The irony here is thick. In 2006, McCaskill said on Meet the Press that while Bill Clinton was a great president, “I don’t want my daughter near him.” Upon hearing the news, according to John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s book Game Change, Hillary exclaimed, “Fuck her,” and cancelled a fundraiser for the Missouri senator. McCaskill later apologized to Bill Clinton, and was wooed intensely by Hillary during the 2008 primaries. But she infuriated the Clintons again by endorsing Barack Obama. In their book HRC, Aimee Parnes and Jonathan Allen write that, “‘Hate’ is too weak a word to describe the feelings that Hillary’s core loyalists still have for McCaskill.”
McCaskill grew even less effective when Mark Halperin did something TV interviewers too rarely do: He demanded substance. Give “three specific positions” of Sanders that “are too far left,” he insisted. “I am not here to be critical of my colleague Senator Sanders,” McCaskill responded, absurdly. But Halperin caught her, noting that, “With all due respect, you already were: You said he was socialist and not electable.”
McCaskill, in other words, is a great surrogate: someone eager enough to regain the Clintons’ affection that she’ll not only praise Hillary, but also slam their opponents. On Morning Joe, she had two talking points. First, journalists are giving Sanders a pass. Second, Sanders is a socialist, and thus can’t win. Asked about Sanders’ large crowds, McCaskill compared him to Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, other candidates who sparked enthusiasm among their supporters but couldn’t win a general election because of their “extreme message.”
More intriguing is point number two. Sanders probably would be a problematic general-election candidate. But the liberals flocking to his side don’t much care. Nor are the Clintonites likely to scare off many liberals by reminding them that Sanders is a socialist. Most of them already know. And far from hiding it, Sanders is quite effective when challenged on this point. Right after he jumped in the race, George Stephanopoulos gave Sanders exactly the treatment McCaskill is calling for now. First, he reminded Sanders he was a socialist. Then, when Sanders pointed to Scandinavia as his socialist model, Stephanopoulos snarked that, “I can hear the Republican attack ad right now: He wants America to be look more like Scandinavia.” But Sanders was not cowed. “That’s right. That’s right,” he replied. “And what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong when you have more income and wealth equality? What’s wrong when they have a stronger middle class in many ways than we do?” It was the kind of performance more likely to leave liberals inspired than alienated.
(Quoted exactly - no opinion from me)
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