Despite the most recent primary results, Bernie Sanders is still losing to Hillary Clinton. In my opinion, it’s not because he has bad ideas, but because his campaign strategy is to portray himself as an exemplar of moral virtue and Clinton as evil incarnate. Not only that, he decries anyone who doesn’t agree with him as a corrupt sell-out. Some of his supporters seem to agree.

When legendary farm labor, feminist, and voting rights activist Dolores Huerta published an op-ed saying she didn’t know enough about Sanders to vote for him, citing his inconsistent record on immigration and his lack of presence in the United Farm Workers struggle (that’s the labor union she co-founded with the late Cesar Chavez), the person who spoke up on Sanders’ behalf was an actress who once played Huerta in a poorly received biopic of Chavez. Rosario Dawson, a 36-year-old from New York City whose Latino ancestors hail from Puerto Rico, a US territory, and Cuba, the beneficiary of an open-door US immigration policy these last 57 years, wrote an op-ed in the Huffington Post lecturing Huerta.

“I am surprised, dismayed, and concerned that you would do your legacy such a disservice by becoming an instrument of the establishment, rather than joining this movement to create a better America like you once inspired us to do,” Dawson said.

Forget that Huerta not only cofounded the UFW but has dedicated six decades to fighting on the front lines of the workers’ rights movement. She’s been arrested 22 times while demonstrating for the cause and was even hospitalized in 1988 – as a grandmother – with two broken ribs and a ruptured spleen while protesting President George HW Bush’s opposition to the UFW grape boycott. Forget all of it. Dawson has declared Huerta’s legacy destroyed on Bernie’s behalf.

In case there was any doubt as to whether Sanders approved of her message, Dawson was subsequently picked to introduce him at speaking events in San Diego and Los Angeles, where she told crowds to be wary of the media. She spoke of how she been registering Latino voters for 11 years through Voto Latino. Good for her. Dolores Huerta has been doing it for 56, since back when that kind of thing could get you lynched.

The whole episode smacks of the Sanders’ overall style, one that, in the words of former Massachusetts congressman Barney Frank, “alienates his natural allies”.

Frank once said of Sanders: “His holier-than-thou attitude – saying in a very loud voice he is smarter than everyone else and purer than everyone else – really undercuts his effectiveness ... To him, everyone who disagrees with him is a crook.”

I suppose that, in addition to Huerta, UFW president Arturo Rodriguez (Cesar Chavez’s son-in-law, who has been fighting with the UFW since 1973), is a crook, too. He also wrote an op-ed questioning Bernie Sanders’ voting record on immigration. Sanders voted against the 2007 bipartisan immigration bill on the grounds that it didn’t have enough protections for new guest workers (although it did boost protections for farmworkers). Yet Sanders didn’t appear to have the same concerns when it came to co-sponsoring a 2011 bill to allow agricultural guest workers, currently only allowed for seasonal farm work, into Vermont’s dairy farms, which offer year-round work.

“Although Senator Sanders opposes use of guest workers because of concerns over exploitation,” wrote Rodriguez, “is he willing to make an exception for guest workers in agriculture? Is this the same kind of exception that saw – and still sees – farm workers excluded from the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act guaranteeing minimum wages and overtime pay after eight hours, and other protections?”

It’s a fair question from a man who has spent many decades fighting on behalf of farm workers. But please, Dawson, tell us how the UFW are a bunch of corrupt sell-outs. Better yet, I’d love to hear the answer from Sanders himself.