if Sanders would pay attention to local media, but he’s a US Senator. It’s time to face the facts: he clearly has multiple avenues to distribute his message. Seven Days is probably his least efficient option. I love your articles, but you’re not exactly known for your political news stories on the national scale. If I want to know about national stories or national politics, I read WaPo or the New York Times. Stop being butthurt.
And politics as usual means the failure of democrats to articulate a message in keeping with their base’s desires. Democrats are apathetic to their party and resort to mechanisms outside of the normal political apparatus. One might call that being out of touch. The democrats still haven’t found a chair yet and the fact that someone progressive like Ellison (it doesn’t have to be the guy, but they need to be able to rally their base) hasn’t clenched it yet is embarrassing. Why would anyone want Perez? If you didn’t notice, Obama’s inability to guide his party is why we lost the damn election. I loved the man as a president and he was a great leader for America-at-large, but was terrible in his leadership of the party apparatus. So why in the hell are we still imagining that Perez will be able to rally the base and make a come back?
Senator Sanders has been available and reaching out to his constituents (us) through Vermont media outlets. Bernie Lange did a great interview with on Local 22 on Sunday (http://www.mychamplainvalley.com/news/loca…).
Perhaps he doesn’t make himself available to childish zealots who write rambling and biased articles like John Walters?
This criticism of Bernie is justified. He uses the intentionally vague phrase “politics as usual” to appear to his zealous left wing supporters that he’s different from the Democrats, while himself engaging in “politics as usual” and not attending to his senatorial duties when there’s more fun things to do, like appear on talk shows, etc.
And as for those who try to justify his unwillingness to talk to local media: he was perfectly happy to talk to local media all the time, even at the beginning of his presidential campaign, until national media started paying attention to him. It was only then that he started “not having time” to talk to reporters in the state that elected him to be its Senator.
Bernie is about whatever attracts attention to Bernie. His loyalty to Vermont, and actually doing his Senatorial work, seems to have become secondary.
When 1/3 of voters still don’t know the ACA and Obamacare are the same thing, many do not realize their insurance is Obamacare facing imminent cancellation, and the GOP’s replacement ideas are terrifyingly miserly, I am at a loss to see why this televised debate was useless. Granted, we have many competing crises, but exposing an audience to details in the healthcare crisis is vitally important, even when it reveals no new scoops for the political media to cover. The public is poorly informed, and I think it was fantastic CNN dedicated so much airtime to the problem. Doubly fantastic that Sanders positions represented the Democrats.
If you people think Socialist Sanders is for the Vermonters you all are delusional..He’s more interested in his book,which would be good as a door stop or level a table.. He has no concern about the citizens of Vt, but runs his mouth slamming Pres Trump about everything.. Sanders cares more about the refugees then he does about us.. but that’s what a socialist is all about.. himself and foreigner ‘s ..unless it’s all about him he doesn’t care, unless it has money in it for him or hang with the fools in Hollyweird, or get on talk shows..which he seems to do a lot of….half the time he doesn’t even show up to vote on things.. Glad I’ve never voted for him..
Nothing about what Bernie is doing on the national stage is ‘politics as usual.’ If he had been using the (stale and useless) national Democratic playbook, he would have been on stage purely as an apologist for a pretty crappy healthcare policy, the Affordable Care Act. Instead he used the opportunity he has to be in the national discourse to change the conversation. He understands that healthcare is not some commodity we must mandate people purchase – it is a fucking human right, plain and simple. And while we can continue to have private delivery of healthcare, public, single payer system is the only rational solution. Bernie believes we can turn this whole USA thing around and is using his position, as US senator and national figure to make that happen.
Walters has a point. Bernie Sanders did not have the time to meet with even one constituent losing their homes thanks to his F-35 fighter jet basing but he has the time for this? When Jane Lindholm on VPR asked Bernie about why he refuses to meet with constituents losing their homes, he literally immediately changed the topic to student loans, causing Ms. Lindholm to remark & joke to him, “Oh, you want to talk about what you want to talk about?!” (And not answer questions from the interviewer). Sounds like politics as usual to me.
There are few journalists more honest, fearless and thoughtful than Jane Lindholm. With all due respect to CNN, once a great station, like so much cable news now on both sides of spectrum, they are part of the problem.
Sanders is, and always has been, a blowhard. Prior to entering politics, Sanders was a failure at everything he did. Since becoming a politician, his record of accomplishment is pretty slim. He shouts and waves his arms, screaming extreme left wing talking points that have little chance of actually becoming policy and offers no viable solutions to much of anything. Bernie has always been most concerned about Bernie and his personal celebrity is way more important than actual accomplishment. This “debate” was just more of the same.
I’d like to see Feats of Strength as well as Airing of Grievances in political smackdowns. Even better would be live competitive target shooting – every Democrat victory would guarantee gazillions of male blue-collar votes.
I’m a Democrat so I can say that.