For all the time we spend on the bad blood that developed between Ted Cruz and Donald Trump on the Republican side, and the contentiousness of that race has certainly been historic, something is going on “across the aisle” which could be quietly every bit as nasty.
That wasn’t expected. At the first Democrat debate, when he had the opportunity to assail Hillary Clinton for her corruption and gross mismanagement of the nation’s secrets, Bernie Sanders demurred. That marked him as an unserious candidate and a lightweight, and after Clinton blitzed through the Super Tuesday primaries most people wrote Sanders off.
Except since then he’s been killing Hillary in primary contests, even though the conventional wisdom is he doesn’t have a real chance to win (he doesn’t).
Sanders’ 57-43 pounding of Clinton in Wisconsin Tuesday was enough to get her particular attention; yesterday she took the gloves off and began ripping into the socialist senator for what she says (rightly) is his lack of qualification to hold the White House…
Then Sanders shot back and listed all the reasons why he thinks Hillary isn’t qualified…
This is couched in rather polite rhetoric, but it’s heating up. The fact that neither one of the two contestants are particularly capable of interesting rhetoric doesn’t change the fact that they’re beginning to get at each other’s throats.
Here’s Hillary’s press secretary Brian Fallon on Twitter…
Hillary Clinton did not say Bernie Sanders was 'not qualified.' But he has now – absurdly – said it about her. This is a new low.
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) April 7, 2016
Facing long odds, Sanders is inventing grievances & nonexistent paths to the nomination to rile his supporters & keep fundraising spigot on
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) April 7, 2016
Bernie Sanders, take back your words about Hillary Clinton.
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) April 7, 2016
#TakeItBackBernie https://t.co/1IGsMW26OO
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) April 7, 2016
A quarter of Bernie Sanders’ people say they’ll never vote for Hillary Clinton. If that number holds the Democrats have just as much of a unity problem as the GOP has, and the increasingly combative nature of their race is only going to exacerbate that issue.
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