Judging from his response, the most painful accusation Hillary Clinton leveled against Bernie Sanders in Sunday’s Democratic primary debate in South Carolina was that he had been disloyal to President Obama.
In a night filled with pandering to the African American vote (which included throwing police under the bus), Clinton attempted to deflect Sanders’ accurate description of her crony ties to Wall Street—a damning accusation these days to the increasingly socialist Democratic party—by playing the Obama card.
Sanders, said Clinton, not only dared to criticize Obama for accepting donations from Wall Street, he “called [Obama] weak, disappointing; he even in 2011 publicly sought someone to run in a primary against President Obama.”
Sanders’ reaction to that most grievous of accusations among the left has already been immortalized in this Vine:
Sanders responded to the malevolent charge by noting that he and his “friend” Obama had “worked together on many issues.”
The Hill notes that Martin O’Malley had actually tried that dig on Sanders before in an earlier debate and PolitiFact judged it to only be half-true; Sanders did call for someone to challenge Obama in 2012, but only because he wanted to pressure Obama to move even further left. The reality is Sanders worked hard to get Obama elected in both 2008 and 2012—and Clinton knows it. But things like honesty, transparency, and facts don’t matter to the Clinton camp, particularly when her poll numbers are starting to get worrisome.