"... this absence of substance beyond the slogans seems to be true of [Bernie's] positions across the board."

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COMMENTS: 
*  How can you blame Hillary for Bernie's lack of understanding and preparations. Sorry, but your emperor has no clues.
*  What worries me increasingly about Sanders and his supporters--and I wholly agree with most of their general principles!--is this kind of ranting refusal to deal with the actual, pr[e]cise issues.  Not good, guys. This is how you get into trouble, just as you do with the ranting and vagueness of the Right.
*  It's not the fact that he called her "not qualified," it's the examples he used to illustrate why. He elaborated. In detail. In the original soundbite that started it all, Mrs. Clinton merely spoke the truth – that, in being unable to elaborate on how he would achieve the pie-in-the-sky promises he's making, the Senator sounded like someone who hasn't done his homework. Truth, and nothing more. The Senator's response was a personal attack, and for a candidate who once promised to run a clean campaign with no personal attacks, he's sure quick to attack.
*  Sanders can't read past a headline? It's too much trouble to actually read the actual article itself before responding publicly and looking like a fool? Sanders is playing way out of his league.
*  Saying he was ambushed by the Daily News sounds a lot like Palin whining about Katie Couric's gotcha questions. He was asked for details on his core message and had an epic fail.
*  I've been a Sanders supporter for many months, and have said so clearly. But I'm crossing over to the dark side now and supporting Ms. Clinton.  Bernie has some great ideas, but claiming that someone who spent 8 years in the White House while her husband was President, then served as both a US Senator and as Secretary of State is "unqualified" is unacceptable to me.  It reeks of Republicanism, where every candidate is subject to childish ridicule by the other candidates, and I deem that attitude to be contemptible.  Shame on you, Bernie. Stand on your own. There's no need to waste time belittling your opponent. Either you believe in your vision or you don't.
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Sanders Over the Edge
By Paul Krugman, April 8, 2016

From the beginning, many and probably most liberal policy wonks were skeptical about Bernie Sanders. On many major issues — including the signature issues of his campaign, especially financial reform — he seemed to go for easy slogans over hard thinking. And his political theory of change, his waving away of limits, seemed utterly unrealistic.

Some Sanders supporters responded angrily when these concerns were raised, immediately accusing anyone expressing doubts about their hero of being corrupt if not actually criminal. But intolerance and cultishness from some of a candidate’s supporters are one thing; what about the candidate himself?

Unfortunately, in the past few days the answer has become all too clear: Mr. Sanders is starting to sound like his worst followers. Bernie is becoming a Bernie Bro.

Let me illustrate the point about issues by talking about bank reform.

The easy slogan here is “Break up the big banks.” It’s obvious why this slogan is appealing from a political point of view: Wall Street supplies an excellent cast of villains. But were big banks really at the heart of the financial crisis, and would breaking them up protect us from future crises?

Many analysts concluded years ago that the answers to both questions were no. Predatory lending was largely carried out by smaller, non-Wall Street institutions like Countrywide Financial; the crisis itself was centered not on big banks but on “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers that weren’t necessarily that big. And the financial reform that President Obama signed in 2010 made a real effort to address these problems. It could and should be made stronger, but pounding the table about big banks misses the point.

Yet going on about big banks is pretty much all Mr. Sanders has done. On the rare occasions on which he was asked for more detail, he didn’t seem to have anything more to offer. And this absence of substance beyond the slogans seems to be true of his positions across the board.

You could argue that policy details are unimportant as long as a politician has the right values and character. As it happens, I don’t agree. For one thing, a politician’s policy specifics are often a very important clue to his or her true character — I warned about George W. Bush’s mendacity back when most journalists were still portraying him as a bluff, honest fellow, because I actually looked at his tax proposals. For another, I consider a commitment to facing hard choices as opposed to taking the easy way out an important value in itself.

But in any case, the way Mr. Sanders is now campaigning raises serious character and values issues.

It’s one thing for the Sanders campaign to point to Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street connections, which are real, although the question should be whether they have distorted her positions, a case the campaign has never even tried to make. But recent attacks on Mrs. Clinton as a tool of the fossil fuel industry are just plain dishonest, and speak of a campaign that has lost its ethical moorings.

And then there was Wednesday’s rant about how Mrs. Clinton is not “qualified” to be president.

What probably set that off was a recent interview of Mr. Sanders by The Daily News, in which he repeatedly seemed unable to respond when pressed to go beyond his usual slogans. Mrs. Clinton, asked about that interview, was careful in her choice of words, suggesting that “he hadn’t done his homework.”

But Mr. Sanders wasn’t careful at all, declaring that what he considers Mrs. Clinton’s past sins, including her support for trade agreements and her vote to authorize the Iraq war — for which she has apologized — make her totally unfit for office.

This is really bad, on two levels. Holding people accountable for their past is O.K., but imposing a standard of purity, in which any compromise or misstep makes you the moral equivalent of the bad guys, isn’t. Abraham Lincoln didn’t meet that standard; neither did F.D.R. Nor, for that matter, has Bernie Sanders (think guns).

And the timing of the Sanders rant was truly astonishing. Given her large lead in delegates — based largely on the support of African-American voters, who respond to her pragmatism because history tells them to distrust extravagant promises — Mrs. Clinton is the strong favorite for the Democratic nomination.

Is Mr. Sanders positioning himself to join the “Bernie or bust” crowd, walking away if he can’t pull off an extraordinary upset, and possibly helping put Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in the White House? If not, what does he think he’s doing?

The Sanders campaign has brought out a lot of idealism and energy that the progressive movement needs. It has also, however, brought out a streak of petulant self-righteousness among some supporters. Has it brought out that streak in the candidate, too?
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