Silver Spring, Md. — As Bernie Sanders waved his arms and harangued Hillary Clinton over her Wall Street ties and support for the Iraq war during Thursday night’s Democratic debate in Brooklyn, Gloria Cabe kept thinking one thing: “I know this man.”
“I’m particularly sensitive to it, being close to Bernie’s age,” says Cabe, who managed Bill Clinton’s 1990 campaign for governor of Arkansas and served as his chief of staff, as she watches the debate here at a party organized by the Clinton campaign. “[He’s] attempting to put her in her place, with language and gestures that I would almost promise you he would not do if he were standing next to Donald Trump, for instance.”
“He’s not as sexist as a lot of people,” she continues. “But it’s still there, and people like me feel it. I was in the state legislature in Arkansas, and I dealt with guys like this all the time — the ones that were trying to be liberal!”
Sanders is facing strong headwinds going into New York’s Democratic primary on Tuesday, and his strident performance in Brooklyn was likely a must if he was to have any hope of denting Clinton’s prohibitive polling lead in the state. But his campaign’s increasing harshness is coming at a cost. Many Democrats who once tolerated, or even admired, the Vermont senator’s underdog bid now view him as a boorish annoyance at best — and a real danger to the party’s general-election prospects at worst.
On its surface, the Clinton campaign’s debate-watch gathering at Silver Spring’s Eggspectation restaurant is a subdued affair. Fewer than two-dozen people showed up, only two of them under 40 years old, to watch Clinton and Sanders duke it out on a small television with the volume turned down too low. One harried waiter rushes to fill drink orders, though no one is in a particularly exuberant mood. Clinton’s counterpunches are met with mild applause and murmurs of agreement, not raucous cheers.
#share#But there’s real anger simmering just underneath the placid facade. For months, many of Clinton’s rank-and-file supporters have expressed sympathy with Sanders’s vision, saying his heart is in the right place even if his ideas are unrealistic. But after weeks of escalating potshots between the campaigns — including several remarks by Sanders and his surrogates that the Clinton team deemed sexist — there is a sense that Sanders is unnecessarily dragging out a damaging primary contest he can’t win, and it’s tough to find much sympathy for him among Clinton’s committed Maryland supporters.
“He’s a different version of Donald Trump, as far as I’m concerned, and as far as the rhetoric is always the same,” says Linda Phelps, a Montgomery County resident eager to vote against Sanders in her state’s delegate-rich primary on April 26.
“It’s a frustration that he’s still in the race, and that the things he’s saying to Hillary — that guilt by innuendo — [are] going to be used by Republicans and Donald Trump to hurt her when we get to the election,” says April Burress, another local Clinton supporter.
Some question Sanders’s motivation for continuing his campaign despite an almost-insurmountable delegate deficit.
Some even question Sanders’s motivation for continuing his campaign despite an almost-insurmountable delegate deficit, openly spouting conspiracy theories. “One of the things we’ve seen so far is this campaign has actually quadrupled his net worth, so I don’t know if he’s in it just for the financial gain or not,” says Brian Phelps, who also plans to vote for Clinton on April 26. “I’m not sure exactly what his role is. I certainly don’t think his allegiance is to the Democratic Party.”
Many attendees express their irritation with what they view as a sexist streak in the Sanders campaign. Several point to Wednesday’s use of the term “corporate Democratic whores” by a Sanders surrogate as proof that his campaign is veering into gender-charged personal attacks. Most seem hesitant to accept Sanders’s disavowal of that remark, saying his bullying behavior on the debate stage and his claim that Clinton is “unqualified” to be president prove his disdain for her as a woman.
#related#Sanders’s repeated suggestion that Clinton is a shill for the finance industry also strikes a personal chord with her supporters. “This whole notion that if you take money from somebody, you’ve been bought and sold, I deeply resent that,” says Cabe, while watching Sanders dress down Clinton for not releasing transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street firms. “When he does that — says she’s bought and sold by Wall Street, fossil fuel — what it does is minimize the people who show up for her.”
Democratic strategists and high-profile Clinton surrogates have so far shied away from pushing Sanders to drop out, saying his continued presence has helped toughen Clinton up for the general election to come. But several have also hinted that if and when he loses New York, it will be time for him to go. For Clinton supporters deeply frustrated by Sander’s perceived sexism and scorched-earth attacks, that moment can’t come soon enough.
“Every day he stays in, he’s raising issues that the Republicans will definitely raise — and they will quote him, ‘Your opponent said this about you,’” says Cabe. “He just needs to stop.”
— Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review.