“Senator Sanders is trying to live in the purity bubble, and it needs to be burst," David Brock said. | AP Photo Brock: Time for Bernie's 'purity bubble' to be burst

MANCHESTER, N.H. -- Hours after former President Bill Clinton caught the attention of Democrats all across the country with the debut of his stinging critique of Bernie Sanders in a 50-minute stemwinder in Milford, N.H., one of Hillary Clinton’s top allies piled on to his critique — and previewed new attacks on the Vermont senator.

“I think that it’s about time that voters got a glimpse of reality, which is what’s happening, and President Clinton did that. It was a strong call to arms, particularly to her supporters — and I include myself in that — who have stayed too quiet in the face of those character attacks, and that’s over. What she correctly called the ‘artful smear,’ we need to call attention to,” David Brock, the founder of the Correct The Record rapid response and opposition research group that coordinates with the Clinton campaign, told POLITICO on Monday morning. “Senator Sanders is trying to live in the purity bubble, and it needs to be burst."


The comments from the conservative-turned-Clinton ally followed the delivery of the former president’s ratcheted-up rhetoric just before the Super Bowl Sunday. The strongly-worded speech landed not long after tensions reach a boiling point in the Democratic primary, particularly after the two candidates clashed onstage at Thursday night’s debate, when Clinton said Sanders’ suggestions that she is beholden to Wall Street was an “artful smear."

While some Clinton allies were happy to see the Big Dog turn attack dog, others had immediate flashbacks to 2008, when his harsh criticisms of Barack Obama backfired, particularly in South Carolina. But Clinton loyalists point to 2012 — when the former president stepped in to help Obama — as a more favorable comparison to Clinton’s role. (Sanders’ campaign didn’t respond to a request for a response to Clinton or Brock.)

“When you’re making a revolution, you can’t be too careful with the facts,” Clinton said on Sunday night, not mentioning Sanders’ name, but alluding to him throughout the speech — a break from his standard lines about how his wife is a positive change-maker. “The New Hampshire I campaigned in really cared that you knew what you were doing, and how it was paid for."

Usually a more sedate presence on the trail, Clinton railed against Sanders’ health care plan and his critique of Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of money from Wall Street. He also compared December’s Democratic National Committee data breach to the Sanders camp stealing a car with keys in its ignition — a point Brock seized on, insisting Hillary Clinton “would’ve been hounded out of the race if her staff had done what his did, in stealing data and misleading the press about it, then raising money off it."

And Bill Clinton mocked the Sanders camp’s repeated invocation of the political establishment when criticizing Hillary Clinton: “Anybody that doesn’t agree with me is a tool of the establishment,” he said in his summary of Sanders’ argument, a sentiment he repeated while introducing his wife in Manchester on Monday morning.

To Brock, the fiery speech was a clear signal to other Clinton allies to turn up the heat on Sanders, who leads the former secretary of state by double-digits in most New Hampshire polling, with just hours until the polls open.

“The Clinton campaign has stayed remarkably positive in the face of a relentlessly negative campaign from Sanders,” Brock said after Clinton’s speech, which he saw as an outline of future lines of criticism.

While Sanders himself has pledged not to go negative, Hillary Clinton and her aides have repeatedly accused him of running a negative campaign — and her chief strategist Joel Benenson even called his effort the “most negative” Democratic primary campaign ever. Meanwhile Clinton’s team has started distributing fliers outside of Sanders events that quote the PolitiFact New Hampshire site decrying Sanders’ “false” claims of endorsements or support from New Hampshire newspapers.

“These are all fruitful things to explore, they’re themes that I imagine will be developed going forward,” Brock added, elaborating on Bill Clinton’s points.

Brock said more spotlight needs to be focused on policies where Sanders has changed his mind, similar to how Sanders has criticized Clinton: “[President Clinton] referred to Senator Sanders’ hypocrisy, and that is clear on a number of issues, like the fact that he did the bidding of the NRA for years, and when Secretary Clinton called him out on his record, he flip-flopped,” said Brock, referring to Sanders’ recent pivot to supporting legislation that amends a 2005 law he voted for that limited liability for gun manufacturers. He also alluded to the candidate’s switches on immigration policy.

“There’s a unanimous chorus of serious progressive commentators who find almost nothing of any substantive value in his so-called policies. It’s all slogans,” Brock added, suggesting such critiques would be amplified in the coming weeks.

Brock suggested Sanders himself should be called on his campaign’s missteps, which have each gathered local media coverage but never a great deal of national scrutiny. Between appearing to tout newspaper endorsements he didn’t receive in an ad — a version the Sanders camp says was never supposed to go public — and Sanders staffers in Nevada misrepresenting themselves as members of the politically powerful Culinary Workers Union, “if any of that were on the other foot, imagine what the response would be."

On the topic of Sanders’ boisterous supporters — some of whose attacks Bill Clinton called “vicious trolling and attacks that are literally too profane … not to mention sexist” — Brock echoed the former president’s concerns, adding that Hillary Clinton’s large deficit among young voters can be partly explained by their online environment.

“If you study what’s being said in social media, the media that millennials are consuming, it is filled with misinformation and vicious lies and sexism in terms that you can’t even repeat from his supporters, from other trolls,” Brock said. “And you wonder why there’s such a gap in the millennial preference for Sanders over Hillary. I think if people took a look at what they’re seeing, that would account for some of [the deficit] — the fact that they have a misimpression of her."