Opinion

Hillary’s Quest To Make Everyone Think Bernie Promotes Sexism

Scott Greer Contributor
Font Size:

Hillary Clinton’s coronation as the Democratic presidential nominee isn’t going so well.

She narrowly beat Bernie Sanders by the slimmest of margins in Iowa Monday and the Vermont senator is trouncing her by double-digits in New Hampshire polling.

The assured path Clinton hoped to have to the nomination is getting thrown wildly off-track by the Sanders insurgency. It now even threatens her White House dreams as much as a federal indictment.

In response to this turbulence, Hillary’s campaign and its surrogates have invented a meme in which to shame her primary adversary from the Left: Bernie Bros.

Bernie Bros, according to their critics, are young white males who’ve taken their love for Bernie way too far. They lurk on the dark corners of the Internet, waiting for innocent Clinton supporters to fall into their grasp, and then strike without mercy. And by ruthlessly striking, it means these budding democratic socialists send mean tweets to obvious Hillary fans.

For a charged election cycle like 2016, it would seem very natural for supporters of the respective Democratic contenders to feud online. That’s both the nature of the Internet and the nature of contested primaries. And when Sanders is renown for his large online fanbase, it’s bound for a few nasty words to be sent Hillary’s way.

Clinton’s allies, sensing a juicy opportunity, are trying to spin this phenomenon as something far more dangerous than a mere disagreement over political support. In their eyes, it’s a well-coordinated harassment campaign driven by subtle sexism and reveals how Sanders’s supporters aren’t diverse enough.

Some of the most prominent figures in opinion-making — such as The New York Times’ Paul Krugman and the New Yorker’s Emily Nussbaum — have said they’ve been victimized by Bernie Bros. Nussbaum cited one Twitter user calling her a “psycho” as evidence of the awful vitriol Bernie supporters spew online.

As uncovered by Glenn Greenwald in his solid takedown of the meme, that Twitter user was actually a right-wing troll posing as a congressman — not a Bernie fan.

Some Bernie Bro haters have been more ridiculous in their assertions of misogyny. Mashable declared Bernie’s online supporters a “sexist mob” because a few randos on Facebook said vulgar things about Hillary. Salon, being Salon, turned up the insanity by labeling an amusing meme poking fun at Clinton probably having lame music taste “predictably sexist.”

Some on the Left have tried to be a little more reasonable in their criticism of Bernie Bros. Slate’s Amanda Hess made sure to say they were bad, but argued that the uproar over it has gotten stupid. Hess puts the blame on the nature of the Internet and says all types of online fanbases engage in similar behavior to the Bernie Army. But she’s still disturbed some Sanders fans would tell big-time female Hillary backers they only support the former first lady because they want a job in her White House.

Apparently, these statements are a form of coded sexism and are just not acceptable.

Now Clinton aides are publicly addressing the very troubling trend and are urging Sanders to denounce his bros. “When you look at what goes online in particular, some of his supporters engage in negative, hurtful, nasty attacks and I think it is incumbent on him to call that out,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook told Bloomberg Politics Thursday.

The Sanders campaign did issue a statement this week asking its Internet followers to be respectful like the Vermont senator himself, but that doesn’t appear to be enough for Hillary’s surrogates.

The kerfuffle over Bernie Bros is something that could only happen on the Left, and the Clinton camp is smart to exploit it. For the liberals who think Gamergate is a crime against (wo)mankind, it makes sense for this to become a good attack on Sanders. Twenty-first century left-wing pundits have a remarkable interest in policing speech they don’t like, especially when it’s targeted at their favorite protected classes.

And Clinton has already indicated she will appeal to this feeling.

Hillary continues to hit Bernie for supporting — rather lukewarmly — gun rights in Vermont and has previously implied his comments rebuking her gun control assault were sexist.

She’s also used the woman card to knock back at Sanders saying she’s a part of the establishment. As Clinton said at Thursday night’s debate, there’s no way a woman running for president could be the establishment. (RELATED: Hillary: I Can’t Be The Establishment, I’m A Woman!)

Clinton is clearly trying to undermine Sanders’s progressive credentials from a cultural Left perspective. Insinuating his supporters are a bunch of misogynistic white dudes paints the senator as an reactionary while the former secretary of state is the vanguard of a multicultural future.

Others on the Left are going further than moaning about the supposed sexism of Sanders’s followers and saying the man himself has no interest in combating white supremacy. Several reports have chastised Bernie for attracting too many white people and not enough minorities. (RELATED: Hillary Clinton Allies Ramp Up Efforts To Play Race Card Against Bernie Sanders)

Could Bernie Whiteys be the next attack against Sanders if Bernie Bros fails? Perhaps.

But the only reason it would have any credibility is because liberals have decided identity politics and regulating “offensive” speech are the most important items of a progressive agenda.

Follow Scott on Twitter

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel