Hillary Clinton is using her upcoming book to attack former primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for inflicting “lasting damage” on her doomed campaign, and for promising “four-minute abs” to voters — a reference to the allegedly unrealistic promises the Vermont socialist made on the campaign trail.
What Happened, Clinton’s campaign post-mortem due to be released Sept.12, is slowly but surely being leaked online, and glimpses suggest it will continue the blame game that Clinton has played ever since she lost to President Trump in November.
While the approximately 500-page tome is likely to point the finger of blame for her election defeat at a number of people (former FBI James Comey) and institutions (the Democratic National Committee) and even countries (Russia), some excerpts being leaked show that she has her targets set firmly on Sanders.
One page, according to CNN, shows Clinton accusing Sanders of “paving the way” for Trump to call her “Crooked Hillary” by suggesting she had changed positions because of a donation. Clinton wrote:
When I finally challenged Bernie during a debate to name a single time I changed a position or a vote because of a financial contribution, he couldn’t come up with anything. Nonetheless, his attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.
“I am proud to be a Democrat and I wish Bernie were too,” she says in one extract in a reference to Sanders’ constant distance from the Democratic Party (Sanders is an Independent, although he caucuses with Democrats.)
In terms of Sanders’ own policies, she takes him to task for promising a lot, arguing that whatever policy she put forward, Sanders would always call for a bigger and more expensive version — no matter how unfeasible that might be.
According to CNN, in one instance, she says that aide Jake Sullivan said Sanders reminded him of the movie There’s Something About Mary when a hitchhiker plans to roll out “seven-minute abs” to beat the eight-minute ab workout — to which another character quips, “Why not six-minute abs?”
“That’s what it was like in policy debates with Bernie. We would promise a bold infrastructure investment plan or an ambitious new apprenticeship program for young people, and then Bernie would announce basically the same thing, but bigger,” she said.
“On issue after issue, it was like he kept promising four-minute abs, or even no-minute abs. Magic abs!” she added.
Adam Shaw is a Breitbart News politics reporter based in New York. Follow Adam on Twitter: @AdamShawNY