Keller @ Large: Sanders Critiques Clinton On Twitter
BOSTON (CBS) -- For those of you who aren't on Twitter, let me reassure you, you are not missing much.
Watching the tweets roll by can be a distraction of sorts, like reading the road signs out the window on a long drive.
But yesterday I saw something on my Twitter feed that hit me like some unfortunate roadkill bouncing off the windshield.
It was a tweet from presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, lashing out at Hillary Clinton – you conservatives will get a kick out of this one - for having the nerve to call herself a progressive.
"You can be a moderate," Sanders (or his campaign staff) wrote. "You can be a progressive. But you cannot be a moderate and a progressive."
Oh really?
What about Theodore Roosevelt, considered a leading figure of the American Progressive movement? He took many non-liberal positions, especially on foreign policy.
Does he still make the cut?
How about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, purveyor of decidedly non-liberal views on American military interventionism, incarcerating Japanese-Americans during World War II, and opposing anti-lynching reforms?
Was he not a progressive?
What about John F. Kennedy, staunch anti-communist and proponent of supply-side economics?
Or Paul Tsongas, a Massachusetts liberal with very moderate views on business and taxation?
Simplistic labeling is one of the worst aspects of political discourse.
Let's hope Sen. Sanders was just tired and had a slip of the tweet, and doesn't actually believe that drivel.
Listen to Jon's commentary here: