In Serious Gaffe, Sanders Treats Opponent With Dignity and Respect

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

14 October 15

The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."

n a major slip that may prove fatal to his Presidential ambitions, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont treated his principal opponent for the Democratic nomination with dignity and respect on Tuesday night.

Calling it a gaffe of historic proportions, many political insiders were still scratching their heads Wednesday morning over Sanders’s bizarre decision to act toward his opponent as if she were a fellow human being.

“I chalk it up to pressure,” the political strategist Harland Dorrinson said. “Sanders has never been on such a big stage before, and in the heat of the moment he cracked and behaved with nobility.”

“It was one of those moments where everyone in politics was like, ‘What was he thinking?’ ” Dorrinson added.

Carol Foyler, a veteran political operative, said that Sanders has one more debate, “at the most,” to prove that his respect gaffe was just that—a regrettable but forgivable slip of the tongue, not to be repeated.

“Bernie Sanders’s behavior towards Hillary Clinton Tuesday night has raised some grave questions about him in voters’ minds,” Foyler said. “If he treats people with decency and civility now, what kind of President would he be?”