WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The “tone” of the Republican primary campaign is getting a lot of press as the front-runners Donald Trump and Ted Cruz trade taunts, hurl charges, and even insult each other’s wife.

But the tone of the Democratic campaign has turned sharper as well, while not descending to the level of the playground bully as the Republicans have.

One of Hillary Clinton’s strategists, Joel Benenson, launched a Twitter tidal wave this week when he said on CNN that his candidate’s willingness to add another debate to the schedule before the April 19 New York primary would depend on the “tone” Bernie Sanders will be using as the campaign goes on.

The Clinton camp is complaining that Sanders has reneged on his pledge not to run a negative campaign, though the Vermont senator maintains he is walking a fine line between criticizing her on the issues and not denigrating her personally.

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“Sen. Sanders doesn’t get to decide when we debate, particularly when he’s running a negative campaign against us,” Benenson told CNN’s Kate Bolduan. “Let’s see if he goes back to the kind of tone he said he was going to set early on. If he does that, then we’ll talk about debates.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth than #tonedownforwhat was trending on Twitter, many of the tweets sarcastically pointing out that Clinton speaks in New York only when she’s paid a quarter of a million dollars to do so.

Clinton supporters countered that it was just so much “faux outrage” and accused the Sanders campaign of fomenting a publicity stunt by insisting on a New York debate.

In the meantime, however, in a race characterized by widespread voter support for the anti-establishment candidates Sanders and Trump, Clinton continued to cruise along in her establishment bubble, showing she remains deaf to the tone being set by the voters.

The former first lady has scheduled a fundraiser for April 15 hosted by actor George Clooney and his wife, Amal, where the top ticket for a couple to sit at the same table with Clinton will cost $353,000 — some four times the average annual income in San Francisco and seven times the annual median income nationally.

“It is obscene that Secretary Clinton keeps going to big-money people to fund her campaign,” Sanders told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, no doubt striking a tone that Benenson would find objectionable.

“It’s not only this Clooney event,” Sanders continued. “It is the fact she has now raised well over $15 million from Wall Street for her super-PAC, and millions more from the fossil fuel industry, and from the drug companies.”

Sanders made it clear he has nothing against Clooney (“a great actor, I like him”), but objects to the type of access the wealthy have to a candidate in a “corrupt campaign finance system.”

All this against the backdrop of Sanders trouncing Clinton in three primary contests in the West over the weekend, racking up anywhere from 70% to 82% of the vote in Washington, Alaska and Hawaii.

The establishment press honored these compelling wins with desultory headlines such as “Sanders wins three states; Clinton holds delegate lead” in the Associated Press.

Comedian Andy Borowitz had some fun with this in his blog for the The New Yorker under the headline “Media Unimpressed as Sanders Barely Gets Seventy Per Cent of Vote.”

Cable networks, Borowitz “reported” in his satirical piece, said Sanders “ran out of steam well shy of eighty percent.”

Clinton still holds significant leads in the polls for the giant primary votes in California and New York, as well as several other remaining contests.

Only time will tell whether this past week marked a turning point for Sanders, giving him the momentum not only to win in delegate-rich Wisconsin, where he is ahead in the polls, but to score an upset in one of the really big states.

Even if he ultimately falls short, as the punditocracy expects, Sanders will come to the convention with a substantial number of delegates and millions of voters behind him.

He appeared to set conditions for his eventual endorsement of Clinton in the general election in an interview on the website “The Young Turks.”

Sanders said he would want to see the Democratic campaign champion policies he has pushed for, including single-payer health care, $15 an hour minimum wage, repair of crumbling infrastructure, tax on Wall Street speculation, free tuition at public colleges, closing corporate tax loopholes and “a vigorous effort” on climate change.

A whimsical moment at Sanders’s rally in Portland, Ore., on Friday made the 11,000 supporters in attendance go wild, went viral on social media and has already inspired posters, memes and the trending hashtag #birdiesanders.

At one point in his stump speech in the Moda Center, the crowd pointed out a little bird that had landed on the floor next to the speaker’s podium. When Sanders talked about “this little bird” — later identified as a house finch or female sparrow — the bird flew onto the podium and for a few seconds appeared to scrutinize the candidate as he smiled indulgently.

Sanders said it was like a dove symbolizing peace, but it is perhaps appropriate in a campaign where Twitter plays such a big role that it is this little bird who is really setting the tone for the insurgent Democratic campaign.