Opinion: Democrats looked ready to unify. And then Hillary Clinton had to go and raise her hand

[Autumn]

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-01-21/democrats-unify-hillary-clinton-bernie-sanders

JAN. 21, 2020 12:21 PM

On Monday, the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates — who have run a pretty chill primary, all things considered — linked arms at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day rally in South Carolina. Their message was clear: Even as the race narrows and the Iowa caucuses loom, the field is joined in common purpose. Or enough common purpose to keep things civil.

It was a nice twenty-something hours. Because this morning, former candidate Hillary Clinton popped up to zing Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders — even demurring on whether she’d support him were he to win the nomination. In an upcoming Hulu series, Clinton says Sanders “was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done.” When asked if that assessment still holds, Clinton told the Hollywood Reporter, in an interview published this morning, “Yes, it does.”

It’s mind-boggling to see a woman against whom “likability” was so ably weaponized argue that Sanders is unlikable. It’s particularly absurd for Clinton, who was so frustrated by Sanders’ late support of her as the Democratic presidential nominee, to say that she’s unsure if she would support him should he get the nomination. (I’d vote for a sentient sock should it win the Democratic nomination, or even former Vice President Joe Biden, should it come to that, which is to repeat myself.) It’s wild to accuse a competitor’s campaign of relentless negativity while being relentlessly negative three years later about that same campaign.

Meanwhile, the current candidates, including Sanders, have largely kept their messages to the issues. When Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign circulated the rumor that Sanders had said a woman could not win the presidency, Sanders denied the exchange, all while praising Warren as a candidate and a person — an exceptionally difficult line to walk. When a prominent Sanders supporter published an op-ed last week saying that Biden represented Washington, D.C., corruption, Sanders immediately went on television and said, “It is absolutely not my view that Joe is corrupt in any way. And I’m sorry that that op-ed appeared.”