The left explodes at media after Hillary Clinton declared presumptive nominee
On Monday night, the Associated Press found that between the delegates that Hillary Clinton has already won and the superdelegates that are pledged to her, she had enough support to be called the presumptive nominee for the Democratic Party.
Cue a liberal firestorm directed at the media.
Supporters of Bernie Sanders and others on the left went after the Associated Press and the media as a whole, with some floating conspiracy theories that the press had been in the tank for Clinton the entire time.
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The vitriol was, on some level, understandable. The AP's announcement came on the eve of a big day in the race for the Democratic nomination, with seven states set to vote in primaries including California, where 475 delegates are at stake.
Clinton downplayed the announcement, citing the upcoming primaries.
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It didn't take long after the AP declared Clinton the presumptive nominee that the anger emerged. The Sanders campaign fed into the resentment, pointing to the counting of superdelegates.
"It is unfortunate that the media, in a rush to judgment, are ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer," said Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs in a statement.
Some called Sanders out over this argument, noting that in 2008 he supported Obama as the nominee before the party's convention despite his counting of superdelegates.
Left leaning pundits and journalists also jumped in on the attack. Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept decried the announcement and the process.
"The nomination is consecrated by a media organization, on a day when nobody voted, based on secret discussions with anonymous establishment insiders and donors whose identity the media organization – incredibly – conceals," Greenwald wrote.
The Associated Press drew much of the rage on social media, with the critiques loud enough to draw a response from the organization's U.S. political editor explaining the decision.
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With most news outlets reporting that the AP had called Clinton as the presumptive nominee, Sanders supporters also began to call out the media as a whole.
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At least one reporter, Amy Chozick of the New York Times, claimed to have received threats related to the news.
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Some even looked for hints that the system had been rigged, implying that the AP had planned to announce on Monday night to purposefully help Clinton. Some had rallied around the hashtag "#APRetract."
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Topics Elections
Jason Abbruzzese is a Business Reporter at Mashable. He covers the media and telecom industries with a particular focus on how the Internet is changing these markets and impacting consumers. Prior to working at Mashable, Jason served as Markets Reporter and Web Producer at the Financial Times. Jason holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in International Affairs from Australian National University.
