Senator, This Is Wrong

[Content Note: Misogyny.]

Hey, remember when I wrote that piece calling bullshit on the contemptible narrative that Bernie Sanders has made Hillary Clinton a better candidate?

You probably do, since it was just last week!

And remember when I wrote that other piece about how, if anyone is to get credit, in addition to Hillary Clinton, for Hillary Clinton being a better candidate, it's the marginalized people who have spoken up and spent time and energy offering her their thoughts?

You probably do, since that was also just last week!

Well, I can tell you one person who definitely does not agree—Bernie Sanders! He's certain that Bernie Sanders is definitely responsible for making Hillary Clinton a better candidate!

Per New York Times reporter Yamiche Alcindor, Sanders said today that "he is 'delighted' that Hillary Clinton has been adopting his message and starting to use the same language he does." And not just that! He also said Clinton "is copying his message so well that he saw an ad for her & thought it was an ad for him until the end."

So not only is Clinton so hapless that she needs an old white magical man to make her a decent candidate, but she's so ruthless that she will simply plagiarize that man to win.

Senator Sanders, this shit has to stop.

Because it is wrong. Factually and ethically.

Because this sort of misogynist messaging that casts a female candidate as an evil, Machiavellian liar (who is somehow simultaneously too weak to be a good candidate on her own) catches every woman in your rhetorical buckshot.

Because there are consequences—serious consequences—to engaging in such inflammatory and demonizing rhetoric against Hillary Clinton.

Just days ago, a Sanders supporter, and host of a volunteer phone bank for Sanders, was escorted from the Las Vegas Review-Journal's lobby and contacted by the Secret Service after attempting "to place an obituary notice for the former secretary of state."

Naturally the man claimed it was just "political humor," hahaha, "a predictive reference to Clinton losing Saturday's Nevada caucuses." (Which she didn't.)

It is not okay to make fucking "jokes" about the death of a presidential candidate. It is not okay to make fucking "jokes" about Hillary Clinton's death.

None of this is okay. And Senator Sanders needs to immediately stop with the demonizing rhetoric, before some dangerous jackass wants to make more than a "joke" out of it.

Not that it needs to reach that level for this despicable campaigning to be out of line. It's out of line from the get-go to deny a female candidate her agency; to take credit for anything and everything you will begrudgingly grant she's doing "right."

Sanders claims he isn't running a nasty campaign, but that's about as nasty as it gets.