the media is not afraid to be racist; the media thrives on racism. it divides people, as it manufactures consent for the ruling elite. that, as gramsci understood, is it's fundamental purpose in a capitalist oligarchy.

it is because the media is racist that it is trying very hard to obscure the data that's coming out of this primary, and it's happening with a lot of signals from the party itself. this is an old divide that we've really seen the media clampdown on this cycle.

they want there to be a black party and a white party, and they want voting decisions to be based on tribal allegiances instead of policy differences. this is the ideal world for the neo-liberal establishment that runs both parties; you float democratic candidates that are virtually identical to republican candidates, then you herd people into fighting with each other over race, instead of aligning based on class.

in fact, it's the oldest trick in the book in the united states. there's neither anything new about this, nor is there anything liberal about it. it's the same trick that got white servants and black slaves fighting against each other, instead of working together to overthrow their common enemy. it really goes all the way back to the roman policy of bread and circuses; there it was greens and blues, here it is blacks and whites.

but there were populists back then, too.

in order to understand the trends coming out of the cycle, you have to all but ignore what the media has said.

so, what are the actual trends?

fishiness in the data aside, this is what it says, whether you think it's trustworthy or not:

1) bernie is winning huge majorities of young people, but youth vote is way down. bernie has failed to excite young people enough to win.

2) biden is winning huge majorities of black people, but the black vote is way down, too. if your argument was that clinton didn't get enough blacks out, and that's why trump won, biden is getting less blacks out than clinton did. so, he hasn't been winning using that tactic, and he won't win the general with that tactic.

3) however, turnout is up. a lot.

so, if youth turnout is down, and black turnout is down, who is driving turnout up?

the answer is older white voters, who are showing up in unexpectedly huge numbers across the country and voting for biden.

that is the movement that's underway, here - middle aged white people flocking to the democrats. stampeding, even. like a herd of obese elephants looking to consume. more. more...

why is this happening, exactly?

i'd have to assume that not many watched the debates, as they wouldn't, that they couldn't, vote for biden if they did. a lot of these people are quite educated. what is going on here?

if you believe it, if you take it at face value, it must be cultural. it's rachel maddow. it's saturday night live. it's a broad idea that it's not socially acceptable to be a republican, right now - that the cool middle aged kids vote for the democrats.

i remember leaving university and going to work and feeling like i'd gone back to high school, in terms of how people interacted with each other. i felt like i'd grown down, that i'd reverted to life as a teenager, not like i'd grown up and become an adult.

if that's true, bernie has roughly 6 days to destroy biden's popularity amongst middle-aged voters. 

and, he just wants to be a nerd and talk about policies.

so, your average boomer appears to essentially be thinking something like this: biden's cool, like me; bernie's a nerd, like my kid, who has to use their phone to google how to brush their teeth every morning and can't be trusted to bring back the groceries without fucking it up.