Washington Post editorials lambasting Bernie Sanders were not endorsements of Hillary Clinton and made no mention of the front-runner. | Getty Clinton camp plans to roll out Washington Post's anti-Sanders editorial

DES MOINES, Iowa — One scathing newspaper editorial is worth a thousand of a candidate’s own words.

That’s the bet Hillary Clinton is making. While she has dropped direct attacks on Bernie Sanders from her stump speech, her campaign is planning to reprint a withering Washington Post editorial that accuses Sanders of running a “fiction-filled campaign” and distribute it to voters in New Hampshire ahead of the Feb. 9 primary.


The plan, an inside source said, is to have volunteers pass out reprints of the editorial and let the newspaper make the case against Sanders, with no commentary necessary from the campaign.

Clinton officials were thrilled with the editorial, entitled “Mr. Sanders Is Not a Brave Truth-Teller,” when it posted on Jan. 27. The editorial, sources said, nailed the narrative Clinton operatives themselves have attempted to put forward — that Sanders’ plans overpromise and don’t add up in terms of how to pay for universal health care, raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and free college, among other issues.

But the campaign itself has struggled to forcefully make that case: Campaigning in Iowa, where 43 percent of Democrats self-identify as socialists, Clinton seems to have found that a positive message works better for her than attacking Sanders and running the risk of turning off his supporters.

Enter The Washington Post. “He is a politician selling his own brand of fiction to a slice of the country that eagerly wants to buy it,” the paper's editorial board wrote. The piece goes on to slam Sanders’ “political revolution” for implying “a national consensus favoring his agenda when there is none and ignores the many legitimate checks and balances in the political system that he cannot wish away.” And it accuses Sanders, whose anti-establishment, outsider appeal has been key to his success, of being “a lot like many other politicians, comparing his claim that more government spending would result in more growth to Republican arguments “that tax cuts will juice the economy and pay for themselves.”

On Thursday, Sanders unloaded on the Post during a media breakfast in Des Moines. “Check out where all the geniuses on the editorial page were with regard to the invasion of Iraq,” he said. “I know The Washington Post may think I’m really radical. I’m not.”

That only escalated the fight. The Post responded with a second critical piece, entitled “Bernie Sanders’s ideas are not too bold. They are too facile.”

The pair of editorials were not endorsements of Clinton and made no mention of the Democratic front-runner who has found herself in a tight race ahead of the Iowa caucuses on Monday.

But by reprinting the Post’s takedown of Sanders, the campaign has cover for spreading attack literature while simultaneousely expressing its disappointment at Sanders’ attack strategy.