Has Sanders ever run a more negative campaign than this one?

[highplainsdem]

And before anyone asks whether I've forgotten 2016 -- if that was worse -- I'd better point out that I paid as little attention as possible to Sanders then. I believed then, and still believe, that he's an odd candidate and unsuited to be our nominee, let alone president. (Interesting gadfly in Congress, though.)

[NurseJackie]

1. Had her ever been more behind and desperate?

There's a correlation.

[showblue22]

2. This is who he is.

This is the Bernie Campaign showing the world how nasty they are. The same ugly way Bernie campaigns is how he will govern. We should never reward this repulsive behavior.

[Blue_true]

17. Democratic politicians from Vermont that know him warned us months ago.

There is no negative that he won't traffic in to win. It is sad.

[showblue22]

18. It's hurtful.

I'm a 33 year old grown man and I want to cry. Biden is a good decent man running a campaign about unity and this is what Bernie does to a good man. It's hurtful. I feel a knot in my stomach seeing and reading this ugliness. How can anyone vote for him?

[Blue_true]

20. Some people overlook obvious failings.

Don't despair. Joe is a tough dude, he has dealt with a lot, he will brush off this spate of negative attacks and move forward for the country.

[showblue22]

22. Thank you .

That's what I need to hear more of.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. It wasn't like this during 2016, at least that I noticed.

It didn't start getting weird until Bernie refused to suspend when it became mathematically impossible for him to win the nomination, and some of his supporters tried to disrupt the convention. Twitter wasn't quite such a big deal then, which might have had something to do with it, and his campaign staff weren't as nasty as the people he has now.

[TwilightZone]

6. That's what I seem to recall.

The campaign on DU was a lot worse than it was in reality, from what I remember.

His 2020 staff is a significant part of the problem. Some of them basically act like social media trolls, retweeting fake videos, debunked rumors, and so on. That's no way to run a campaign.

[Stand and Fight]

30. Twitter was as big of a deal then as it is now.

I, and many other people, were often maligned by the Bernie Bros on that platform in particular. You can even go back and look up how vicious they, and to a slightly less overt degree, the Bernie campaign and his surrogates were. Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Rosario Dawson, Michael Moore, and others were very nasty, and it came from the top.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

33. Maybe I wasn't paying as much attention to Twitter.

Things got pretty heated on DU but it seemed to be going in both directions, par for the course for a primary, so I didn't notice anything extraordinarily nasty about Bernie's side of it until it was clear he was losing. I supported him until it was clear he wasn't going to win (and I never really believed he would) but he lost me permanently after the convention shenanigans. But since I wasn't following Twitter at all I didn't see that other stuff.

[George II]

4. "He" doesn't, but he hires a whole slew of people who do the dirty work for him.

[showblue22]

7. He's the mastermind. There's no question about it. nt

[NYMinute]

21. There is a saying ..

"A fish rots from the head first"

[ThisIsNotPossible]

31. Indeed. If he's innocent and...

all that stuff is going on above his head, it’s impossible to deny that he’s clearly unqualified to be President. In fact, he might be unqualified to be a senator, so maybe that’s something that should be looked at if he’s still ticking along in 2024. Very worrying that someone who might be struggling so badly to keep on top of that stuff could fumble his way into the Presidency!

[Skid Rogue]

5. Any means necessary. I wonder what Dr. King would say. nt

[ehrnst]

8. His '86 campaign for governor against a progressive female incumbent was apparently rather negative.

By any measure I was regarded as a progressive governor. If I was vulnerable, it was for being too liberal. As a legislator, my maiden speech on the floor of the Vermont House was in favor of ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. My first priority as governor was universal access to kindergarten. I set a record for a Vermont governor’s appointees; women filled half of my cabinet. I sought out talented women, many of whom were the first women to head their agencies.

Women draw on a different network than men and can share an alternative definition of “qualified.” Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff, according to Fast Company, is over 50 percent female. Sanders’ campaign began with a predominantly male inner circle and continues to face accusation of keeping women out of the top ranks.

When Sanders was my opponent he focused like a laser beam on “class analysis,” in which “women’s issues” were essentially a distraction from more important issues. He urged voters not to vote for me just because I was a woman. That would be a “sexist position,” he declared.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/02/04/when-bernie-sanders-ran-against-vermont/kNP6xUupbQ3Qbg9UUelvVM/story.html

Implying "reverse sexism" was pretty negative.

[Cha]

24. I was actually thinking of that.. TY.

[Ouimette]

9. He hires non-Democrats and attack dogs

He wanted to be negative from the start.

[dawg day]

10. He probably thought he'd clinch it on Super Tuesday--

So it might be more painful and frustrating this time-- to have it seemingly "snatched away" when he thought he had it in the bag.

He might not have thought that the others would drop out and immediately endorse Biden right at that moment.

[ehrnst]

11. I think he may feel justified in lashing out, because he felt that it was his already, and therefore

when voters chose Biden, he believed it was therefore "stolen" in a plot by "the establishment."

As campaign rhetoric has indicated.

[showblue22]

13. Nothing justifies this nastiness.

People mimic their leaders and start behaving like them. This hurts our nation.

[ehrnst]

14. I agree. Apparently the campaign feels this is somehow justified, much to their detriment. (nt)

[showblue22]

15. I hope you're right

This behavior should not be rewarded.

[Cha]

25. The "establishment" that he insulted after the caucuses in Iowa?

Link to tweet

When he was feeling so confident?

[TwilightZone]

12. I've had similar thoughts.

He ramped up the attacks on the "establishment" and so on around the time of the Nevada caucus. I think he might have thought the race was over and was shifting to his GE stance. I also agree that he probably wasn't prepared for the swift response from Pete, Amy, and to a similar degree, Bloomberg, along with the huge shift in the polls.

[Cha]

26. Yes, looks like he was feeling really confident back then..

Link to tweet

[relayerbob]

16. He went full-on scorched earth at about this point

I recall the memes/pictures of HRC and many other incredibly nasty things. This is perhaps somewhat worse, but it's more a mark of their desperation. I suspect most people are going to be turned off. So far in this cycle, almost every time someone has gone negative, the effect has been to have ratings of the victim of the attack increase, while the attacker drops.

[NurseJackie]

19. Scorched Earth desperation.

[SiliconValley_Dem]

23. He was kind of ok until S. Carolina and Super Tuesday

Now he’s just going way down the slime hole and it is not a good look.

[RandySF]

27. I saw this play out in the 2018 Michigan primary

There's something about Michigan that brings out their worst.

[napi21]

28. He thinks that's the only way he can win. He doesn't understand Joe is liked & trusted a lot

more than he is. Give the voting to happen. BS will keep sinking. He didn't realize that most of his wins in 2015 were with caucuses & a number of states have changed to voting like the rest of the Country.

[ucrdem]

29. 2016 was pretty bad.

Every day there was a new meme, a.ka. half- or untruth beamed to supporters who dutifully posted it here, usually several times. Pushback was futile because a meme disproved in one thread would simply be reposted in another.

[Cha]

32. Business as usual

[yardwork]

34. This is who he is. Believe him.

There's a reason why Sanders admires totalitarian dictators like Castro and the Ortegas. That ideology believes that the ends justify the means.

Are you prepared to give up everything in the name of the revolution? If not, you aren't sufficiently committed. Believe it.

[SidDithers]

35. There's no prospect of a 2024 Democratic presidential run to keep him in check...

He's free to go full scorched earth. He's already registered as an I for his next Senate run. He's going to wait mere seconds before renouncing the Democratic Party (again) once his presidential campaign is over.

And he doesn't need to play nice (or even appear to play nice) this time around. There's no need to try to keep a good relationship with the Democratic Party, once he no longer needs them. This is his final D presidential campaign.

I think it will be uglier than 2016. I'll actually be surprised if he campaigns on behalf of Biden. I predict he uses his health and the demands of the campaign to retire to VT after the convention.

Sid

[dalton99a]

36. +1

[Kahuna7]

37. I remember reading on DU years ago that Bernie had never run a negative campaign...

After seeing him in 2016 and now, I find that impossible to believe.