John Berman Reality-Checks Bernie Fan’s Iowa Spin: ‘These Were Expectations the Sanders Campaign Itself Was Setting’
CNN anchor John Berman offered a dose of reality to HillTV host and prominent Bernie Sanders supporter Krystal Ball, reminding her that it was the Sanders campaign that set the expectations in Iowa that they’re now falling short of.
On Wednesday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day, Berman hosted Rising co-host Krystal Ball and longtime Democratic strategist Paul Begala to discuss the slow trickle of results out of Iowa.
Begala began by noting that former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who currently leads the delegate race, could make history by being “the first LGBTQ-plus American to win a state,” and complained that the chaos surrounding the results has robbed Buttigieg “of the political momentum he deserves.”
Ball complained about the caucus process, and decried the selective release of partial results by the “party elites,” then turned right around and cited those results to boost Sanders.
Ball agreed with Begala that “If Pete ends up being the winner of the state delegates, he’s been completely robbed by this,” but added that the results are not final, and that “Bernie Sanders very much leads in the popular vote here as well.”
“So I think it’s been interesting to the media narrative that has come out of this,” Ball continued. “I heard you talking earlier about how Bernie didn’t meet expectations. He literally won the most votes, at least that’s what it looks like right now. I’m not sure what other metric you were supposed to judge by.”
Berman pointed out that in Iowa, “the winner is declared by the state delegate equivalents” and not the popular vote, then pointed out that the Sanders campaign “were spinning that they were going in with a clear win, he was going to bring all kinds of new voters to the polls, and the turnout wasn’t high. We know that he himself said he was disappointed at the turnout.”
“So these were expectations the Sanders campaign itself was setting, and to only come out of there with, the best-case scenario for him is a narrow win in delegates over Pete Buttigieg, I don’t think that meets what the Sanders campaign itself established as their expectation,” Berman added.
After Berman, Ball and Begala talked about former Vice President Joe Biden’s disappointing showing in the results so far. Begala then made another point about the caucuses that Sanders supporters are so loudly complaining about.
“[Bernie] set this up, not just the expectations with reporters like you, Sanders supporters in the Democratic party insisted on keeping caucuses,” Begala said and added “Caucuses are anti-democratic, they seem to have hurt Bernie in this case. but let’s just agree that we should just have one person in one vote, not caucuses. Just primaries. And we begin in places where they are more diverse so we don’t have to look at just 4% African-American participation or just 16% turnout which it looks like we had in this caucus.”
Watch the clip above via CNN.
