Media ignore anti-establishment presidential candidates

Glenn Greenwald:

[John] Edwards, [Ron] Paul and [Mike] Huckabee are obviously disparate in significant ways — ideologically, temperamentally, and otherwise. But there is a vital attribute common to those three campaigns that explains the media's scorn: they are all, in their own ways, anti-establishment candidates, meaning they are outside and critical of the system of which national journalists are a critical part, the system which employs and rewards our journalists and forms the base of their identity and outlook. Any candidate who criticizes and opposes that system — not in piecemeal ways but fundamentally — will be, first, ignored and, then, treated as losers by the press. [...]

As Digby notes, Ron Paul is going to raise more money than any Republican candidate this quarter; he just topped the record for most money raised in a single day; and has now exceeded Howard Dean's 2004 quarter total when Dean was at the peak of his online fundraising prowess. Huckabee is now tied for the lead in national polls and is leading in several of the key early states. Yet our establishment media stars continue to sneer at these anti-establishment candidates as though they are aberrational jokes, and there is virtually no serious effort to understand the meaning of their success.

In 2004, the media were basically forced to write about Howard Dean because he was the only candidate who was doing anything interesting. Nonetheless, they made sure everyone knew that the anti-establishment candidate from Vermont was "angry, gaffe-prone and unelectable." Plus ça change.