A top campaign aide to Hillary Clinton said Friday that Bernie Sanders is running one of the “most negative” campaigns in history, accusing the Vermont senator of launching vicious attacks on Clinton in the run-up to the Iowa caucus.
“I think he’s running the most negative campaign of any Democratic presidential candidate,” Joel Benenson, chief strategist of Hillary for America, said Friday morning during an appearance on CNN. “I think he’s been more personal in his attacks, I think he’s been increasing it on the stump recently, and I do, I can’t think of one, even in a really hard-fought campaign in 2008, I don’t think we had the range of negativity on either side.”
Benenson’s comments came on the heels of a series of attacks on Sanders from Clinton’s camp over the past several weeks on everything from his healthcare positions to the viability of his worldview.
Sanders, in turn, has begun highlighting Clinton’s personal ties to Wall Street as evidence that she is part of the political status quo.
But given repeated opportunities in Democratic debates to attack Clinton head on for her private email use and for her husband’s past indiscretions, Sanders has refused to engage.
“He’s running fundamental attacks and he’s out on the campaign trail every day raising issues about her personally, her character, and other Democrats as well. Democrats, by the way, who enacted the toughest rules on Wall Street and the banking system in seven decades,” Benenson said.
“In the last three weeks, he’s been attacking and dismissing everyone who’s not aligned with him,” the top Clinton aide argued. “It seems once you’re not with him, you become a focal point of his attacks. I do think it’s been extremely negative and I think it’s unfortunate.”
Sanders vowed early in his campaign to avoid negative attacks on his opponents. His latest messaging on Clinton’s Wall Street connections, such as her acceptance of six-figure speaking fees from Goldman Sachs, have for the first time teetered on the edge of violating that pledge.
However, Clinton’s team has been trying out a wide variety of attacks as Sanders has narrowed the gap in Iowa, characterizing him at some times as too inexperienced to be president and yet, at others, as a member of the party elite due to his decades of service in Congress. The digs came after months of ignoring Sanders’ rise among the progressive grassroots.
