No surprise. It's politics, after all. This is how the game is played. The surrogates are off their leashes.

I, and many others, predicted this is precisely what the Clinton campaign would do if Sanders closed the gap on her in New Hampshire and Iowa. Back on July 2, I wrote this diary:

Bring on the surrogates!

In that piece, I wrote:



The Clinton surrogates will now be out in force to pound Sanders. And her campaign and her supporters will trot out the ol', "[NAME] doesn't speak for the campaign," to keep Hillary's hands clean, just as they have already done with Claire McCaskill's lame "socialist" and "extreme agenda" attack, and Luis Gutierrez's "I-don't-know-if-he-likes-immigrants" smear.

In advance of all of the folks who will write, "Politics is a bloodsport!" or "If he can't take it now, how will he take it from Republicans?" or "Oh, poor, poor Bernie! It's part of the game!" let me just say that, yes, I agree with you! I agree with all of that! And I bet Sanders does, too. He knows what's coming (some of it has already started), and I suspect he's ready for it. His supporters should be ready for it, too, because it comes with the territory of being an actual contender. So embrace it, love it, laugh at it. Bernie has arrived! And who woulda' thunk it just a coupla' short months ago? I assure you that no one in Clinton's camp expected it.

As I also noted:Well, now that Sanders has established a lead over Clinton in New Hampshire and continues to chip away at Clinton's lead in Iowa, it is clearly time to "Unleash the hounds!"

Hillary Clinton’s proxies ramp up attacks against Sanders



While the wounded front-runner is ignoring her competition in the primary race altogether -- she still does not utter Sanders’ name on the campaign trail – Brooklyn is paying the travel costs for proxies who are using their appearances in the early-voting states to criticize the surging senator. ... At Clinton HQ, campaign officials regularly brief strategists, elected officials and donors before they comment publicly about the race. In recent weeks, the campaign has become more closely guarded with its talking points -- when giving guidance on how to respond to speculation about Vice President Joe Biden jumping into the race, for instance, campaign officials told surrogates they would put nothing in writing and would brief them only by phone, multiple sources said.

So I hope that Clinton's most ardent backers here can be honest and quit pretending that what surrogates have to say is not connected to the campaign, particularly when the campaign is paying to fly these surrogates to the early caucus/primary states.

Using surrogates to attack rivals is nothing new in politics, though the choice of surrogates can speak volumes about a candidate and a campaign. In 2007-2008, the Clinton campaign experienced backlash after particularly nasty surrogate attacks on Obama from the likes of Geraldine Ferraro and the ever-slimy Lanny Davis.

While Davis is still at it, another slimebag, Andrew Cuomo, was trotted out this week. I know kos is a huge Cuomo fan. (Oh, wait...) But I think the choice of surrogates is telling. While kos and a number of other front-pagers have been telling us over and over what a great liberal Clinton is, you are the company you keep. Andrew Cuomo, really?

We'll see who else gets trotted out in the coming days and weeks. I suspect if Sanders holds his lead in New Hampshire and inches closer in Iowa, the attacks will get more numerous, louder and more pointed.

Joaquin Castro was flown out to Iowa this week by the Clinton campaign to claim, essentially, that Sanders doesn't care about Latinos, a theme that Clinton mouthpieces have been repeating for months. Trying to keep up the "Sanders-doesn't-care-about-people-of-color" theme has gotten increasingly difficult for the surrogates as more people have gotten a chance to listen to Sanders, directly. In fact, that theme has transitioned to "Sanders-isn't-reaching-out-to-people-of-color" as the original theme tanks.

The Clinton campaign is obviously viewing South Carolina as a firewall, if need be. I think Sanders is still a long shot, but as Clinton's favorables continue to decline (slowly among Democrats, but more rapidly among the general electorate), and her head-to-head match-up numbers versus Trump and Bush in state polls look increasingly worse, it is no surprise that some in the party hierarchy are getting nervous. These mucky-mucks don't want Sanders, but they don't want a badly-wounded Clinton in November 2016, either.

For all of these reasons, I suspect we will see a ramping up of surrogate attacks on Sanders (and, obliquely, at Biden) from Camp Clinton over the next month. When debates begin, the candidate, herself, will have to wade in.

Until then, check out the choice of surrogates and listen to their arguments. The more we see of folks like McCaskill, Cuomo and Lanny Davis (or any of the other old DLC crowd like Evan Bayh, Harold Ford and Mark Warner), the more the Clinton campaign tips its hand on what kind of governing we can expect from a Hillary Clinton administration.

The good news for Sanders backers is that he's for real. When we see guys like Castro getting a paid trip to Iowa to lie about Sanders (claiming that Sanders never held a campaign event in Texas) we can be sure that there are some nervous folks in Clinton headquarters in Brooklyn.