Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin, liberal CNN political commentator Angela Rye accused "Clinton world" of trying to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008 by leaking a photograph of him in "African garb" as she predicted that the two current Democratic factions will be able to unite after the nominating process as they did for the 2008 election.
A bit later, fellow liberal CNN commentator Van Jones oddly compared giving everyone a free college educatoin to giving the military "free drones" as he complained about Clinton supporters denigrating young Bernie Sanders supporters as wanting "free stuff."
At 3:33 p.m. ET, host Brooke Baldwin brought up the issue of whether Bernie Sanders supporters would be willing to support Hillary Clinton:
Van has a great point, you know, about sour milk and some of the back and forth and the jabs, and, you know, Hillary Clinton spoke last night about specifically two Senator Sanders supporters, you know, and talking about the need to unify, especially if you want to have a Democrat in office.
So how does she do that, especially given the fact that there are throngs of young people -- you look at the exit polling -- 18 to 24 love Bernie Sanders? And if he doesn't get the nomination, Angela, they may not vote in November. How does she handle that?
Rye, who used to work for the Congressional Black Caucus, brought up the photo from 2008 as she began:
Well, I think that we should look no further than 2008. I mean, we're talking about a bitter primary battle where things like President Obama appearing in African garb going to the Drudge Report, courtesy of the Clinton campaign, showed up -- or Clinton friends.
She then added:
I won't blame that on the campaign, but it certainly came back to somebody in Clinton world. Hillary Clinton constantly referring to herself as "tested and ready," and "the message of hope was naive." It was a bitter primary battle. And, you know what, at the end, everyone came together singing kumbaya, and it was fine. So if they could do it in 2008, I know we can do it in 2016.
When Baldwin turned to Jones and asked if Sanders should continue campaigning, Jones griped:
I do think that Secretary Clinton's surrogates should be a little bit less sometimes condescending toward the young people: "Oh, they just want free stuff." That's not fair. Nobody says the Pentagon just wants free drones or NASA just wants free space shuttles. Everybody pays taxes. Everybody has a right to say where they think the money should go.
And those kinds of things, I think it's, if they can just tone that down, I think the young people need to feel respected coming back, not belittled coming back. If they clean that up, they'll be fine.
