Written by Tom Herman   

It is heartening to see that Bernie Sanders is lately showing more grit vis-à-vis Hillary Clinton. It is essential that he do so, though not necessarily for reasons for which he has been criticized. Bernie prides himself on never having run a negative campaign. And it would not behoove him to fail in his principles now. Nor would he, because unlike most politicians, his principles run deep. They define his character. Some have said he threw away his chances of victory with his famous line about Americans being sick of hearing about Hillary's “damn emails.” But they failed to see that in that remark he was demonstrating his strength of character. He would sacrifice an easy opportunity to hurt Hillary in order to forcefully bring the conversation back to important issues. It is that kind of courage and integrity that distinguishes him from nearly every other politician you can think of. It is also what we admire and love in him.

But there is a difference between “going negative” versus forcefully pointing out the deficiencies in an opponent's policies and showing how they are wrong on the issues. Making personal attacks against an opponent is business as usual for most politicians; but telling the truth about an opponent's positions is the way you differentiate yourself from them, and make the public keenly aware of the differences. It can become murky when the implications of a person's behavior itself seem to be damning. For example, if Bernie points out that Hillary takes a lot of money from Wall Street—and that Wall Street doesn't hand out money to candidates as an act of disinterested largesse—it may seem to be an attack against her. But in fact it is letting facts speak for themselves. Not to convey these facts, out of a fear of appearing “negative,” would be dishonest.

Hillary, like most politicians, has been saying what she thinks she has to say to get votes. It is standard operating procedure in elections to move toward your base in the primaries, then become more centrist as the national election approaches. This practice is so common that you would think that no one would believe what candidates say anymore. Yet many people believe that the best thing about Bernie is that he is pulling Hillary to the left. Hillary is not being pulled anywhere. She is going with the flow because it suits her goals at the moment. That is why she suddenly “evolved” on gay marriage, on the Keystone Pipeline, on the Trans Pacific Partnership and belatedly decided her voting for the Iraq War was a mistake.

She is following Bernie's lead because Bernie's positions are clearly favored by more people than hers. Part of the reason for this is to give the impression that she is not that different from Bernie, which is not true. She is a hawk, and a Wall Street beneficiary, in spite of any rhetoric implying the opposite. We know this because we know her history and we know who her supporters are. We also know Bernie's history, which has been strongly progressive and consistent for 35 years.

It is therefore essential that Bernie aggressively make voters aware of these differences and not to allow the artifice of Hillary's new-found changes of mind to deceive them. This is not “going negative” but telling it like it is. It is honest, just as it was honest not to seize upon the email scandal as a way to hurt her.

There is another reason why it is important for him to speak up: the media. It has been clear for a long time that both the establishment Democrats and the mainstream (corporate) media are dead set against Bernie. This manifests as ignoring his campaign—simply not mentioning it, or when talking of it to generally put in some phrase about how of course in any case he's not going to win. The goal is to have you either not know he's running at all, or to believe he is irrelevant. Lately Bernie has been strongly criticizing Trump and Hillary, both. And this the media can't resist because their darlings have been “attacked,” and this, of course, is news! It is no secret that this is Trump's secret: the more controversial you are, the more the media like it and the more they find you newsworthy.

So too, for Bernie. The media don't think it interesting when a man, like a voice in the wilderness, repeats over and over that the country has been taken over by the billionaires and the corporations—even though every other issue we have is affected by this fact, whether it be the wars we fight, the environment we live in, the climate, education costs, wages, how we elect our leaders, etc. But a squabble they can't resist. The more strongly Bernie speaks out in contradistinction to what his opponents (Republican and Democrat) do and say, the more seriously he will be taken. And in this way his word will get out and he will show why he is the better candidate.