Sounding Exactly Like an Onion Article, Sanders Campaign Attacks Clinton’s Ambition

Remember that Onion article from awhile back? The one headlined: “Hillary Clinton Is Too Ambitious to Be the First Female President.”

Well, apparently the Bernie Sanders campaign is now lifting talking points from that prescient 2006 piece. On CNN on Tuesday night, after Sanders’ win in the Wisconsin primary, his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, warned Clinton and her supporters: “Don’t destroy the Democratic Party to satisfy the secretary’s ambitions to become president of the United States.”

In response, Clinton literally LOLed. Because really that’s the only appropriate response to a charge that was already satirized by The Onion.

As Rebecca Traister explains at The Cut, Weaver’s comment was a throwaway one, but this narrative — casting Clinton as a Tracy Flick-like character, a “woman who tries too hard, who competes with too much intensity, who applies too much focus to her own advancement” — is one that the Sanders campaign seems to be increasingly turning to in recent weeks.

Hopefully they’ll cut that shit out and remain committed to running on the issues, instead of invoking the tired stereotype of the overly ambitious woman and counting on our deep-seated double-standards around power and gender to kick in.

As for Weaver’s broader point — that even as the race between the Democratic nominees heats up in the final stretch, we should “not denigrate other people’s supporters” because “we want to have a party at the end of this we can unify” — I personally agree wholeheartedly. A poll out yesterday, however, suggests that there are more people feeling the Bern who could stand to hear that reminder: 25 percent of Sanders’ supporters, compared to 14 percent of Clinton’s, say they wouldn’t vote for the other one if their candidate doesn’t get the nomination.

Image credit: Vox