Sanders Surrogates Launch Manufactured, Hypocritical Attacks

Pete Buttigieg has become their target

You know something’s strange when progressives like Ro Khanna are quoting the NY Post — or, more accurately, when progressives quote the NY Post which is quoting the Washington Examiner.

The NY Post has long been considered a non-credible news source — especially by Democrats, which Congressman Khanna and his supporters likely consider themselves. Most metrics consider the bias of both the NY Post and the Washington Examiner to be right-of-center.

Congressman Ro Khanna represents California’s 17th District, and is currently a Campaign co-Chairman of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 Presidential Campaign. Recently, via Twitter, Khanna used a NY Post article to malign Mayor Pete Buttigieg. The tweet sources a report on Buttigieg drawing parallels between the anti-establishmentism of Sanders and Trump.

Khanna was interpreting Buttigieg’s words as a punch at Sanders — but in reality, they were far from that. In fact, Buttigieg didn’t actually discuss Sanders directly at all, he instead discussed Sanders’ supporters. The below passage is from the Washington Examiner article.

“I think the sense of anger and disaffection that comes from seeing that the numbers are fine, like unemployment’s low, like all that, like you said GDP is growing and yet a lot of neighborhoods and families are living like this recovery never even happened. They’re stuck,” Buttigieg told high school Democrats in Nashua, N.H., on Friday. “It just kind of turns you against the system in general and then you’re more likely to want to vote to blow up the system, which could lead you to somebody like Bernie and it could lead you to somebody like Trump. That’s how we got where we are.”

The passage seems innocuous. It seems unoriginal. And that’s because it is.

The anti-establishment parallels between Trump and Sanders were repeatedly expounded on by pundits all across the political spectrum during the 2016 campaign. In fact, in December of 2017, Sanders used the idea himself.

Here is Sanders quoted in VICE in December of 2017.

“It is clear that there is an element of Trump supporters who are racists, sexists, homophobes, and there’s nothing I’m going to say that’s going to appeal to them,” he said. “But I think that the vast majority of Trump supporters are people who are in pain, who are struggling economically, who are worried to death that their kids are going to be in even worse shape economically than they are, and they turned to Trump because Trump said things that made sense. He said he was going to take on the establishment, and he was going to provide healthcare to everybody. You know what, it’s pretty much what I said.”

This quote closely mirrors Buttigieg’s. Sanders doesn’t just draw parallels between his supporters and Trump supporters, he takes pride in them. But Congressman Khanna seems to be unaware of his own campaign’s former messaging. What once was a point of pride is now somehow offensive to Khanna.

Further down in the Twitter thread, Khanna labeled Buttigieg’s words an “attack on Bernie.”

But Khanna was not alone in manufacturing the outrage. Nina Turner, another Sanders surrogate and founder of Our Revolution, jumped in on the Buttigieg-bashing.

Turner also echoed Khanna’s messaging, agreeing that Buttigieg’s statements were an “attack” on Sanders.

A popular Sanders-supporting Democratic Socialist Facebook also page got in on the action. To their credit, they shared content that provided Buttigieg’s response to the surrogates, but their commenters interpreted the post as a clear evidence that Buttigieg is just another, “both-sides-have-faults” centrist.

Attacks on Buttigieg are to be expected. At least some portion will likely be baseless. It’s unavoidable.

But knowing the Sanders crowd is willing and able to completely manufacture an attack is disconcerting. The public has a responsibility to vet candidates and to “put them through the wringer,” but making things up does no one any good.

So the question, then, is why did Congressman Khanna and Nina Turner both decide to turn their ire on Buttigieg now? The answer may be found in a recent poll, showing Buttigieg gaining fast ground with Biden and Sanders remaining relatively stagnant.

Buttigieg, a young, gay, and politically fresh candidate contrasts starkly with the other two frontrunners. And in a crowded field, contrast is everything.

Sanders’ team is smart to be concerned about the rise of Mayor Pete Buttigieg — but that doesn’t give them license to manufacture scandals that aren’t there.

-Ben Chapman