The Democratic primary elections have been interesting to watch. The most entertaining part has been Bernie Sanders’ rise in momentum. It must be extremely disappointing for Hillary Clinton to have lost to Obama, and now, even when using the first female president card, Sanders is still giving her a run for her money. As Sanders’ momentum rises, Clinton and her supporters have been getting scared and they’ve started throwing out ignorant character attacks, directed at both Sanders and his supporters. Here are some examples of those attacks.

1. Bernie Sanders is a racist!

David Brock, supporter of Clinton, was critical about a Sanders political ad and told Associated Press,

“From this ad, it seems like black lives don’t matter much to Bernie Sanders.”

Nothing about the ad at all says, “I don’t care about black people.” The entire ad just shows footage of Sanders greeting supporters, some of whom were minorities. You’d have to be the kind of person who really really despises Sanders to the point of being OK with smearing him to see any kind of racism in the ad.

2. Women are obligated to vote for Hillary because she’s a woman.

On “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Gloria Steinem, a well-known feminist and Clinton supporter, said the following about young female Bernie Sanders supporters,

“They’re going to get more activist as they get older. And when you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys?’ The boys are with Bernie.”

That must be it, Gloria, everyone knows that if a woman doesn’t automatically support Clinton because of her vagina, it must be because of cute guys. It’s not like these young women have looked at both candidates and happened to like Sanders’ policy ideas more, they just spend all day, every day, thinking of ways to meet boys. It’s not like they’re human beings capable of making their own opinions without feeling the need to go to their radical feminist overlords to tell them what to think. (If you haven’t noticed, I was being sarcastic, not serious.)

Let’s not forget this wonderful quote from Madeleine Albright, who introduced Clinton in an event in New Hampshire.

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!”

Not that this surprises me, but this quote is insinuating that if you’re a woman, you have to vote for Clinton because she’s a woman too. What happens if you’re Hispanic and female? How do you choose between Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton? Are you expected to flip a coin or something? If your only reason for voting for someone is because of gender, race or any other kind of biological difference rather than of policy positions, your candidate probably sucks and you need to re evaluate why you’re voting for them.

Steinem and Albright later apologized, but the fact that self-proclaimed feminists, who have made entire careers claiming to support women’s rights, will easily turn into the monster they pretend they are fighting when you disagree with them on who should be president really shows their true colors. The hypocrisy of these women is astounding. These same women would have thrown a temper tantrum if someone else made a comment that was that misogynistic in nature, and they wouldn’t have accepted an apology either. The person who made that comment would have a “Misogynist” stamp for life. It’s like their mindset is “Misogyny is bad! But not when we do it!”

Speaking of misogyny…

3. Bernie Sanders’ supporters are sexists!!!!

This is one I see the most often while looking at political memes on Instagram. There are many articles I have read on the subject. Out of all of the articles on the subject, only one had proof that said comments actually happened. One of the comments in question mentioned that Hillary Clinton supporters were voting for her because she’s a woman, which I will admit probably isn’t true for every Clinton supporter, but is true for a good amount of them (revisit Steinem’s and Albright’s comments, and it doesn’t help her case since she talks about being a woman often, example 2). Clinton supporters should be complaining about being generalized, rather than being victims of sexist comments.

In conclusion, most, if not all of the character attacks on Sanders and his supporters have yet to be supported with evidence. Sanders isn’t racist. Sanders supporters aren’t all sexist either. Why attack character? Why not attack policy directions? You know, the thing that matters the most when choosing a president. Why do so many people have the “They don’t agree with me, therefore they must be terrible, evil human beings” outlook? This may come as a shock to some people, but you can disagree with someone on politics without feeling the need to hate them. Can we just get back to talking about policy please?