Sanders to run as a Democrat -- but not accept nomination (2018 Senate)

[karynnj]

584. No I wasn't

He did not attack Hillary harder than she attacked Obama in 2008 or than Dean attacked Kerry in 2004.

Did he question her position on trade? Yes, because he has always been against the trade deals, while Clinton has always been part of the wing of the party that fought for them and she had supported TPP until the primaries. (disclaimer - I was FOR TPP and wished she would have opted to run saying she was for it, but some changes were needed (the usual wiggle room).

Did he back Obama against Clinton when she argued in her book that we should have been more aggressive than Obama in Syria? Yes, it was a policy difference. Sanders, in this was actually more honest than Dean was in defining Kerry as pro war, when their positions as stated in 2002/early 2003 were very similar. Clinton, planning for a general election, intentionally defined herself as more hawkish trying to differentiate herself from Obama on foreign policy.

Did he question her secret highly paid talks before Goldman Sachs and others - yes, as did O'Malley, who made that an issue before Sanders did. Knowing she was running for President, I can not believe that she thought it a good idea to give those talks -- though she had every right to do so. Then, once she did and they became an issue, she should have put out the transcripts and spoke of how they represented her opinion circa 2013/2014. (It hurt her when wikileaks put them out because of praise of TPP - which she was publicly praising in 2013/2014 as well.

Note he consistently refused to make her use of the email server an issue. (I do not give him a lot of credit on that. The story was everywhere and he would gain nothing speaking about it -- and would lose some people.)

On the first three issues, trade, hawkishness, and wall street, Bernie had decades of consistent views (too consistent in my opinion) that defined who he is -- and he spoke about them. Every one of these issues would have debated by ANY opponent. Not to mention, these issues would ALL have been addressed by any Republican to some degree. (Where it differed is that a Jeb Bush would have hit her from the right on trade and matched her on hawkishness.)

I started posting on DU in the wake of 2004 and quickly found a home in DU JK. Even in internal debates, there was absolutely no talk that Dean, Kuchinich, or Edwards had harmed Kerry with their primary attacks. ANY strong advocate for a candidate will see things that seem below the belt. Some are generic, in any race between a governor and Senator, expect the governor to say that the Senator has no executive experience and flip flops (the nature of Senate votes makes this happen) and the Senator will say the Governor has no foreign policy experience.

You could find accounts of Dean supporters carrying flip flops, Trippi (on Dean's campaign) distorted Kerry's positions on Iraq, Dean falsely accused Kerry of being too close to lobbyists (Kerry, who had a reputation as clean put out a 15 year list of every meeting he had with lobbyists and said he could defend all of them - no one in 2008 did so when they were challenged to do so), one of the opponents used a push poll suggesting that Kerry was hiding that his cancer had returned. (I suspect that the windsurfing during the RNC was to preclude similar rumours - like Clinton 2016)

The key thing is that anything opposition research could find will be used in the general election. None of the things that Clinton supporters suggest hurt Clinton because Bernie said them were hard to find.