Clinton camp stews over Sanders 2020 campaign

And now that Sanders is embarking on a second run for president, they’re making their true feelings about the Vermont senator known.Story Continued BelowBoth on the record and on background, on Twitter and on cable television, Clinton’s former aides and allies are taking pains to lay out what they see as all of Sanders’s flaws, imperfections and vulnerabilities — much as he once did to their ex-boss during a primary that saw mud flying on both sides.“I would say — and for all I know, the Sanders people might take this as a compliment — among a lot of the major donors in the party, there’s concern that he could emerge,” said David Brock, a longtime Clinton ally who founded a pro-Clinton super PAC in the 2016 campaign and later authored a public apology to Sanders for some of his bare-knuckled criticisms during the primary. Jeff Weaver, a top adviser to Sanders, shot back that Sanders’ grassroots army of supporters “could make him the nominee” — and dismissed the notion that the absence of large donors would hurt him in a general election.“It is not a secret that people who would hang out with David Brock would be putting their class interests ahead of the party and the country,” he said. | Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images | Getty“I don’t know who our nominee is going to be but I am damn sure that beating Trump & getting America back on the right footing is going to require a unified Democratic Party, so crap like this 613 days before Election Day is irresponsible, counter-productive, & sets us all back,” tweeted Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill.Brock said the major party donors were concerned about Sanders for two reasons: “electability” and a difference in ideology.“As a self-described democratic socialist, that’s just a step too far for a lot of people,” adding they “worry that he would end up losing to Trump.”Perhaps the biggest attack launched by ex-Clinton staffers so far came recently in POLITICO, where a number portrayed him in unflattering terms for using private jets while campaigning for Clinton after she won the Democratic nomination.While Sanders’ team contends the senator kept to a rigorous schedule of 39 rallies in 13 states in the homestretch of the 2016 campaign, the argument isn’t convincing in some pro-Clinton quarters.“I’m not shocked that while thousands of volunteers braved the heat and cold to knock on doors until their fingers bled in a desperate effort to stop Donald Trump, his Royal Majesty King Bernie Sanders would only deign to leave his plush D.C. office or his brand new second home on the lake if he was flown around on a cushy private jet like a billionaire master of the universe,” Petkanas said.Neera Tanden, a longtime Clinton policy advisor, was less evocative but no less pointed in a response to a recent Sanders radio interview where he said, “We have got to look at candidates, you know, not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender and not by their age.”