Bernie Sanders Says ‘Something Is Clearly Lacking’ in Hillary Clinton’s Judgment

[ImaPolitico]

20. Cranky Bernie...

Source : Roll Call

VA issues

In recent years, Sanders has been criticized for his chairmanship of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee from 2013 to 2015, where he didn't act on government warnings about backlogs at VA medical centers until after it became national news. In a CNN town hall forum in New Hampshire, Sanders admitted, "We should have done better."

About his own interactions with the military, the Sanders campaign has confirmed that he applied for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War, when he was a pacifist, although "[he] isn't now," Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs told ABC News in August 2015. His conscientious objector status was denied, the Burlington Free Press reported in 2006, but Sanders was too old to be drafted by the time his number came up anyway.


On the Hill

Sanders' famously inflamed demeanor on the campaign trail is part of what his supporters, fed up with America's economic system, like about his speaking-truth-to-power persona. But among some Democrats, there's lingering concern about that personality. "Bernie has never been known as a particularly collegial worker in Congress," Ridder said.

"He's gruff in private," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said in an interview with Roll Call in October. A Vermont alternative newspaper delved into Sanders' "anger management," suggesting — based on conversations with anonymous former staffers — that he didn't always treat personnel well.


Not a sex scandal

Then there's Sanders' personal life, which he's accused the press of caring too much about at the expense of reporting on the issues.

"We have a culture in Vermont where that is very much off limits politically," said Franco.

The story of his son born out of wedlock is now well-known. Politico pushed the issue onto the national scene with a story last July titled, "Bernie Sanders Has a Secret." The New York Times has since caught up with Levi Sanders, now in his mid-40s, calling him the "constant witness" to his father's political journey and portraying theirs as a close father-son bond.

An illegitimate child may have been salacious at one point in American political history, but Sanders is running against a political last name synonymous with sex scandals.

"Look I get it, Bill Clinton is the former president, but there’s been no vetting of Senator Sanders' wife. She's not a casual spouse to a politician, she has been a top political adviser," said a strategist close to the Clinton campaign.

And she's not free from controversy. The New York Times reported that Jane Sanders resigned from the presidency of Burlington College for allegedly "overextending the college with a $10 million real estate purchase."

And this is not Sanders' first time in this position. "Hillary Clinton is not the first progressive Democratic woman to be challenged by Bernie Sanders," former Vermont Gov. Madeleine May Kunin wrote in the Boston Globe earlier this year. In 1986, when Kunin was up for re-election, Sanders ran as a third-party candidate against her.

"It’s dismissive," of course, his friend Franco said, referencing headlines that say Sanders can't win. "The other side of it," he added, is "be careful what you wish for and you may get it. I wouldn't want to have Donald Trump's coverage at this point, no thank you."