And it points out a campaign strategy that Bernie clearly employs against women. It's particularly interesting that he claims to be astounded when Hillary called him out at the last town hall.
Sanders may be able to legitimately claim he's never explicitly said that he's never called people to "stand together; vote for a man," but when he has run against women, he has very pointedly made issues of his opponents' gender. When he ran for governor of Vermont in 1976 as the Liberty Union candidate, against Republican Richard Snelling and Democrat Stella Hackel, he said: "The only difference between Richard Snelling, a Republican, and Stella Hackel, a Democrat, is that one of them is a man and one a woman." A decade later, when he ran against then-Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin: "He urged voters not to vote for me just because I was a woman. That would be a 'sexist position,' he declared."
He also said, of Kunin and her Republican opponent Peter Smith, "It is absolutely fair to say you are dealing with Tweedledum and Tweedledee," despite "Kunin's solid, groundbreaking record on women's issues." In 1974, he called Connecticut gubernatorial candidate Ella Grasso, against whom he wasn't running, "nothing more than a political hack," singling her out after saying he was "not impressed with other women candidates elsewhere."
Over and over, he has said that voters should not support women just because they are women, and repeatedly called female candidates part of the establishment, virtually indistinguishable from Republicans.
So, sure, he's never said the words "vote for a man," but he has sure stuck to the same shitty critiques of female candidates for 40 years. None of them are progressive enough; all of them are shills; no one should vote for them just because they're women. This is a pattern. And it's an ugly one.
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