2016: Bernie Sanders among top 25 of Congressional recipients of NRA donations

[Tom Rinaldo]

178. "blasting Hillary for taking Wall Street money"

That's not my quote. It's from the post I responded to. I didn't bring up the matter, that post did, and I wasn't diverting from anything, just responding to the point being made. Hundreds of hours of Sanders speaking are available in video and audio records. I challenge you to find even once when Sanders said Hillary was owned by Wall Street. That was never close to being the message of his campaign, which rather focused on economic issues like Medicare for all and free college tuition, both of which he was attacked over for being pie in the sky ideas. But I guess you are just going to hear what you want to hear.

I will note for the record that I am only responding to your recollection of the primary campaign here and made no attack on Hillary over her conduct either during it or after.

By the way I think a prior D grade from the NRA for Sanders sounds about right. I prefer an F grade. I preferred Hillary on gun issues during the primary over Bernie and I said so here at the time. Congress collectively has had at least an A minus grade from the NRA for a long long time. I wasn't worried about Bernie vetoing any progressive gun legislation that came out of Congress should he have become President, but yes, if that was the only important issue to focus on during an election campaign, I would have supported Hillary in the primaries instead. Should Sanders run for president again I will, in context, weigh his prior gun positions against him. There would be other factors to consider as well.

I'm sorry, but I didn't let Russian bot attacks against Hillary turn me against her, and I'm not going to let Russian bot "support" for Bernie turn me against him either. Those bots had their own agenda which in both cases was to hurt Hillary and our democracy, and sow disunity among Democrats too gullible to apply critical reasoning or check sources. Bernie wasn't calling the shots in Russia, unless you are implying that he was in on it, but you wouldn't do that because that would be a smear and I know how much you dislike smearing people.