NBC News' Chuck Todd compared the intensity of President Donald Trump's supporters to Sen. Bernie Sanders and read an article that compared the Democratic presidential candidate's supporters to a "digital brownshirt brigade." The MSNBC panel Todd hosted complained about the treatment they have received from Sanders supporters after disparaging the candidate. MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell expressed her concern there are not superdelegates and party "elders" to stop Sanders.



"If Biden collapses, if there's a Stop Bernie movement. That is going to be to hell to pay with the Bernie people because they are so committed," Mitchell warned.



At a conservative opinion website named The Bulwark, columnist Jonathan V. Last wrote:





But as a functional matter, the end result is the same: An army of people (or bots or Russians or whoever) hounding opponents, enforcing discipline, quashing any sort of dissent—and trying to preempt anyone else from taking sides against the Dear Leader.



Whether or not Bernie is personally coordinating this effort makes absolutely no difference to the facts on the ground.



No other candidate has anything like this sort of digital brownshirt brigade. I mean, except for Donald Trump.



The question no one is asking is this:



What if you can’t win the presidency without an online mob?



What if we now live in a world where having a bullying, agro social media army running around popping anyone who sticks their head up is either an important ingredient for, or a critical marker of, success?

“What if you can’t win the presidency without an online mob?” — MSNBC seems very frightened that ordinary voters, many of whom use the Internet, may actually get to participate in deciding who wins the presidency pic.twitter.com/nPM5c8DF1n — David Sirota (@davidsirota) February 10, 2020

“Why are Sanders supporters so angry?” ponders @chucktodd as he cites a piece referring to Sanders supporters as brown shirts



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pic.twitter.com/XKu1tM50MD — NY For Sanders #Bernie2020 (@NYforSanders) February 10, 2020

Totally normal for Chuck Todd to imply the Jewish guy's supporters are Nazi Brown shirts, and Chris Matthews to say Sanders is gonna have him executed in Central Park, and Joy Reid to claim that getting rid of SuperDs is "racist". — This handle kills fascist rats (@BethLynch2020) February 11, 2020

MSDNC’s @chucktodd approvingly quotes a screed from Bill Kristol’s neocon Bulwark likening Bernie supporters to Nazi brownshirts pic.twitter.com/1OmilNTL87 — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) February 10, 2020

"I know everybody's freaking out it but you saw the MAGA rally that's prepared around here there are people that are coming from three or four states. That is real. This is like Bernie," Todd said after reading the quote."That is a really depressing sentence that you just read,"'s Ruth Marcus said. "But we saw a little bit of this at the state party Democratic dinner Saturday night where Pete Buttigieg was talking about how you can't always have a revolution and the Bernie supporters there, who had great flashing purple signs, started chanting 'Wall Street Pete. Wall Street Pete.' This is the makings of an ugly primary season coming ahead of us and the makings of a potentially really ugly general election campaign.""This is a part of the campaign that we never had to worry about four years ago," Todd said."I think the question becomes what if we get to the convention and Bernie Sanders does not have anywhere near a majority but he has a plurality? He has 35%, 37% of the delegates and he goes to the convention and says, 'I won more primaries than anyone else. I have more delegates than anyone else. I dare you to deny me the nomination and the superdelegates,'" said Dante Scala, a concerned University of New Hampshire professor.""You don't have super delegates anymore, at least on the first ballot" Andrea Mitchell lamented. "You don't have the members of Congress would be the elders. That was exactly the reform that the Bernie Sanders people demanded."