Two days after the Iowa Democratic caucus in which Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders by a razor-thin margin, the candidates were shaking hands and kissing babies in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, but the real action was on Twitter.
The two rivals for the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination—or, rather, their social-media teams—spent much of the day sniping at each other on the microblogging service about which of them was a true progressive.
It began when MSNBC political correspondent Kasie Hunt asked the Vermont independent senator if he considered the former secretary of state a “progressive.”
https://twitter.com/aseitzwald/status/694635486481141761
Clinton—well, technically, her web team—took offense to this remark and used the opportunity to subtly highlight the narrative of the former New York senator as a seasoned Beltway veteran who knows how to pull the levers of power to accomplish complex policy goals—in contrast to her opponent, whose idealism, they suggested, isn’t tempered by practicality.
A 40-year record of progressive results—boiled down to “some days.” https://t.co/ljJvAp6vFT
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2016
Sanders’s people fired back in an attempt to maintain the dominant frame of the race—Sanders as a progressive alternative to Clinton.
“You know, I get accused of being kind of moderate and center… I plead guilty.” – @HillaryClinton, Sept. 10, 2015. https://t.co/0OoGWW0xDH
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 3, 2016
Incidentally, liberals used to call themselves “liberals” instead of “progressives,” but then they started using “progressive” because the word “liberal” no longer polled well due to a decades-long campaign by conservatives to turn it into a pejorative.
Sanders’s team then posted the video describing Clinton’s progressivism as intermittent at best.
“I think, frankly, it is very hard to be a real progressive and to take on the establishment in a way that, I think, it has to be taken [on], when you become dependent as she has, through her super PAC and other ways, on Wall Street and drug company money,” he said.
Q. Do you think @HillaryClinton is a progressive?
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 3, 2016
A. Some days, yes. Other days she announces she is a moderate.https://t.co/kIdhjzXZDs
The senator’s campaign then followed up with fierce attacks on Clinton’s record.
You can be a moderate. You can be a progressive. But you cannot be a moderate and a progressive.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 3, 2016
Most progressives that I know don’t raise millions of dollars from Wall Street.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 3, 2016
Most progressives I know are firm from day 1 in opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They didn’t have to think about it a whole lot.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 3, 2016
Most progressives that I know were opposed to the Keystone pipeline from day one. Honestly, it wasn’t that complicated.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 3, 2016
Most progressives I know were against the war in Iraq. One of the worst foreign policy blunders in the history of the United States.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 3, 2016
Clinton’s people, keen to pick up as much liberal support as possible, fired back with a list of her progressive accomplishments over the years, then posted a video of Clinton listing even more of those accomplishments.
“Some days” we’re pretty proud of. pic.twitter.com/LVwHJx1wGL
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2016
.@BernieSanders says Hillary’s been a progressive “some days.” Hillary responds:https://t.co/RCWx5w8oYU
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2016
The former secretary of state’s web team then highlighted Sanders’s relatively pro-gun voting record, at least in comparison to her own, among other facts intended to worry the left-leaning Democratic base while positioning Clinton as above the fray of ideological purity.
1) This shouldn’t be a debate about who gets to define “progressive”—it should be about who will get real results for American families.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2016
2) Now, if you do want to make it about who’s a “real progressive,” @BernieSanders, what were you on these days? pic.twitter.com/8Q6hANYPhh
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2016
3) An important part of being a progressive is making progress. From health care to fighting inequality, Hillary’s record speaks for itself.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2016
Clinton’s team then capped it off by throwing some A+ passive-aggressive shade at Sanders.
4) Hillary’s not running to make a point—she’s running to make a difference. She’ll keep doing that. Please feel free to keep tweeting.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 3, 2016
In response, Sanders’s team tweeted its own list of not-especially-progressive things that Clinton had done over the years.
Some other days… pic.twitter.com/7SjQdgiiQr
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 3, 2016
So, who won the Great Political Twitter Battle Of The Wednesday Before The 2016 New Hampshire Primary? The answer isn’t clear.
Clinton’s tweets garnered a combined total of somewhere in the neighborhood of 19,000 favorites and retweets, whereas Sanders’s messages received more than 64,000 favorites and retweets.
So in one sense, Sanders won. But, in a larger sense, America won, because the country finally got a news story about a political Twitter fight that didn’t involve Donald Trump.
Photo via Gage Skidmore/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman
