Meanwhile, a trio of researchers associated with the Institute for New Economic Thinking -- Thomas Ferguson, Jie Chen and Paul Jorgensen -- found that "the higher the town's income, the fewer votes cast" for Sanders. "Lower income towns in New Hampshire voted heavily for Sanders; richer towns did the opposite."
The researchers saw in the data "further dramatic evidence of a point we have made before: that the Democratic Party is now sharply divided by social class."
It's a reality with media implications that are hidden in plain sight. The often-vitriolic and sometimes preposterous attacks on Sanders via powerful national media outlets are almost always coming from affluent or outright wealthy people. Meanwhile, low-income Americans have virtually zero access to the TV studios (other than providing after-hours janitorial services).
With very few exceptions, the loudest voices to be heard from mass media are coming from individuals with wealth far above the financial vicinity of average Americans. Virtually none of the most widely read, seen and heard journalists are on the low end of the nation's extreme income inequality. Viewed in that light -- and keeping in mind that corporate ownership and advertising dominate mainstream media -- it shouldn't be surprising that few prominent journalists have much good to say about a presidential campaign fiercely aligned with the working class.
"If there is going to be class warfare in this country," Bernie Sanders told the Iowa AFL-CIO convention last summer, "it's time that the working class of this country won that war and not just the corporate elite."
To the corporate elite, goals like that are unacceptable.
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Norman Solomon is cofounder and national coordinator of RootsAction.org. He was a Bernie Sanders delegate from California to the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Solomon is the author of a dozen books including War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.
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