Who Is The Worse Spousal Campaign Surrogate, Jane Sanders Or Bill Clinton?

You all remember the old Rovian tactic of hitting your opponent not on his weaknesses, but on his strengths. This is how war hero John Kerry, for example, became a draft-dodger who shot little fleeing Vietnamese boys in the back until his heroic Swift Boat comrades fragged him totally dead. Neutralize their advantages, and you don't even have to bother with their negatives because now everything is one!

These days, Bill Clinton and Jane Sanders are neutralizing their respective spouses' strengths all by themselves. But who is worse? Let's ponder.

Hillary Clinton's Main Strength: Black People Dig Her

Without the tidal wave of support she's gotten from the black community, Hillary Clinton wouldn't be whomping Bernie Sanders in big, diverse states. (Black voters give her almost Obamanian margins, like by not even kidding 70, 80, and 90 percent.) Old establishment types wouldn't be worrying about how to get Bernie voters to support her come November, because they wouldn't be in the slightest bit sure she'd be the nominee. Without black people (and Latinos), the Millennials would probably be outvoting her outright (if they remembered to register, HAHA BURN!).

So what the fuck does Bill Clinton do? He goes out and yells at black people so bad that he is even "almost" sorry the next day.

Faced with Black Lives Matter protesters yelling about the Crime Bill, he doubles down on how locking up a generation of black boys was good for the country, and (I swear to God, Jesus Christ), says "you know where else black lives matter? AFRICA."

BILL. Go make yourself useful and pick out some china.

Bernie Sanders's Main Strength: He CANNOT BE BOUGHT.

Bernie Sanders has a reputation for and aura of complete integrity and disinterest in amassing personal wealth. Releasing one's full tax returns has been a fun thing for presidential candidates to do since people started wondering about Pat Nixon's cloth coat, but the Sanderses have only released one full return, for 2014. Every time they're asked, they say either they will or they already have (they haven't). Until today, when Jane Sanders said they won't release their tax returns unless Hillary Clinton releases all the transcripts of her paid speeches to Wall Street.

This has not been received well. Until today, the conventional wisdom has been that there can't be anything hinky in Sanders's returns. He doesn't make enough money for there to be anything truly astounding, for one.

The Sanderses paid very low effective rates of 13 percent on the one year of taxes (2014) they did release, and those are some Mitt Romney style numbers! But nobody freaked out about it beyond you (me) grumbling to your (my) husband that you paid considerably more than that on considerably less, but eh, it's not like we didn't already know the tax system is inverted. Bernie taught us!

Is it simply that Jane Sanders's salary as a college president would have made them look richer than Bernie Sanders likes to look? I don't know! Nobody does! But "my wife does our taxes and we've been busy" combined with "we will not release our taxes until Hillary Clinton produces her longform birth certificate" is just fucking weird, and unnecessary, and totally self-inflicted (just ask President Romney), and it is making me not like Jane Sanders very much. (Bill Clinton could already go suck a dick.)

SO. Now it is time for a poll!

 Who is the worse candidate spouse, Bill Clinton or Jane Sanders? in Wonkette's Hangs on LockerDome 

Now shut up and go fight in the comments.

[ TPM ]