nomination, just throw that away and say i don t want to hear anymore about the damned e-mails, do you think that helped bernie sanders or helped hillary? well, i think nobody wants to hear about the e-mails anymore. what we see are thousands and thousands of pages looked through. we saw hillary clinton sit and deal with the committee for 11 hours. and the momentum shift because what we saw is a true leader who has done nothing wrong. and we are done just debating this. i think the mistake bernie sanders has made is going negative at all. when you re an insurgent candidate who is supposed to be different than all the politicians before and then you make a political move like this you start to see some faltering. and i think that actually may be the problem. it will be interesting to see what happens on saturday night. it will be, but let me ask john about that. because stephanie said that bernie has been negative. he has been lately in a kind
i m trying to think the nation is a pretty liberal magazine and i m trying to figure out if there is still hope. your thoughts, john. well, i do think there is still hope that it will be a two-person race. the fact of the matter is bernie sanders and martin o malley got into a very tough race at the start. they got in the race with a real frontrunner who had strong organization and great name recognition. hillary clinton had a rough late summer and early fall and then she hit her mark. there is no question about that. to my view, about what sanders has to think about, and martin o malley, is how did they distinguish themselves in this race? if it is just attacking clinton that is not in my sense going to get them very far. clinton has attacked from the right. there is a national sense that that doesn t work and shouldn t work.
it didn t seem like the action of a competitor, but a protester who would rather win on the issues. i don t think that bernie sanders thinks of himself as a protest candidate. but i do think what he did there was very different from what we see a lot of in politics. and bernie sanders has said again and again he doesn t like that. he doesn t like the personal back and forth and it has been a signal from the start of his campaign that he was not going to do it. my sense is there was a certain wisdom in it. because the fact of the matter is had he gone on a major attack and made it central to his campaign yeah, but don t john, i m smarter than you on that one. don t try to set up a straw man here. nobody is saying he should have gone on the attack. he said it s not like i m not going to slam you. nobody thought he would.
hear about the e-mails anymore. what we see are thousands and thousands of pages looked through. we saw hillary clinton sit and deal with the committee for 11 hours. and the momentum shift because what we saw is a true leader who has done nothing wrong. and we are done just debating this. i think the mistake bernie sanders has made is going negative at all. when you re an insurgent candidate who is supposed to be different than all the politicians before and then you make a political move like this you start to see some faltering. and i think that actually may be the problem. it will be interesting to see what happens on saturday night. it will be, but let me ask john about that. because stephanie said that bernie has been negative. he has been lately in a kind after glancing way. but to throw away the issue used by hillary clinton by others, certainly not by to people to her left but by others struck me as an odd sort of jumping over the tennis net saying i m going to make sure you
he said it s not like i m not going to slam you. nobody thought he would. why do you think he just took it off the table? just took it off. because he has labeen sliding i the polls ever since. thank you, john nicoles from the nation. up next, do republicans want to widen the net or shrink it? could it hurt gop chances next year? this is hardball, the place for politics. how you doing? hey! how are you? where are we watching the game? you ll see.