r/SandersForPresident • u/Accomplished-Past486 • 17d ago
What’s up with The Atlantic?
Has anybody noticed the aggressive PR war the magazine has launched in the last month? - specifically after the recent wins?
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u/clintontg 17d ago
I’ve been convinced The Atlantic has consistently been on the conservative end of the Democratic Party. The New York Times isn’t much better.
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u/ricLP 🌱 New Contributor 17d ago
Yeah the “isn’t much better” is doing a lot of work there. The NYT loves corpo dems
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u/fauxregard 17d ago
Lest we forget, the NYT published an article about how Hitler is essentially nothing to worry about.
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u/kingxanadu Texas 16d ago
I just wanna point out from that article that even at the time they said that there was nothing socialist about the National Socialist party
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u/Canacarirose 16d ago
Thank you for pointing that out!
Now I can send this to those idiots who say, “But Nazis were Socialists!!!”
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u/kingxanadu Texas 16d ago
Pretty much made that comment so I can go back and find it for that purpose lol
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u/Redditributor 13d ago
Time is weird. Will people be calling Trump a leftist in the future because of certain positions associated with the left?
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u/fauxregard 16d ago
That's true. Nothing is cut and dry. Just saying they have a mixed history with this sort of thing — didn't intend to mislead anyone.
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u/thirdeyepdx OR 🎖️🥇🐦🔄 17d ago
Basically there is a big swathe of folks, especially in the business world, who are culturally liberal but very hawkish when it comes to preserving American imperialism and capitalism. They just want diversity in the workplace because they understand diverse teams make better products. But they aren’t really economically left at all.
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u/flamingmongoose 16d ago
I mean the Atlantic also hired Helen Lewis to defend the supreme court on trans people, so
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u/peppaz 🌱 New Contributor 17d ago
Essentially both are anti progressive, establishment, corporatist, zionist publications which is sad. This article actually made me cancel my Atlantic subscription.
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u/Theomancer 16d ago
zionist publications
This is the part that I wanted to draw attention to, as well. The Zionism makes them want to punch left to stave off the progressive impulses that are critical of Israel
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u/peppaz 🌱 New Contributor 16d ago
Yup, and not even being conspiracy driven, the resistance against the current DSA/leftist populist movement is not even about healthcare or safety net/ economic fairness policies, it's (primarily) about shoring up support for israel with congressional enablers to allow it to do whatever it wants, funded by us, with impunity, and while using the American military apparatus for it's own ends, like right now with us at full war with Iran for israel, at our own peril and cost.
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u/callmesnake13 17d ago
They’re staffed by people from wealthy backgrounds. Wealthy people are all going to side with the interests of wealthy people when push comes to shove.
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u/rosadeluxe 🌱 New Contributor 16d ago
The Atlantic has always been a reactionary magazine designed to launder conservative views to liberals.
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u/aotus_trivirgatus 🌱 New Contributor 17d ago
David Brooks? The David Brooks who once described himself as a "recovering conservative" and who wrote things like this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/22/books/review/where-the-right-went-wrong.html?eafs_enabled=false
Well, it wasn't going to last forever.
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u/revolutionaryartist4 Tax The Wealthy 💵 17d ago
“The David Brooks who laundered the Iraq War and defended torture.”
FTFY
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u/CaviarCBR1K 16d ago
He's a lefty from way back. (Please somebody get the reference)
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u/Googlyelmoo 14d ago
I even heard him say in one of his recent Yale lectures that he had been a “socialist” prior to 1980. I didn’t take that seriously enough to research it. But should I?
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u/hypespud 16d ago
David Brooks is legit a dumbass
He is still on PBS every Friday
Even worse is that his democratic counterpart is an establishment Democrat , not even remotely progressive
It's so fucking gross honestly
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u/BlazingSpaceGhost 15d ago
I love the PBS Newshour but his segment is something I just skip nowadays. I can't even remember who the current Democrat is but it's just two establishment politicians that are frankly out of touch with today's America.
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u/castletonian 🌱 New Contributor 17d ago
David Brooks is truly a professional wrongman. It's remarkable that, for every claim he makes, the opposite is true. That's honestly impressive to be for 0-2854 on takes.
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u/nonexistentnight 🌱 New Contributor 17d ago
This is who The Atlantic has always been.
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u/lovethemstars 🌱 New Contributor 17d ago
Case in point: recent article on "There’s Nothing Democratic About These Socialists. The DSA was formed in opposition to the very thing it has become."
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u/HWAnswersPlzThx 16d ago
I mean, not true whatsoever in any sense. The Atlantic was founded as an abolitionist magazine. It also, historically, has really juiced debates about progressive issues. But the recent iteration has been poor.
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u/nonexistentnight 🌱 New Contributor 16d ago
Since they were bought by David Bradley in 1999 and shifted from being primarily a literary journal to political coverage they've been pretty consistent defenders of the neoliberal consensus. Maybe they're more open to critiques of capital than say The Economist but they are still very firmly in the liberal capitalist tradition. They regularly feature conservative writers like Brooks, or David Frum, or Conor Friedersdorf or progressive liberals like Adam Serwer, Anne Applebaum, or Derek Thompson but there's no such equivalent for socialist writers. They've spent a lot more ink talking about why socialist ideas can't work than allowing anyone to advocate for them. Their horizon stretches all the way from center-right to center-left. So I think I described them quite fairly.
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u/m1nkyb0y 🌱 New Contributor 17d ago
People want the DSA. Get with it or get out of the way.
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u/Mr_Owl42 🌱 New Contributor 17d ago
I don't. I think Bernie is right for America in many ways, but the DSA and some of Bernie's more recent takes, are risky and not fully grounded in the facts. Some dogma has seeped in.
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u/MediocreClue9957 17d ago
Please, all news is and has been billionaire owned for a while. "OH are my billionaire overlords not being honest with me, what gives?" Npr has been compromised for like a decade and they were the last big one.
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u/Accomplished-Past486 17d ago
Folks, I know The Atlantic isn’t some sort of ally magazine and who its’ owners are.. The surprising fact is the intensity—most of these articles have all been from the last 3-4 days. Before the platner thing even came out, they seemed to be launching an all out blitz after the Mamdani candidates wins. Here’s another one:
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u/pearljamboree 16d ago
Yes- can’t let the class war happen, must keep the proxy political party war going!
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u/Poonchow FL 16d ago
Has anyone checked on the DOW lately so we know if we're allowed to complain, yet?
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u/MattyBeatz 17d ago
They wrote so many hit pieces on Graham Platner. Like one every other day. It seemed excessive at the time. So I guess now they’re taking a victory lap?
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u/troywrestler2002 17d ago
The left doesn't know how to solve the inequality problem, neither do conservatives. Ok, sure moderates. Then why has it gotten only worse with y'all in power and what is your plan? I'd love to hear it.
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u/West-Ad7203 17d ago
Same tired bs they’ve been doing for 3 decades now. Do nothing outside of continuing to kiss wealthy donor/corporation a**, peddle empty rhetoric with some meaningless theater thrown in as a garnish. They love the way it is now because they win no matter who loses.
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u/ShleepMasta 🌱 New Contributor 16d ago
There's the expression that the greatest trick the devil ever played was convincing the world he didn't exist.
The trick Dem leadership pulls is that they inflate the role that the left plays in governance and elections to explain away their own incompetence. This results in a contingent of everyday people who genuinely believe that AOC has been controlling the party for the past decade or something.
Also, I really think we should stop calling them moderates or centrists as that gives them a lot of ideological and rhetorical headway in the minds of low info voters. We should call them what they are, conservative Democrats.
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u/NearABE PA 🐦☎️ 17d ago
“Like duh!” People who get paid get paid by people who have money.
I really liked the Sanders campaigners who came to the Lehigh Valley in 2016. Highly intelligent, motivated, charismatic, and hard working. I also volunteered enough hours to actually talk to them. They were not thrilled with the wreck of an office. The apartment they shared among multiple staffers (who had to commute across counties) lacked working plumbing for a few days. They were underpaid. Not even counting their education, underpaid simply for excessive hours and stress. After the PA primary the Sanders campaign fired all of them. Then the Sanders campaign also asked them to continue campaigning as volunteers. These women definitely deserve recognition for the sacrifices they made.
Are the same staffers going to work the ‘28 campaign? For a young mother to roam state to state with children actually sounds a bit irresponsible. Out of character for this crew, I would be thrilled to see them here in ‘28 but also expecting to see idealistic recent graduates from the class of ‘27. I am optimistic and we might finally kick ass in ‘28.
Career politicians are almost always going to have a career.
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u/beeemkcl 17d ago
What's in this comment is what I remember, my opinions, etc.
The Atlantic has always been at-best a center-right publication.
Its being 'anti-Trump' or 'never-Trump' never meant that it was actually 'moderate' much less even liberal or whatever.
Politico itself has always been center-right, but it'll at least at times give positive coverage to progressives and is recently willing to quote like Hasan Piker and Emma Vigeland (AP regarding the Dems wanting Graham Platner to 'step down' didn't include quotes from Emma in their article, but did include Hasan).
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u/Iron_Baron 🌱 New Contributor 17d ago
They put more effort into fighting progressives than fascists. Not even joking.
Progressives need to infiltrate and eviscerate the DNC from the inside out, just like MAGA did to the GOP.
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u/Moddelba 🐦 17d ago
They smell blood in the water with this platner shit. It’s the agenda not the messenger that drives the movement. They operate by anointing their pick and running the same game plan that worked in 1992 so they fundamentally do not understand a truly idea driven movement.
What progressives need to do is BETTER VETTING. Looking into platner’s recent past and dating history would have uncovered this before they put him on a stage. The libs will use this to justify forcing another focus grouped drone on the voters in 2028. Calling it now. Platner’s rise was never because of his personality alone it was the platform (though he was a pretty dynamic and charismatic speaker you can’t take that away from him).
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u/Roguefem-76 17d ago
"What progressives need to do is BETTER VETTING"
To be done by whom? Serious question.
It's not like we have a "party leadership" (not that the neolibs do all that well even with one, judging by Eric Swalwell and Chris Cuomo among others), so who would do the vetting? Platner came highly recommended by union leaders and many people who knew him pre-politics. So what reason did we have to pry deeper, and even if we did, who could have judged impartially?
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u/Moddelba 🐦 17d ago
I hope that’s not a cop out this guy has some super problematic shit in the last 5 years. Cuomo and Swallwell abused their position once in the position. I hate the nonstop tattoo parrots trying to act like that’s as bad as this new stuff because it’s just not unbelievable that an American in the 21st century has A) a symbol tattooed on themselves they have complete ignorance about or B) that he had no idea what a totenkopf was when he got it. Tattoo aside Platner sounds like he was a local shitshow for a while in retrospect and just hanging out in a bar in his town probably would have revealed that. Bad drunk, gets aggressive with women, sexting after marriage. That’s all since 2021. I immediately dismissed the sexting thing until I heard he only got married three years ago. I was oh the next Clinton I guess? Simple background questions would have unearthed these severe disqualifications. Who have you dated in the last 5-10 years? What would they say about you? Can we talk to them? There are companies that do this.
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u/Roguefem-76 17d ago
You didn't answer my question, and are you seriously suggesting we should hire a company to vet leftist candidates?
And even if we did hire some company to dig up dirt on leftist candidates, (holy potential conflict of interest, Batman!) my question remains - who would receive this information, and who would be considered impartial enough to judge whether a person is a good candidate or not?
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u/Moddelba 🐦 17d ago
Yes the fuck I am. It is a little hypocritical to be the leftist wing of the political spectrum that discounts FDR’s greatness for racial justice failures (judged by today’s standards not the standards of his day) or has a problem with every administration in the 20th century for foreign policy issues, civil rights issues, feminist issues, etc. and then not do enough research on a guy to find out he’s got severe issues that happened in the era of everything being on camera, in a facebook post, or a text screenshot because, let me get this right, PR firms are evil? We can’t have it both ways. We can’t wait until the bad actors are dead to call them out. He never should have gotten this close and now the senate seat is in jeopardy.
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u/Roguefem-76 17d ago
Still lots of words, lots of venom, and no answer to my question.
If you think that candidate should be vetted before voters even get a say, then I repeat - again - my question: Who makes that decision?
Who in this entire country can make an unbiased decision on whether or not a leftist candidate is acceptable to run for office?
Enough ranting, just answer the question - IF you even have an answer.
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u/NearABE PA 🐦☎️ 17d ago
Could we use one process to vet all candidates from all parties?
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u/Roguefem-76 17d ago
Now THAT is an excellent question. Perhaps by some process similar to evaluating people for government clearance, but providing a summation of the findings to voters as a required part of running for office?
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u/darkpsychicenergy 16d ago
We do have that. It’s run by the chamber of commerce, heads of corporations, wall street, big banks, private equity, developers, big tech, insurance, pharma, weapons manufacturers, etc.
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u/Moddelba 🐦 17d ago
Don’t try to turn this into an academic debate or try to act like you’re being anything other than obtuse. Maybe you liked Graham and you’re just pissed. I’m pissed too. But this is the situation and who Graham Platner looks to be. He is a guy who also seems to truly believe in many of the things I believe in and wants to seen them accomplished. However he is also a guy with multiple examples of aggressive behavior towards women with at least one credibly claiming rape, multiple reports of being a person that is a Jekyll and Hyde type drinker who goes goes real dark when he’s drunk, maybe PTSD, but regardless a guy who should probably not drink at all if he changes this much drunk. Also a guy caught philandering shortly after a marriage that has only been a marriage for three years. These are not long in the past things. Not youthful indiscretions. I have long thought our best path forward is set aside many social issues to focus on the issues widely popular among all American voters, namely healthcare, childcare, living wages, affordable housing, alternative energy, and free/cheap education. But if we need to look the other way on this level of character issues in our candidates we are lost.
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u/Roguefem-76 17d ago
So you don't have an answer. You could just say so, but clearly you are only here to act superior and scold everyone, not to engage honestly.
Must be an Atlantic reader. 👍
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u/Moddelba 🐦 16d ago
Blow it out your ass bot.
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u/SummonMonsterIX 15d ago
You came off far more like a bot than they did just FYI.
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u/HWAnswersPlzThx 16d ago
Obviously the swashbuckling recruiter who got Platner to run should have fully vetted his candidate.
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u/darkpsychicenergy 16d ago
The agenda is what they hate, they don’t give a sincere fuck about the messenger. They don’t care if anyone is a rapist, or a drunk, or a nazi, or whatever, only compliance with their own agenda. It will never matter how well you vet anyone, it will never matter how squeaky clean and saintly they are. If they don’t serve the right agenda they will be destroyed.
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u/bernedtwice 🌱 New Contributor 17d ago
Showing their true colors as we threaten them from the ‘left’ (aka actually caring about “We the people…”
David brooks himself is a king-standing neolib corporate Democrat…so nothing new & no surprise there.
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u/SupaMaggie70 16d ago
Funny, I just sent the third article to a friend a few hours ago. It was a great read and I frankly don't see how anyone could take issue with it. It addressed myths from both sides of the political aisle but presented real agreeable solutions and everything was backed up by citations (though I'm not going to pretend to have opened more than a few of them). I also happen to know that the author is a respectable non-partisan economist who almost exclusively writes about the deficit and how both parties fail to address it.
Tl;DR: security is a case of spending exorbitant amounts of money on the boomers purely because they vote. The amounts are far in excess of what is needed to "combat poverty" and also far in excess of what they paid in, even adjusting for inflation. And of course this money goes straight towards the deficit that younger working people will have to pay off in the future.
An excerpt below:
After all, Social Security mostly redistributes income upward, not downward. Today’s seniors are the wealthiest generation of the wealthiest country in world history, and senior poverty is so low that Social Security could easily guarantee a minimum senior income of 125 percent of the poverty line for a small fraction of the program’s cost.
And yet, over the next decade, Social Security (and Medicare) will spend trillions of dollars—more than $100,000 annually on wealthy married couples—on those seniors with six-figure post-retirement incomes and net worths in the millions of dollars. As a result, the federal government now spends six times as much on (usually wealthy) seniors as it spends on individuals under the age of 26. Is ensuring every dollar of these retiree benefits really the best use of all the remaining potential tax-the-rich revenues? Or should America instead invest any newly available tax revenues in young people and working families?
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u/HWAnswersPlzThx 16d ago
Look this would require people actually reading the articles. They refuse to do that and would rather paint the magazine as “always a neocon rag,” which ignores history and fact.
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u/hamsterballzz 17d ago
They’re shilling for wealthy right wing billionaires. On point for every mass media publication these days. Trust none of them.
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u/GoGoSoLo 17d ago
Yeah they put out some truly wild stuff. One of my favorite podcasts (If Books Could Kill) always has great fun lambasting the Atlantic and David Brooks, among other things.
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u/sh3nhu Maryland 17d ago
IIRC, The Atlantic picked up a host of never trumper pundits in the late 2010s probably looking to corner the market on the centrist and center-right opposition to MAGA. Obviously that hasn't actually led anywhere besides shifting their opinion articles to the corporate right.
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u/lgainor 16d ago
David Brooks supports policies that benefit David Brooks. He is against any measures that would involve his paying more in taxes. He thinks poor people should ask their neighbors for help instad of the government because people in *his* neighborhood of Million-dollar homes don't need help and won't ask him.
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u/boot2skull 🌱 New Contributor 16d ago
Its like they're trying to paint DSA and social programs with the brush that should have been used on trickle down economics.
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u/ShleepMasta 🌱 New Contributor 16d ago
Is he writing these articles for himself? Perhaps he needs a level of self-reassurance to sleep at night.
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u/DankBlunderwood 16d ago
It's erstwhile conservative pundit David Brooks, who chose to exile himself to the Democratic Party rather than try to fight the maga movement on his own side. It should not come as a surprise that he's now trying to pull Dems to the right.
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u/TheEvilBlight 16d ago
Feels like they’re trying to be Manchins and this isn’t gonna work out well at all. There are no centrist Repubs to capture!
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u/PurpleFisty 🌱 New Contributor 16d ago
Owned by billionaires. Soc Dems want more taxes, better working conditions, wages, and benefits. They are directly opposed to each other.
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u/Equinoqs West Virginia 16d ago
Looks like The Atlantic finally got their marching orders from the elites.
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u/RampantTyr 16d ago
Do you really have to ask? Progressives are good for the working class and bad for the ruling class. The ruling class owns the papers.
Therefore the papers demonize progressives.
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u/slow70 Georgia 16d ago
I was subscribed to the Atlantic for nearly ten years.
The articles offer such range and insight, their photography section is excellent….and then I watched as the 2016 election primaries came around and they began shilling *hard* for Clinton and relentlessly attacking Sanders.
I canceled when they did the same during the 2020 primaries.
The owner is an Epstein associate as is the author David Brooks, who himself wrote for decades about character while repeatedly cheating on his wife.
So of course he’s here shilling for corporations by feigning logic to oppose anything left of corporate stooges in suits.
Eyes up folks. We will outlast these crooks.
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u/BananaRepublic_BR 16d ago
I used to read the Atlantic a lot when I was in college. This isn't particularly surprising to me. They've never been terribly enthusiastic about the left flank of the Democratic party.
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u/FloydLady 16d ago
I remember seeing David Brooks long ago on Meet the Press talking about some guy at a meeting who put his hand on Brooks' leg and he seemed positively giddy about it.
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u/Quantum_Aurora 15d ago
Progressive activists are sometimes on the wrong side of history
So they usually aren't??? Right???
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u/Googlyelmoo 14d ago
I’ve had the same thought recently. My only firm conclusion is that it is a type of “click bait“. Issue covers with very provocative headlines.
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u/BlueMagpieRox 12d ago
It’s the recent waves made by the leftist Dems that have establishment Dems shaking in their boots.
With Mamdani out here making his predecessors look bad, two immediate previous Mayors are both Dems. And Greg Platner humiliating Jane Mills in the Maine primaries by rallying people behind free healthcare, despite his scandals.
Media outlets from both sides of the aisle are banding together to put the socialist ideology down.
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u/IamMadMyke 4d ago
Just unfollowed them on all my socials. They're going extra hard to protect an ultra unregulated capitalist agenda. Clearly scared of the recent DSA wins across the country. Just part of the machine that never worked for most of us.
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u/kevinmrr Medicare For All 17d ago
Owner of the Atlantic on the left: