Hillary surrogates like Clair McCaskill are supposed to help their candidate. What doesn’t help are Republican attacks on Sanders – by Democrats.

Said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO): “The Republicans won’t touch [Sanders] because they can’t wait to run an ad with a hammer and sickle.”

It may well be true that the fact that the word “socialist” has been attached to Sanders may hurt him, may even hurt Democrats down ticket.  It may just as well be true that the 23 years of Hillary hate out there will take the same toll on her and down ticket candidates. To act as if that potential reality, as if the last 23 years of Clinton vilification, whether earned or not, just does not exist, seems fairly silly.

The bottom line here is that Bernie and his surrogates have not lowered themselves to use that while Hillary’s surrogates apparently are quite willing to red bait Bernie. Note, Hillary’s surrogates will. She won’t. Tells you that they know how dirty it is.

Look, I’m agnostic on this. I will support whoever the nominee is. What I’ve said is that Sanders is my long shot dream candidate, closer in both ideology and approach to what I believe we need as a nation than Clinton.  But it’s not like they’re that far apart, it’s more the difference between a big picture ideologue and a small bore technocrat.

And I don’t give a damn if Hillary does lose both Iowa and New Hampshire, it’s still a long way from decided if she does.  These attacks, like Hillary’s teeth grating attempt to tie criticism of her Wall Street fundraising to bad mouthing Obama, seem way too prematurely panicky. These kind of attacks make me want to claw at the TV.

Don’t get nasty.  Or at least don’t get nasty before you have to.  It reminds me of the kind of unhelpful strategy they took in South Carolina in 2008 that caused bitterness among Obama supporters.