Name: Democratic Primary Voters Decisively Rejected the Media's Favorite Candidates
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Democratic Primary Voters Decisively Rejected the Media's Favorite Candidates

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As Super Tuesday finally transfigures the Democratic presidential nomination process into a binary choice between two old, occasionally problematic white men whose enduring popularity is consistently underrated by a baffled mainstream press, it's worth reflecting on just how poorly the media's preferred candidates performed in the 2020 race.In the end, The New York Times' dual Democratic presidential endorsements—bestowed upon both Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.)—were like : They just didn't matter.Nor did the media's fawning over , early flirtation with , and absolute worship of resonate with the millions of Americans living outside the Acela corridor.Instead, Democratic voters indicated over and over again that they were most interested in the popular former vice president and the iconoclastic but well-respected runner-up from the 2016 Democratic race. Before the actual primaries, Biden consistently led in polls and Sanders performed well—and then the eventual voting followed this pattern, with early wins for Sanders and a comeback surge from Biden. The idea that any other candidate had a particularly likely shot at the nomination was always pundit-driven misdirection from a class of commentators demanding more interesting, intersectional characters, because the commentators themselves are more interested in identity-based diversity than the rest of the country.Indeed, the media stumped for Warren so hard that Vox's Matt Yglesias recently explaining to people why she was losing "even if all your friends love her." By your friends, he meant friends of people like you, a reader of Vox. Yglesias famously  Vox's audience as "a graduate of or student at a selective college (which also describes the staff and our social peers)" and lamented that "if you assigned me the job of serving a less-educated audience [I'd] probably need to think about how to change things up." He's right; outside the Vox bubble, there was little interest in the kind of .At present, Biden and Sanders are locked in a battle for delegates. Both men have a good shot at the nomination. But this was true a year ago as well. They were both better-known and better-liked than many in the media seemed to grasp, and an endless series of magazine covers, fluff pieces, and editorial board endorsements aimed at other candidates couldn't make any difference whatsoever. "We question some restrictions that she has imposed as overstepping her executive authority."  The WHO arguably failed at its most basic mission of stopping the spread of a global pandemic, but it's still willing to hector people about their drinking habits. Border counties are now prohibited from selling to anyone without proof of residency.  It's not the politicians who have the power to reopen America, or at least the parts that are now closed. It's individuals, families, businesses, and religious congregations. Some protestors were nasty and went overboard, but her harsh tactics will sap her legitimacy at a critical juncture.

As Super Tuesday finally transfigures the Democratic presidential nomination process into a binary choice between two old, occasionally problematic white men whose enduring popularity is consistently underrated by a baffled mainstream press, it's worth reflecting on just how poorly the media's preferred candidates performed in the 2020 race.In the end, The New York Times' dual Democratic presidential endorsements—bestowed upon both Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.)—were like : They just didn't matter.Nor did the media's fawning over , early flirtation with , and...

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@reason senior editor. 2016 @forbes 30 Under 30 list. Author of "Panic Attack: Young Radicals in the Age of Trump." Available now: http://bit.ly/2t6lO23

Robby Soave

Reason is an American libertarian monthly magazine published by the Reason Foundation. The magazine has a circulation of around 50,000 and was named one of the 50 best magazines in 2003 and 2004 by the Chicago Tribune. Reason was founded in 1968 by Lanny Friedlander (1947–2011), a student at Boston University, as a more-or-less monthly mimeographed publication. In 1970 it was purchased by Robert W. Poole Jr., Manuel S. Klausner, and Tibor R. Machan, who set it on a more regular publishing schedule.

Democratic Primary Voters Decisively Rejected the Media's Favorite Candidates

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