Eric Zuesse

His name is Jann Wenner, and he says he endorses her because, "Hillary Clinton is one of the most qualified candidates for the presidency in modern times.” He doesn’t explain what he means by that.

Here are her qualifications — it's her actual record, as the U.S. Secretary of State, and links are also provided there to her record as U.S. Senator before that. She was Senator for 8 years, and was Secretary of State for one 4-year term. (Prior to that, she was First Lady for 8 years, no government-decisionmaker.) Her opponent Bernie Sanders was U.S. Congressman for 18 years, and U.S. Senator for 10 years. (Prior to that, he was a political demonstrator and activist for many years, and was sent to jail in the early 1960s for leading a Chicago demonstration against racial segregation, and he was also the Mayor of Burlington Vermont, prior to being elected to Congress.)

Those are her “qualifications.” That’s what she actually achieved as U.S. Secretary of State, and before. (Despite her double-speak on Obama’s ‘trade’ deals, she supports them, just as she supported NAFTA.) The near-billionaire owner of Rolling Stone prefers her “qualifications” over those of Sanders, whom he calls “a candidate of anger,” and Wenner says, "Anger is not a plan; it is not a reason to wield power; it is not a reason for hope." He says, "Idealism and honesty are crucial qualities for me, but I also want someone with experience who knows how to fight hard” — and, by “fight hard,” he doesn’t explain what he means, but he seems to mean: someone who has the financial backing of super-rich people such as he is, who can afford to spend the money that’s required to win the Presidency.

He says: "Clinton is far more likely to win the general election than Sanders.”

He provides no evidence on that, either; but here is the actual evidence on that matter. It has been consistently showing, for months, that Sanders is a much stronger candidate against any of the potential Republican candidates than is Clinton. In other words: it shows that Sanders is actually far more likely to win the general election than Clinton is — if Sanders wins the Democratic nomination (which Wenner doesn’t want to happen).

In the latest nationwide polled matchups shown there, Sanders beats Trump by 17.5%; Clinton beats Trump by only 11.2%.

Sanders beats Cruz by 8.4%; Clinton beats Cruz by only 2.9% (and the latest poll even shows Cruz beating her by 3.0%).

Sanders beats Kasich by 1.0%; Clinton loses by 6.5% to Kasich.

How can the nearly-billionaire Jann Wenner say that “Clinton is far more likely to win the general election than Sanders”? He can lie, or else he can be a fool.

Why might he lie? Could it be because his taxes will go way up if Sanders becomes President?

Oh — and what has Sanders’s actual record of achievement been in public office? Here it is. And, if you think that Senator Sanders should be more appreciated for that than he is, he already has (by far) the highest approval-rating of any of the 100 U.S. Senators — 83% — and that’s approval by the people who’ve actually seen the results of his performance serving them. There’s nothing speculative at all about that: the people in his home-state of Vermont have always been delighted with his performance for them.

Furthermore: with a record like that (and currently a 17.5% edge against Trump in the general-election matchup), Sanders as the Democratic nominee would quite possibly bring in a congressional landslide for the Democratic Party, the type of landslide which would enable him quickly to pass in Congress the types of reforms that he’s been talking about.

So: perhaps these things make pretty clear why Jann Wenner — like most other centi-millionaires and billionaires — prefers Hillary Clinton: She’s got the type of record they want in public office. She has represented them, very well.

(NOTE: In order not to lose his readers who aren’t suckers, Wenner allowed his employee, Matt Taibbi, who is very popular with his readers, to state in Wenner’s publication, why Taibbi dissents. Taibbi opened by praising his “boss,” by saying: “In many ways, the endorsement by my boss and editor, Jann Wenner, read like the result of painful soul-searching, after this very magazine had a profound influence on a similar race, back in 1972. Jann explains this eloquently in ‘Hillary Clinton for President’.” There’s nothing actually ‘eloquent’ about Wenner’s propaganda for Hillary Clinton. And the circumstances aren’t well analogous to those of the McGovern campaign’s failure. But, in any case: Bernie Sanders is no George McGovern. But he could turn out to be another FDR. And America’s billionaires didn’t like his policies, either.)

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity