ABC News reported as recently as 2013 that at that time, most of the people housed in Tent City were awaiting trial, not convicted criminals. Jane Sanders did not seem to know this, and she certainly lacked the courage to challenge Arpaio standing next to him.

So not only did Jane Sanders accept the excuse that frying convicted prisoners in the desert heat was somehow not as inhumane but she accepted it on a basis that hasn't even always been true. Arpaio has tortured those held pre-trial, not just post-conviction in his Tent City jail.

Why is this important? Is every presidential candidate's spouse supposed to be read up on the history of every bad prison in America? Of course not. But when you are conducting a publicity tour to show you care on behalf of your spouse's campaign at one of the most controversial prison under the watch of the most controversial Sheriff in America, it's a good idea to check up on the history of both the place and the person you might see.

When you do not, you end up promoting the racists' agenda by allowing that Sheriff to propaganda unchallenged, like Jane Sanders did. It's not as though the history of the prison is not public information (heck, I found it with a simple Google search), nor as if Apraio's excuses have not been aired in the media a gazillion times.

Jane Sanders was unprepared to confront Joe Arpaio because she had only prepared for the trip as a publicity coup for her husband, not as an actual gesture of caring about the victims of Arpaio's racism. Not that anything more can be expected from the Vermonter who sits on the Texas toxic nuclear waste dumping board whose help her husband enlisted to try to dump Vermont's nuclear waste on the poor Latino community of Sierra Blanca.

And that's a damn shame.