Thank you for this detailed and thoughtful profile of Faiz Shakir. Yes he is diplomatic (and still honest and forthright) which is rare these days. It’s reassuring that someone like him is in charge of the Sanders campaign.

I do have a problem with Shakir’s assessment that the reason the media ignores Sanders is that they want to accommodate the “wealthy ruling class” and that “it’s the working class of America that responds most to [Sanders]. And why do they respond most to him, it’s because they see credibility in him, somebody who has been consistent over the course of a lifetime….”

First, it’s the white working class that responds most to Sanders. The black working class is not traditionally monolithic in their support for Democratic hopefuls (except for Barack Obama of course). In the 2016 primary, when Clinton won South Carolina largely because of the black vote, Sanders partisans (not Sanders himself) on social media tore into black voters for making what these critics considered the wrong choice. I’m not trying to amplify the spurious “Sanders doesn’t appeal to black voters” story that the media is fond of promoting. But I think it’s misleading to portray Sanders as the working class hero for everyone.

Second, it’s the white working class that responds most to Trump as well. They (like Sanders’ working class supporters) “see credibility in him, somebody who has been consistent over the course of a lifetime.” Obviously I think they’re wrong; Sanders has a lifetime record of unselfish service, while Trump is just the opposite. But again, I think it’s misleading to see Sanders as the sole representative of the working class, and hence the sole nemesis of corporate media.

Third, in the 2016 primary, particularly the pre-primary, the media was largely positive about two candidates: Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, and primarily negative in coverage of Clinton (Shorenstein study).

Had the primary goal of corporate media been to accommodate the “wealthy ruling class,” they would have favored Clinton over Sanders. And in 2019 there is no Democratic candidate (as far as I know) whose policies are as supportive of the wealthy ruling class as are Trump’s. Corporate media should be savaging or at least ignoring all the Demos, not just Sanders.

So I think Shakir’s accounting for media bias against Sanders is oversimplified at best.