Actress Rosario Dawson has been an outspoken and provocative surrogate for Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid, having previously attacked Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton over the email “scandal” and blamed her for the deaths of US servicemen in Iraq, and on Saturday, she was at it again. At a rally in Wilmington, Delaware, Dawson was inveighing against a social media initiative by pro-Clinton PAC “Correct the Record” when she “cleverly” shoehorned in a reference to Monica Lewinsky:

Now, before anyone gets too outraged here, it’s important to remember two things, the first and most important being that bringing up Monica Lewinsky is much more likely to hurt Sanders than it is to damage Hillary Clinton, whose approval ratings soared in the wake of her husband’s affair. Secondarily, let’s all also remember the truly yellow associations that came out of Hillary Clinton’s own mouth during the 2008 campaign against then-Senator Barack Obama. I mean, Monica Lewinsky is no Hamas:

On Sunday morning’s edition of CNN’s State of the Union, Jake Tapper asked Sanders if he thought Dawson’s remark was appropriate, and true to form, Sanders praised her advocacy, gently suggested his surrogates stick to the “real issues,” and when pressed, said he didn’t know the “context” of Dawson’s reference:

Sanders’ reference to “context” is an obvious tell that of course he’s seen the remark, and feels confident that the bullying pretext will hold up. Someone should tell Sanders and Dawson that this isn’t a new trick, and saying “cocaine” over and over again by talking about how they weren’t bringing up cocaine didn’t help that campaign, either:

Bernie Sanders is pretty much out of runway when it comes to securing the Democratic presidential nomination, but there’s still plenty of room for his staffers and surrogates to make him look really bad, and by refusing to rein them in, he is abetting them in squandering the reservoir of good will he has spent decades building.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.