I don’t think the lesson is to not make media appearances. The lesson is just to realize their importance in the grand scheme of things. It’s not that they’re totally useless or absolutely necessary, it depends on the moment. If we go back in time and ask me I would say maybe the appearances helped. But since then I just don’t feel like they did much. In that moment they weren’t important even though at the time it seemed like it was. At any present moment media seems like a big deal because that’s how we interface with world events. But in retrospect you can probably tell whether or not it was important. It’s like how, at the time, we thought Bernie should be more aggressive with Biden. But would that have really made the difference if you think of how they would have responded to it? Probably not. Bernie is mean to Biden. Media goes nuts over civility. Bernie loses anyways because they would have rallied around Biden all the same.

All the other arguments around media vs groundwork are irrelevant because they all mean the same thing. Bernie’s door-to-door didn’t win it for him either. The speeches selling out stadiums didn’t do it. Absolutely none of it was enough to break through the real problem. You can’t beat the system when the system is stacked against you. At least not without directly attacking the root cause. Media wasn’t the deciding factor, it was the willingness of Democrats to throw out the rules when push comes to shove. They simply did good politics, even if they did it for the absolute most evil system in the world. It’s good to be ruthless and willing to fight for a knife in the mud. Bernie’s team should have expected it. It was also pretty easy for them since they have the system on their side. There was no attack on that system coupled with the Bernie campaign. This is where the derision for electoralism comes from.

A lesson is for us to not treat these appearances as something of great importance. Another lesson is that nothing will help unless you go after the real problem. That problem is we need a way to shut off the economy when we have demands. What importance will media appearances play in building that tool? I don’t know it hasn’t happened yet. They could be important. They may be completely unimportant. We’ll have to see.