Yet another diary about these horribly rude Sanders supporters. It’s so tiresome. In order for Clinton supporters to justify yet another one of these ridiculous generalized attacks on Sanders supporters (this time attempting to inflate a couple of boos into images of feces being slung and sexist slurs being screamed) and blame Sanders for everything his supporters do, they have to ignore:
- An extremely high profile Hillary Clinton supporter (Albright) says I and every other woman who supports Sanders has a “special place in hell”.
- Jean Shaheen openly dismissed Bernie Sanders and endorsed Hillary Clinton at a party unity rally which is supposed to be neutral.
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Claire McCaskill was just recently on pundit shows red-baiting (hammer and sickle? That’s communism, Claire. But you knew that, didn’t you?)
- Jennifer Granholm comes out to say that fewer people would vote for a socialist than an atheist. Horrors, Jen. Fortunately, the numbers are 64% of DEMOCRATS would vote for an atheist and 59% would vote for a socialist. Even more fortunately, there are no “socialists” running, at least none that fit the definition the Clinton campaign is fearmongering with.
- The campaign paid for travel for Joaquin Castro to claim Sanders doesn’t care about Latinos and hadn’t been to Texas (he’d been there twice)
- Chelsea Clinton scared seniors that Sanders wants to take your current health coverage away (Respected media such as Eugene Robinson and others have called Clinton out on this lie)
- The Clinton campaign is openly collaborating with “Correct the Record”, led by slime king David Brock (actually paying them more than $275k so far for “research”) which has already:
- Tried to smear the beautiful Iowa ad by claiming
From this ad, it seems black lives don’t matter much to Bernie Sanders
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(DK5 bullet point fail)
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Tried to peddle his “be very afraid” socialism slander to to several news outlets, who chose to out his outrageous Rovian crap rather than use the “anonymously” sourced garbage
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Attacked Sanders with his threat to ask for a doctor’s note. Sorry Dave, I’m afraid that tactic didn’t quite work out.
- Now we’re hearing about push polls — redux, since she did the same thing in 2007 — with questions filled with debunked numbers and misleading exclusions, like this:
[W]hat if I were to tell you The Washington Post said that Bernie Sanders’ campaign promises would cost more than $20 trillion and would raise everyone’s taxes — would you now be “more likely’ or ‘less likely” to vote for Sanders, or has your opinion remained unchanged?”
- And she’s done all this sort of cynical anti-Democratic stuff before.
Now at a Party Unity dinner someone takes the opportunity to endorse Clinton (not very mannerly!) and gets a couple boos, and the blogosphere is all on fire over these horrible Sanders supporters.
Who is on fire about the DNC setting up a “party unity” event in NH that is more a Clinton rally than about party unity? Ooooh, those terrible Sanders supporters forgot their golf claps and hushed voices after a couple of hours of relaxed atmosphere. The Clinton supporters forgot their golf claps too.
All this drummed up outrage over the behavior of Sanders supporters and the fact that Bernie Sanders isn’t out there scolding everyone who’s mean to Clinton, while the Clinton Campaign embraces the slimiest of Rovian/Atwater tactics! No one is ashamed of voting to support that sort of behavior? Of excusing disgusting push polling as “message research”? If she sent out a mailer falsely claiming Sanders had dropped out of the race and won in NH because people believed it, would you be horrified at the Ted Cruz-like tactics or gloat because it put one over on Bernie?
Leaders lead by example. Sanders campaign has made some missteps (and fired people for getting out of line) but is not busy shopping slime-oppo to various media or trotting out surrogates to mislead about Clinton’s policies. He’s not sending out surrogates to fearmonger with mischaracterization of her policies. It’s not his companion PAC or paid operatives sending out tweets with the intent to foment hurt and anger. Someone actually compared a Sanders campaign call which mentioned only Sanders’ real positions in a positive light with disgraceful push polling.
Until Clinton and her own campaign begin to act like role models themselves, she and her supporters don’t have any standing to blame Sanders for what his supporters decide to do or say.