Independent Vermont Senator and upstart Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders had about 27,000 New Yorkers feeling the Bern Wednesday at a rally in Washington Square Park that, at least visually, recalled Barack Obama’s 2008 foreign policy speech to a teeming throng in Berlin. But the rally was not without controversy, as one of the speakers, health care advocate Dr. Paul Song, delivered a profane speech in which he referenced frontrunner Hillary Clinton, and told the crowd they needed to stop electing Democratic “whores” (you can see his full remarks here):

Now I have tremendous respect for the President and Secretary Clinton, and while they helped my family, I felt I needed to support the candidate that will help every single family in the United States. Now, Secretary Clinton has said Medicare for all will never happen. Well I agree with Secretary Clinton that Medicare for all will never happen if we have a president who never aspires for something greater than the status quo. Medicare for all will never happen if we continue to elect corporate Democratic whores who are beholden to Big Pharma and the private insurance industry, instead of us.

Dr. Song has since sort of apologized, while selling the line that he was not referring to Hillary Clinton with that line:

I am very sorry for using the term “whore” to refer to some in congress who are beholden to corporations and not us. It was insensitive. — Paul Y. Song (@paulysong) April 14, 2016

Here’s the problem with that: It’s pretty clear that the chief “whore” he’s referring to is Hillary Clinton, whose name he drops three times, and against whom the central argument of Bernie Sanders’ campaign has been her acceptance of campaign money from, among others, the health insurance and pharmaceutical sectors. If you have any doubt about that, just take a look at Bernie Sanders’ own fundraising memos:

“Secretary Clinton, on the other hand, has received millions of dollars from the health care and pharmaceutical industries, a number that is sure to rise as time goes on,” he wrote, arguing that Clinton has raised more money from the healthcare industry than the top three Republican candidates combined. “Now, and let’s not be naive about this, maybe they are dumb and don’t know what they are going to get? But I don’t think that’s the case, and I don’t believe you do either.”

Of course, Senator Sanders immediately denounced Dr. Song upon taking the stage, right? He didn’t thank him by name for the “wonderful introduction,” did he?

Of course he did. The denunciation, such as it was, wouldn’t come until the following day, and tellingly, focused solely on the nomenclature:

Dr. Song’s comment was inappropriate and insensitive. There’s no room for language like that in our political discourse. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) April 14, 2016



So, if he’d called Hillary a “Democratic sex worker,” that would have been okay? That response is missing several adjectives, and for a campaign that already has a nasty whiff of sexism to it, this is some pretty weak tea.

The fact is, Bernie Sanders has been making this exact argument against Hillary Clinton for months (without mentioning that Hillary’s contributions from that sector are more than doubled by her contributions from retirees), and all Song did was give it a misogynistic name.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.