Hillary Clinton risks party split over Sanders
WASHINGTON >> For three years, Hillary Clinton has watched the Democratic Party search for a path forward in the Trump era.
She’s watched as liberals and moderates clashed on how best to fight President Donald Trump and a White House that was almost hers. She’s watched as some voters questioned the “electability” of the six women running for president, doubts that she once faced. She’s watched as Sen. Bernie Sanders has risen, after his withering opposition to her in the 2016 presidential primary, to become the dominant liberal force in the 2020 race.
And she’d largely refrained from weighing in — until Tuesday morning, when The Hollywood Reporter published an interview with Clinton promoting a new documentary about her that will premiere Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival. In the documentary, she rips into Sanders and declines to say if she would endorse him and campaign on his behalf if he were to win the Democratic nomination.
“Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician,” she said. “It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”
Asked by the Reporter recently if that assessment still held, she replied, “Yes, it does.”
Her remarks ricocheted across the Democratic Party on Tuesday, threatening to reopen the barely healed wounds of the 2016 primary.
That split over what direction the party should take is now a major issue in the current primary, with Sanders arguing for the full-throated leftist agenda and others counseling moderation.
At the same time, he is engaged in a standoff with his liberal ally in the 2020 race, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, that has divided some on the left, over her accusation that he told her in 2018 that a woman could not win the presidency.
Representatives of both Sanders and Clinton moved quickly to try to quell the furor Tuesday.
Fresh off recent battles with not only Warren but also former Vice President Joe Biden, Sanders’ campaign was eager to avoid another fight that would distract from his closing message less than two weeks before the Iowa presidential caucuses.
Sanders apologized Monday to Biden after a Sanders campaign surrogate wrote an opinion article accusing the former vice president of having “a big corruption problem.”