Is Senator Sanders’ campaign being forthright in depicting his funding from multinational corporations? According to data not easily obtained from the Federal Election Commission and the Center for Responsive Politics, Google, Apple, Amazon, IBM, and Microsoft are among his top donors. But do his supporters know this?
Information about his opponent is readily downloaded, and summarized in easy-to-read graphs and scatter charts.
But if someone is looking for Sanders’ raw data, there are no such easy-to-locate graphs and charts, instead they get a sales pitch firewall garnished with keywords that sound appealing to liberal voters:
“What most distinguishes Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders from other presidential candidates is the fact that he's a self-identified democratic socialist and represents his state as an independent, not a Republican or Democrat (though he caucuses with the Democrats). Sanders has concerned himself with middle class issues, the growing wage disparity and promoting renewable energy sources. Before winning his Senate seat in 2006, Sanders served in the House of Representatives for 16 years, making him the longest-serving independent member of Congress in history.”
The tables are hidden behind numerous filters and drop-down menus and obscured such making it difficult to render a comparison between candidates without spending a great deal of time and effort. Without looking at the raw data, supporters are left to compare cherry-picked apples and oranges, as Mark Lippman describes in his August 6, 2015 article, "Setting the Record Straight on Hillary Clinton's Campaign Donors". Lippman directs readers to look at the real raw data on the FEC site. However, finding the data there requires one to navigate to “Bernard Sanders” (typing in Bernie Sanders will yield 0 results), and then download a 9MB to CSV, convert it to XLS, and then apply data filters to column B, which needs to be sorted alphabetically, and then apply a filter to column I, sort by highest to lowest amount, and then wait for thousands of pages to recalibrate. Clinton’s file is only 5MB by the way.
The question is, does Sanders know his supporters may be searching for the raw data and if so, why doesn’t he make the information available on his website? Why isn’t he admitting publicly that he has thousands of pages of funding from donors employed at top multinational corporations that outsource to child slaves in China? Does he want to protect his wide-eyed innocent flock from the harsh reality of the truth? Does he know they appear naive and gullible when debating on social media?