The spectre of Hillary Clinton loomed once more over Bernie Sanders’ campaign efforts in Iowa on Saturday after Rashida Tlaib, a congresswoman and prominent Sanders supporter, placed his escalating feud with the former secretary of state centre stage at a Friday night rally.
Tlaib led the audience in booing Clinton’s name when the moderator, Dionna Langford, brought up the acrimonious dispute between the 2016 rivals, which was stoked by Clinton’s comments in a Hulu documentary aired at the Sundance festival in which she said of Sanders: “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him.”
The former first lady and former senator for New York edged out Sanders, a senator from Vermont, for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 but lost to Donald Trump.
Tlaib’s comments on Friday at a concert to support Sanders highlight just how much of a factor the Vermont senator’s backers still consider Clinton to be as he chases the nomination to face Trump in November.
After Langford mentioned Clinton’s comments, many in the audience began to boo. Langford said: “We’re not going to boo, we’re classy here…”
That prompted Tlaib, from Michigan, to raise her microphone and interrupt.
“No. no, I’ll boo,” she said, to laughter from Pramila Jayapal and Ilhan Omar, two other Democratic congresswomen and fellow panelists on the stage.
“You all know I can’t be quiet,” Tlaib said. “No, we’re going to boo. That’s all right, the haters will shut up on Monday when we win.”
In a series of tweets Saturday, Tlaib appeared to express regret for the episode but did not apologise. “I allowed my disappointment with Senator Clinton’s latest comments about Senator Sanders and his supporters to get the best of me,” she wrote.
“You all, my sisters-in-service on stage, and our movement deserve better.”
The debate took place in front of a mostly younger crowd of Sanders supporters, there to attend a folk concert by Bon Iver, Politico reported, adding that the audience also booed the former vice-president Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee when they were mentioned by the film-maker and activist Michael Moore.
Sanders, who was not present because he was attending Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate in Washington, is a slight favourite for Monday’s caucuses, the first formal election-year test of Democratic voters’ intentions.
According to polling specialists FiveThirtyEight, Sanders leads Biden by half a point, 22% to 21.5%, with Pete Buttigieg six points behind on 15.5%.
Supporters and opponents of Sanders and Clinton were quick to weigh in on social media. Some pointed out that Clinton defended Tlaib and her colleagues last July when Trump attacked them.
Others, such as the Republican strategist and commentator Ana Navarro-Cardenas, pointed out that such infighting was not conducive to winning the White House.
“Newsflash: Democrats are running against Donald Trump, NOT Hillary Clinton,” she said in a tweet.
Tlaib is no stranger to controversy. Shortly after being sworn into Congress, she told supporters: “We’re gonna go in there and we’re going to impeach the motherfucker.”
Sanders and two other senators, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, will appear in Iowa this weekend after missing a week’s campaigning because of the impeachment trial.
