Yup at a certain point the sinple answer is they're putting it out on purpose to show they're untouchable.

? Like, if you don't get your news solely from CNN or something

that's literally what old people do. My grandmother is 10 years younger than Sanders. her neuroplasticity is GONE. i keep telling her to read print and stop watching cable news. she doesn't listen. she watches liberal cable news all day. it's sensationalist garbage. she's a retired working class woman with health problems but she eats this crap up like she's one of the women on The View. I want to break her TV every time I'm over there. I tell her about books I've read and she says they sound extreme and I should rely on more "respected" sources. If I tell her democrats and republicans are both bad she says that's cynical. Liberal respectability politics is all about believing mainstream sources because they have institutional backing, and ignoring everyone else because they don't. On the surface one can see why they think this. They want the person doing their surgery to have credentials from a respectable institution so they think politics works the same way. if you aren't respected by powerful mainstream institution, if you haven't jumped through the hoops, done the rituals, and gotten your credentials, you're an "extremist." It's actually quite medieval if you think about it. Like believing only a preacher is allowed to have an opinion about religion, and that laypeople are just misinformed. Therefore speaking truth to power is impossible. It just means you're "fringe" and therefore cringe. To the liberal, people on the political margins are all just eccentric people with strange pet peeves. To demand that they listen to the perspectives of people outside of the mainstream cable news narrative is to ask them to consider "fringe" opinions. They literally can't differentiate between an actual raving reactionary and someone with a legitimate grievance.