Desperate Hillary Clinton Campaign to Attack Bernie Sanders as 'Fringe' Socialist Candidate (VIDEO)

Hillary's campaign's crashing, and desperate attacks on Sanders' socialism are going to backfire.

His socialism's exactly why he's surging, especially among young people. I mean, shoot, he's up around 80 percent among Millennials in that CNN/WMUR poll out yesterday.

Sanders has the mojo. Hillary, not so much.

At NYT, "Alarmed Clinton Supporters Begin Focusing on Sanders’s Socialist Edge":

Democrats backing Hillary Clinton, nervously eyeing Senator Bernie Sanders’s growing strength in the early nominating states, are turning to a new strategy to raise doubts about his candidacy, highlighting his socialist beliefs to warn that he would be an electoral disaster who would frighten swing voters and send Democrats in tight congressional and governor’s races to defeat.

It is a scenario many Democrats long dismissed as even remotely plausible: the 74-year-old Mr. Sanders, a registered independent who self-identifies as a democratic socialist, as their nominee. But the possibility of his defeating Mrs. Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire next month has prompted some of her prominent supporters to discuss how they could attack Mr. Sanders if his candidacy began to look less like a threat and more like a runaway train: calling him unelectable and warning Republicans would have a field day if he were the Democratic nominee.

“Here in the heartland, we like our politicians in the mainstream, and he is not — he’s a socialist,” said Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri, who is term-limited and working to elect a Democratic successor. “He’s entitled to his positions, and it’s a big-tent party, but as far as having him at the top of the ticket, it would be a meltdown all the way down the ballot.”

And after months of ignoring Republican cheerleading for Mr. Sanders, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has started aggressively highlighting how much the opposition is openly providing him aid and comfort — mostly recently in a new ad by Karl Rove’s group American Crossroads that echoes Mr. Sanders’s attacks on Mrs. Clinton’s ties to Wall Street.

“Republicans and their ‘super PACs‘ have made clear the candidate they’re actually afraid to face,” said Jennifer Palmieri, Mrs. Clinton’s communications director.

Mr. Sanders, for his part, has taken to highlighting polls that show him faring better than Mrs. Clinton against some of the Republican candidates, and his aides insist that voters will look past labels to consider his record, ideas and proposals.

Yet Mrs. Clinton herself has begun urging activists in Iowa to consider “electability and how we make sure we have a Democrat going back into that White House on Jan. 20, 2017.” And her supporters, with the campaign’s blessing, are aggressively moving to sow doubts about Mr. Sanders’s viability, a tactic aimed at alarming primary voters concerned about retaining the presidency and regaining the Senate.

For all the authorized fear-mongering, though, it is clear that few Democrats seeking re-election this year relish the prospect of running with Mr. Sanders on top of the ticket...

Really?

The only difference between Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama is that the former's not afraid to wear his socialism proudly on his sleeve.

But keep reading.

ADDED: Oh, it turns out it's Hillary hatchet-man David Brock's who's cooked up this scheme. See WSJ, "Clinton Ally Attacks Sanders on Socialism." (Via Memeorandum.)