Anti-Berners have unintentionally shredded their own "Bernie isn't vetted" talking point.

[DanTex]

You know when a grainy image of the Lower Bumblefuck Gazette shows up on twitter with a story of how Bernie ran a red light in 1976? That's not from a guy in Lower Bumblefuck who came across an old copy of the Gazette. No, no, no. The anti-Bernie groups are DIGGING! They are ON IT!

The media's looking for dirt on Bernie. GOP billionaire funded groups like Third Way are looking for dirt. All those centrist anti-Bernie twitter accounts. This is an effort! And what have they found? Nothing!

You don't start your search for dirt with a 1976 issue of the Lower Bumblefuck Gazette, if you know what I mean. The low-hanging fruit has been plucked, and, well, there isn't any.

So, yeah, those anti-Bernie centrists that kept saying he was wasn't vetted. Maybe not in 2016. Maybe not even a year ago. But boy, after the firehose of attacks the last few months, the man is VETTED. And he came up roses.

So thanks, anti-Bernie twitter accounts. We can all rest easier now, thanks to your hard work.

[Gothmog]

1. Damned if they do, doomed if they don't: Why Sanders rivals don't go negative

The real democrats in this race have not started to go negative on him yet but trump has a ton to work with and will bury and destroy such a weak candidate like sanders

Link to tweet

One factor in Sanders’s success is how little scrutiny he has faced from rivals on the campaign trail and the debate stage. Media accounts that catalogue Sanders’s atypical history and decades-old comments are easy to find for anyone who cares to look. But no one knows how Sanders will fare when Democratic or Republican rivals attack him in a high-profile fashion, which to this point no one has seriously done.

Democrats face a classic collective-action problem. The party has a strong interest in publicly vetting Sanders before he becomes its nominee, but no candidate wants to be the one to go negative on him. Instead, as with Donald Trump’s Republican opponents in 2016, other Democratic candidates are seemingly hoping to pick off Sanders voters during the primary season, or at least attract their support in November, without doing the dirty work of criticizing his record. Attacks that appear to echo potential Republican talking points are especially likely to go unsaid. As a result, large numbers of voters may not learn about Sanders’s vulnerabilities and how they might be exploited in a general election until much later in the race.

The lack of scrutiny of Sanders dates back to 2016. Despite his long career in politics, Sanders was a little-known outsider before his presidential campaign against Hillary Clinton. His unexpectedly strong showing in that race made him a national figure with an unusually positive public image. Why? Few politicians ever criticized him. Sanders never seriously threatened Clinton’s hold on the nomination, so she mostly held her fire, preferring to try to keep his voters in the fold for November. Republicans largely withheld criticism as well, presumably appreciating his refusal to withdraw from the race and hoping to run against him rather than Clinton in the general election.

These attacks will come, however, if Sanders is the Democratic nominee. Any candidate will face attacks, of course, but for contenders like Sanders who have been insulated from previous criticism, the potential for damage is especially great.,,,,

Moreover, though Democratic candidates don’t want to make this point in the primary race, attacks on Sanders’s praise of socialist and communist governments are likely to be especially damaging when paired with criticism of his policy proposals as big-government socialism. Even Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who once assiduously sought to prevent Sanders from getting to her left, has realized the risks of Sanders’s plan to move all health care to a single-payer system and has started to edge away from the idea. Only 20 percent of voters — and just 37 percent of Democrats — say they would be enthusiastic about voting for a socialist for president.

Labels like “socialist” are abstract and poorly understood by most voters, of course; some of Sanders’s policies are indeed popular. But the penalty for extremism is real. When ideologically extreme candidates narrowly defeat moderates for a party nomination, the political scientists Andrew Hall and Daniel Thompson find, they perform more poorly in the general election, in part because they inspire the other party’s base more than their own. For instance, former Kansas secretary of state Kris Kobach, a hard-right conservative, barely beat the Republican governor in the 2018 gubernatorial primary before losing the general election to a Democrat by five percentage points.

Trump might seem to be a counterexample, but Sanders will struggle to replicate his success. It’s true that Trump won the White House despite having unusually high unfavorable ratings and a personal background that many voters considered disqualifying. Like Trump, Sanders would surely benefit from the strong pull of party loyalty, which can help counter the doubts of some potential supporters. But Trump had a key advantage: Voters in 2016 saw him as unusually moderate, which helped him overcome those record unfavorable numbers. Though the public now sees Trump as more conservative than in the last election, it views Sanders as even more distant from the center.

Besides his socialist positions, Sanders also has a long paper trail of writings and statements about sex, gender and race that have received relatively little attention but are likely to provoke far more controversy if he wins the nomination. In one 1969 essay, for instance, Sanders wrote that the “manner in which you bring up your daughter with regard to sexual attitudes may very well determine whether or not she will develop breast cancer, among other things.” And does his diverse coalition of young supporters know he once compared workers in Vermont to slaves?

[NurseJackie]

2. ...

[JoeOtterbein]

3. K n R ! Thanks for posting! nt

[efhmc]

4. This antibernie person does not need to see any vetting. His misogyny shines through

and has always been bright and clear to this feminist.

[Thekaspervote]

6. Awhh!! The voice of sanity!!

[jg10003]

12. That explains Bernie's 100% rating from NOW and NARAL

[SMC22307]

19. ...

[betsuni]

21. Calling Planned Parenthood "part of the establishment":

[lapucelle]

5. What's the "Lower Bumblefuck Gazette"?

Is that a snide reference to small local newspapers and the journalists who work for them?

My, that almost sounds elitist.

[betsuni]

22. And here I thought it was good not to be part of the corrupt "corporate media conglomeration."

[beastie boy]

7. You call this vetting? Third Way strawman is vetting Bernie?

If you ever find a Trump tweet that goes full retard on Bernie, get back to me about vetting. Otherwise I am not impressed.

But I doubt you will find anything significant from the GOP on Bernie. He is not a threat to them.

[OneMoreCupOfCoffee]

8. It isn't that people are "suddenly looking." No.

There are things that are known about Sanders that would blow his candidacy out of the water.

Democrats have held back using them. Republicans would not.

That's the difference.

[DanTex]

9. Yeah, we've seen all those "things."

The Democratic campaigns may be holding back. But the Bernie-hating twitter accounts have not been. And so far, they've been shooting blanks.

[highplainsdem]

10. LOL! This over-the-top OP reminds me of your attacking me for "digging" when I posted

about an article that had taken me under 15 seconds to find via Google:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1287447116#post3

[DanTex]

11. Always nice to relive pleasant memories!

[ritapria]

13. Breaking News on Twitter

In 1997 Bernie screamed "Damn" after his dog shat on is his new living room carpet …. A clear sign of animal cruelty … He ought to withdraw from the campaign, as well giving serious consideration to resigning his Senate seat , according to sources close to Third Way - the influential think tank that wants both major parties to be in the tank for Wall ST.

[DanTex]

14. LOL. This just in!

Bernie was spotted double dipping a tortilla chip into a bowl of guacamole. That's right, we have a confirmed double-dip in the guac. Now back to you.

[Sloumeau]

16. Someone posting a few words that Bernie Sanders said decades ago does not prove Bernie Sanders...

has been vetted. For all we know, someone was searching the Internet for something completely different and tripped over it.

[DanTex]

17. Yeah, umm, pretty sure it wasn't someone searching for something different.

[Mr.Bill]

18. Good thing nobody has been digging up whatever Biden

did or said 40 years ago, huh?

[redstateblues]

20. They should've started when he announced. Oops I forgot. They did