May 3, 2016

Clinton's secret campaign against Sanders?

Sam Smith - There's been a lot of talk about Clinton declining a political attack on Sanders, but it looks like she may be doing it in the classic manner of faux honor in such cases: helping the media do the work for you.  I was reminded of this reading Michelle Goldberg's attack on Sanders in Slate which listed things Sanders had said back in the days when he was a young socialist trying to prove how different he was from the establishment. I lived through those days and learned to concentrate on the issues at hand, rather than the strange theories some of your fellow activists had picked up along the way.

But what struck me as odd about Goldberg's piece was that it reeked of a candidate's investigation of her opponent rather than a normal journalistic effort. To check this out, I took a look at one of the charges, namely that Jane Sanders "has been accused of trying to defraud the Catholic Church on a land deal she undertook as president of Burlington College."

But here's one thing she forgot to add: "Bishop Christopher Coyne, however, says the harm to which Toensing refers does not exist. And he says the church wants no part in any political grudge match. We don’t obviously want to get involved in any political battle involving presidential candidates,” Coyne said Monday afternoon. “We’re not pushing this at all. We’re satisfied with the outcome (of the sale to Burlington College).”

Looks like the Clinton staff may have been at work. And knew when to stop





2 comments:

Anne Mollegen Smith said...

More likely than campaign staff leaks or plants are the various private Facebook groups supporting Clinton (or others) whose members do their investigations via the Internet, so local news reports or blogs in Burlington become "authenticated" sources on these social media networks. They do their own opposition research, in other words. Many bloggers, journalists and ex-journalists belong, and many others post links on their public Facebook pages. Because Senator Sanders and Jane Sanders have not been seriously vetted by the national press, these Facebook groups have stepped up. A reason behind all the searching is that the Sanderses have not, in spite of promises, made public their tax returns except for the one, "clean" year of 2014. It seems they are trying to run out the clock and secure (or lose) the nomination without actually releasing more returns.

Anonymous said...


As I recall, Sanders said he would release the tax returns when Clinton release the transcripts of the speeches. In other words, when Hell freezes over.

Sanders has already released one years return, let Hillary release one Goldman speech.

Then we'll talk.