Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Hillary Clinton Is Gaslighting Bernie Sanders and It Is Abusive
Hillary Clinton shares a common trait with Donald Trump, establishment media, and mental abusers. That trait is gaslighting.
According to the basic Wikipedia definition, gaslighting is a form of mental abuse wherein “information is twisted or spun, selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented” by an abusive person in order to manipulate the accuser into questioning reality. Most commonly, the technique is used by abusers to outright deny any past wrongdoing when confronted for past behavior.
After a feud yesterday in which Clinton questioned Sanders’ qualifications for the presidency and Sanders responded in kind, Hillary Clinton played coy and acted as if she were above the fray. During an interview in New York, Clinton said she would support Sanders if he were the nominee, and suggested he instead direct his attacks on Republicans and “keep our eye on what’s really at stake in this election.” Liberal blog Daily Kos praised Clinton’s remarks, saying she was taking “the high road.” The same author of that blog called on Sanders to apologize for responding to Clinton’s previous attacks on his qualifications.
This is an odd 180 degree turn from Clinton’s post-Wisconsin campaign strategy of promising a scorched-earth primary until the convention. After Clinton’s drubbing in the Wisconsin primary, CNN reported that Clinton’s campaign was seeking to “disqualify and defeat” Sanders ahead of the convention, and put party unity on the back burner:
As Sanders took a victory lap following a 14-point triumph in Wisconsin, Clinton took fresh aim at the Vermont senator as part of a three-part strategy before the New York primary on April 19: Disqualify him, defeat him, and unify the party later.
For starters, Clinton used the 20 children killed in Sandy Hook as a launch pad for attacking Sanders on gun control, which ended up blowing up in her face. She also hinted that Bernie Sanders was a fake Democrat, who was unqualified to run for president. Attacking Sanders apparently wasn’t enough, as Clinton also lobbed patronizing shots at his supporters, saying she felt “sorry” for young people voting for Sanders who “don’t do their own research.”
Furthermore, at the most recent Democratic debate, Clinton accused Sanders of siding with anti-immigrant “minutemen” militias and suggested he was popular with the Koch Brothers. Before that, she tried to claim he was against the auto bailout for Michigan workers during the debate in Flint.
Of course, Sanders, the longest-serving independent member of Congress with 32 years of public service under his belt, had no choice to respond to Clinton’s most recent charge that he was unqualified. Sen. Sanders suggested Clinton was unqualified to hold the nation’s highest office, given her support for the Iraq War, which he called “the worst foreign policy blunder in U.S. history,” along with her support of free trade agreements like the Panama deal that enabled tax haven abuses, and for her willingness to take campaign money from Wall Street.
Clinton supporters started the hashtag #HillarySoQualified to boast of the former Secretary of State’s qualifications in response to Sanders’ statement, which backfired tremendously as it was hijacked by Sanders supporters criticizing Clinton’s record. Given the failure of Clinton’s attacks, she had no choice but to abandon her strategy and “take the high road” in an effort to reclaim the narrative, conveniently ignoring her own previous statements.
But Clinton isn’t alone in her use of gaslighting. The Washington Post did the very same thing last month after they got called out for running 16 stories critical of Bernie Sanders in 16 hours. The Post’s response to getting caught running blistering anti-Sanders headlines after his strong performance in a debate was to use gaslighting on their readers, claiming that they had no such bias by claiming stories that simply reported his victory the next day were “pro-Sanders,” mocking their detractors by sarcastically using the
snip
http://usuncut.com/politics/hillary-clinton-gaslighting-sanders/
22 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
