So when Republicans call Bernie a "Communist Jew,"

[Gothmog]

67. Give a little thought to what a GOP campaign against Bernie Sanders might look like

This article from VOX has some good predictions as to how nasty the GOP and the Kochs will be http://www.vox.com/2016/2/3/10903404/gop-campaign-against-sanders

I'm not sure I have the requisite killer instinct to fully imagine how the GOP will play a Sanders campaign. But consider just this low-hanging fruit:

Sanders would be the oldest president ever to take office — older than John McCain, who faced serious questions about this in 2008.
Sanders is a socialist. "No, no," you explain, "it's democratic socialist, like in Denmark." I'm sure GOP attack ads will take that distinction into careful consideration.
Sanders explicitly wants to raise taxes, and not only on the rich.

That's just the obvious stuff. And he has barely been hit on any of it so far.

I have no real way of knowing whether Sanders and his advisers appreciate what's coming if he wins the nomination, or whether they have a serious plan to deal with it, something beyond hoping a political revolution will drown it out.

But at least based on my experience, the Bernie legions are not prepared. They seem convinced that the white working class would rally to the flag of democratic socialism. And they are in a state of perpetual umbrage that Sanders isn't receiving the respect he's due, that he's facing even mild attacks from Clinton's camp.

If they are aware that it's been patty-cakes so far, that much, much worse and more vicious attacks are inevitable, and that no one knows how Sanders might perform with a giant political machine working to define him as an unhinged leftist, they hide it well.

In the name of diverting some small percentage of the social media bile surely headed my way, let's be clear about a few things: This is not an argument against supporting Sanders. There's nothing dumber than making political decisions based on how the other side might react. (For one thing, that would have foreclosed supporting Obama, a black urbanite with a funny name, in 2008.)

But it is an argument that Sanders has gaping vulnerabilities that have not yet been exploited at all, so his followers should not yet feel sanguine about his ability to endure conservative attacks. Also they should get a thicker skin, quick.