Ouch: Former MSNBC anchor slams network, says it has abandoned Bernie, Tulsi and Yang

In an Op-Ed piece at The Hill, former MSNBC news presenter Krystal Ball unloads on her former employer, and makes it clear that the network isn't interested in hearing from the full spectrum of lefty office seekers:

They have gone all in on a fundamentally anti-progressive narrative that a). Spends all day every day fixated on excuses for why Hillary lost to the guy they promised would lose. That would be Comey excuses and Russiagate and Ukrainegate as an extension of Russiagate. b). Fixates on "Trump is bad" as the end all be all of political analysis. Everything that is going wrong in the country and the world is centered on him and him alone because to evaluate the underlying circumstances that brought us Trump would be to question the undying wisdom of that Democratic elite. The people who created the underlying conditions that brought us Trump definitely do not want to talk about those underlying conditions that brought us Trump. and c). They basically devoted the network to the lionization of Bush-era neo-con Republicans and the national security blob. Nicole Wallace, Steve Schmidt, John Brennan, Malcolm Nance etc.

Meanwhile, the network is absolutely shameless in the way that it covers the 3 anti-establishment candidates, Bernie, Tulsi, and Yang. Every interview with Tulsi must include the obligatory "Assad apologist" question and conspiracies about her running third party or being a Russian asset abound. In these times recently did an analysis of Bernie's primetime coverage on the network and found that he is mentioned 1/3 as often as Biden and far more negatively than any other candidate.

She also describes the network's atrocious treatment of Andrew Yang, explaining that they cut him out of debate advertising graphics and even referred to him as 'John Yang.'

So, having a major cable news network embark on an anti-progressive narrative is a good thing, right? After all, MSNBC has seen some growth in viewership with the 'Orange Man Bad' schtick. They're still deeply mired in a distant second place behind cable news king Fox News, but progress is progress, right? (Fox routinely has more viewers than CNN and MSNBC combined.)

Ball is castigating MSNBC for simply being a capitalist-friendly mouthpiece for the Democrat establishment. It's helpful to realize that MSNBC started out as a joint venture between Microsoft Corporation and General Electric's NBC News (NBC is now owned by Comcast). The network veered left during the Iraq War and Microsoft disengaged with both the cable channel and the website in 2005.

The network as it is today doesn't want to hear from people like Bernie or Tulsi because they and candidates like them are doing what Donald Trump did in his 2016 campaign. He ran against the establishment, beat the establishment candidates for the nomination and then beat the establishment candidate offered by the Democrats. MSNBC seems to believe that all the country needs is the right establishment Democrat candidate. Hence their cozying up to establishment figures like Bush era spook John Brennan and former John McCain campaign adviser Steve Schmidt. Keep in mind that these establishment types are cut from the same cloth as the 2000's Democrats who were all for the 2003 invasion of Iraq before they were against it. MSNBC is the television home of the establishment Democrat message.

Krystal Ball is a doctrinaire progressive. She wants to see the Green New Deal, Medicare For All and a Billionaire Wealth Tax get every bit of air time and bandwidth possible. She was a vocal and persistent critic of W during the Iraq War too, so she's on board with Tulsi's anti-war stance. That MSNBC is squelching the dissent from Democrat anti-mainstreamers sticks in her craw.

She's right in one regard, though. The election of Donald Trump was at least in part due to the arrogance of the Democrat-Media complex, who thought that Hillary Clinton was the heir apparent to a festering swamp. MSNBC thinks, as she puts it, "that everything was fine before Trump and everything will be fine again after Trump."

Well, no and yes. No, everything was not fine before Trump but yes, everything will be fine after Trump because by the time he's done President-elect Mike Pence will have a fully drained swamp in cruise control.

It would still be helpful to the country if the Democrats' far left voices received the same coverage that their establishment types get. The radical left is taking over the Democrat party. The wackier the voices, the crazier the ideas and the better we all understand just how nutso they've become.