In 1988, CNN was essentially campaigning for George H.W. Bush against Michael Dukakis. Dukakis was a mediocre, neoliberal centrist who believed the election was about “competence not ideology” and who used to talk about something called “the Massachusetts Miracle,” about turning Boston into Silicon Valley. But on the issue of the death penalty he was not only principled, but well ahead of his time. CNN wouldn’t have it. They set him up with a question that was impossible to answer, fantasizing about raping and murdering his wife. What pigs they were.
In 2020, little has changed. CNN may no longer be fantasizing about raping and murdering Michael Dukakis’s wife, but they’re still blatantly campaigning for their favorite candidate, in this case Elizabeth Warren. Not only did they coordinate the smear campaign with Warren’s staffers, they blatantly refused to ask Warren if Sanders’s denial was true or false. Instead they just called Sanders a liar and asked Warren for her reaction. From rape and death fantasies in 1988 to woke feminism in 2020, their class politics remain the same.
