Bernie Sanders: How the Political & Media Elite are Trying to Set Him Up to Fail

David Muir, setting up the first in an endless stream of questions about terrorism in Saturday evening’s Democratic primary debate, of which he was moderator, reminded Americans that it was “just six days before Christmas, as we all know in this country. It’s typically a joyful time, as it is this year, as well. But it’s also an anxious time.”

The question at hand was not the age-old one of war or peace, or even, for that matter, the war on Christmas. After all, as Muir noted, Americans are united by their knowledge that it’s almost Christmas. The critical uncertainty, rather, is what kind of war this country, which has been ceaselessly at war for 14 years, should fight.

“I’m going to ask the secretary [Clinton] here, because there does appear to be some daylight here between the policies, at least in respect to when you take out Syrian President Bashar al-Assad,” said Muir. “Right now or do you wait? Do you tackle ISIS first?”

More than a decade ago, media credulity fomented in the jingoistic afterglow of 9/11 made the case for the U.S. invading Iraq. In one notably toxic New York Times article, Michael R. Gordon and Judy Miller reported that Saddam Hussein had sought to obtain aluminum tubes that American officials— and anonymous ones at that—believed were meant to enrich uranium, ominously warning that “the first sign of a ‘smoking gun,’ they argue, may be a mushroom cloud.”

One year prior, the media cheered on the toppling of the Taliban government in Afghanistan with even less skepticism, failing to question the justifications for or consequences of a war that has turned out just slightly less disastrous than Iraq.

The Iraq War created ISIS, and the media helped create the Iraq war. Now, the media demands to know, what are we going to do about ISIS? Obama’s relative constraint, the conventional wisdom goes, is not working. And now, as a result, the terrorists are once again at our door.

The San Bernardino massacre closely resembled the near-daily mass shootingstypical to the United States. No matter. The shooting has been officially classified as terrorism so there is a general consensus that everything has now changed. Politics, reporters intone, is now all about national security. And that’s mandatory. Political figures who persist in insisting that Americans do or should care about anything else will be declared out of touch. Irrelevant.

“Bernie Sanders Falls Behind in a Race Centered on Security,” the New York Times headline announced, seemingly unaware of their pivotal role in centering the race.

Hillary Clinton is a longtime supporter of the sort of militaristic foreign policy adventures that help to foment terrorism. Nonetheless, the Times reports, “all of this plays to Mrs. Clinton’s strengths — not only as a hawkish former secretary of state but also as a savvy politician who follows the public mood.”

This media diktat was first issued after Paris and had become conventional wisdom by the time a disaffected and ISIS-inspired county worker and his wife shot down coworkers in San Bernardino. Sanders has disobeyed orders, maintaining that poverty and global warming are the greatest threat to Americans. That this has the virtue of being true does not impress the arbiters of consensus political wisdom.

In his opening remarks at the Democratic presidential debate on Saturday, Senator Bernie Sanders railed against “establishment politics and establishment economics’ and then the nation’s ‘rigged economy.” He moved on to the “corrupt” campaign finance system, then the “planetary crisis of climate change,” the Times yawned. “Only after that did he say he wanted to destroy the Islamic State. It was a litany of priorities that made good sense when Mr. Sanders announced his presidential bid in April. But after the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., he made fighting terrorism sound like an afterthought.”