Salon's outrageous attempt to rewrite history: The Sanders smear machine

Headline from Salon, the formerly liberal website:

Hillary Clinton’s “dirty politics”: Bernie Sanders is experiencing the same nasty tricks that Clinton’s campaign dealt Obama in 2008

"Nasty tricks"? Is writer H.A. Goodman totally insane?

What's next, Goodman? Are you gonna write a book about 1939 in which Poland invades Germany?

Longtime readers know how thoroughly engaged I was in 2008: this blog discussed every cough and quiver of that contest. Readers will also recall that I began as an Obama supporter, and that my original stance was ABC -- Anyone But Clinton.

I changed that stance after becoming thoroughly disgusted with the behavior of Obama's supporters. It was Team Obama, not Team Clinton, which continually pulled "nasty tricks." The record was not mixed: One hundred percent of the evil -- and no, that is not too strong a word -- came from the Obots.

They astroturfed the comments section of every blog on the internet, large and small. They harassed, insulted and even threated anyone who did not toe the Obot line.

I know this for a fact. Although my C-list blog would not seem to be worth the trouble, abusive comments (allegedly from differing authors) showed up every minute of every hour of every day from the same IP in Chicago. You know goddamned well who was behind that 24/7 astroturf operation.

The same thing happened to blogs less widely-read than mine. Everyone got hit.

On every liberal site, Axelrod's trolls continually used words like "cunt" and "bitch" to describe Hillary Clinton. The things said were back then unbelievably vicious. And I'm not talking about just a few sad examples: This was a river of lava, and it flowed for months.

Even today's Trump supporters cannot match the violent obscenities heard during that era. I documented much of this monstrous behavior at the time, and will be happy to republish, if so asked.

The Axelrod astroturfers accused Hillary of killing Vince Foster. On a daily basis, they repeated every anti-Clinton smear made famous by Rush and the WSJ.

Make no mistake: Axelrod was behind it all. He ran a little-known company called ASK, which pioneered the use of astroturf on the internet. Obama bears personal responsibility for the anti-Clinton smears of that era.

The worst offender was the Daily Kos, then a paid arm of the Obama campaign. That assertion is not in dispute: Markos Moulitsas made a lot of money from Obama ads. The moment that deal was set, Moulitsas censored all pro-Hillary sentiments and transformed his site into a cesspool that made the Breitbarters look comparatively sweet and rational.

Sample headline from that era: “Senator Obama please take your foot and step on her throat!” The Obama campaign subsidized those words.

People now accuse Trump of using violent language to appeal to the lower parts of the psyche, but throughout 2008, the Obots were far worse. You might say that Obama taught Trump how to do it.

Clinton was on the receiving end of the Darkened Video smear, which was the key incident that turned this former Obama-leaner into a reluctant Hillary supporter.

Do you recall the NAFTA smear? Obama won the Ohio primary with fliers falsely promoting himself as a NAFTA opponent; of course, he was no such thing. Obama then sent Austan Goolsbee to Canada to assure Ottawa that all of Obama's anti-free trade talk was a lie (which it was). When Goolsbee was found out, the Obama forces flooded liberal blogs with the Big Lie that Hillary -- not Obama -- was the one who did what Goolsbee did.

Then there was the time when the Obama forces doctored a video clip from The War Room to make it seem as though Mickey Kantor (a key Clinton aide) had used the word "nigger." The editing also made it appear that the Clinton forces had insulted the people of Indiana.

The Obot forces claimed that Hillary blocked Nixon's impeachment -- a lie that keeps coming back, no matter how many times rational people knock it down.

Then there was the time when Josh Marshall claimed that Hillary Clinton received the largest donations from Wall Street, even though Obama was the one who held the record.

We were told incessantly -- and falsely -- that Hillary was sending racist signals in order to win over all of the racially-motivated voters who supposedly exist within the Democratic Party: This, despite the fact that David Plouffe himself admitted that all of the racially-motivated voters were already in the Republican camp.

There was a group called Women's Voices, Women's Votes which tried to increase voter turnout in the general election. It was ran by a woman named Paige Gardner, who was pro-Hillary. The Obama forces smeared her as a racist who was trying to disenfranchise black voters. 

The Obama campaign completely lied about Hillary's health care plan.

I could go on and on and on. Hell, I haven't even mentioned the scurrilous tactics of the Obama forces in the caucus states.

If history-fakers like Goodman want to refight 2008, I stand ready. Throughout that year, I spent a massive part of each day investigating each Obot smear. I wrote it all down and linked to my sources.

The Obama campaign of 2008 was the single filthiest political operation in the history of democracy. Hillary Clinton was the victim, not the perp. 

Let's take this further.

Just as Obama bears personal responsibility for what happened on Daily Kos in 2008, Bernie Sanders bears personal responsibility for the smear campaign being waged by Goodman and other Salon writers.

Sanders may say that he has nothing to do with the slimeball tactics employed by his defenders, but so what? Do you believe Donald Trump when he insists that he has nothing to do with the smears peddled by his pal Roger Stone?

If Sanders wanted the smears to stop, they'd stop. Stone is to Trump as Salon is to Sanders.

Bernie Sanders bears no small amount of personal responsibility for the lies told by people like Goodman. Who turned Salon into a septic tank? Blame Bernie.

The most important Snowden document concerns psy-war, and the one key truth of psychological warfare is this: People make decisions based on group-think. If you use astroturf and similar tactics to create the illusion of consensus, people will become emotionally wedded to lies and smears.

That's what the Sanders campaign is doing right now. He has created a mob.

Bernie brags about never running a negative campaign. Well, he sure as hell is running one now. I used to think he was just a nice old socialist of the old school. Now I know better: That man is slime.

I'm not attacking him for reasons of political strategy: Hillary Clinton already has the nomination in the bag. Until today, my instincts were to promote party unity. Until today, I've stipulated that I've always have always had a high opinion of Bernie Sanders, and might even have supported him if he stood a chance of winning in the general.

I'm attacking him now for one simple reason: He deserves to be attacked.

I've had enough of the lies told by Salon and the Berniebros -- lies for which Bernie Sanders himself bears ultimate responsibility. Someone has to fight back.

Bernie Sanders has shamed himself. The crusading socialist has morphed into...well, into Obama.