Apparently, the Hillary Clinton supporters at Correct the Record, a pro-Hillary Clinton rapid response SuperPAC, have gone completely nuts after seeing the same new poll numbers that's we've seen, which show Bernie Sanders holding a solid lead in New Hampshire and taking the lead in Iowa. They've started attacking Bernie directly, in fact, they're trying to tie him to newly-elected British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and deceased former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez:
Clinton's camp has long said it has no plans to attack Sanders. But the super PAC, called Correct the Record, departed from its defense of Clinton's record as a former secretary of state in an email Monday that compares Sanders with (British Labour Party leader Jeremy) Corbyn. Correct the Record, led by Clinton ally David Brock, also has sent trackers after Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley.
[...]
The "similarities" between (Sanders and Corbyn), according to the email, include Sanders' introduction of legislation to terminate the United States' nuclear weapons program, comments that NATO's expansion into former Soviet states is dangerous because it could provoke Russia, opposition to more U.S. funds for NATO, and saying he "was concerned" that proposed new NATO members had shipped arms to Iran and North Korea.
The more serious stretch comes as the email highlights how Sanders helped negotiate a program with Venezuela's national oil company in 2006 that provided discounted heating oil assistance to low-income Vermonters. The senator said it was "not a partisan issue," in the state, which was the sixth to make the deal. His support for the program was apparently enough to merit a mention, since Corbyn has written that the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez's "electoral democratic credentials are beyond reproach."
This is the kind of smear campaign that one would expect from Republicans like Donald Trump, big-money Republican front groups, and the military-industrial complex, not from a Democratic front group. To claim that Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn share the same exact foreign policy is absolutely false, since Sanders's foreign policy is closer to that of President Obama than Corbyn's foreign policy is. Regarding some of Sanders's own anti-NATO positions, they're all sound foreign policy. Excessive defense spending, including, but not limited to, NATO, is one of the biggest reasons why our national debt is in the tens of trillions of dollars. Sanders's claims that former Soviet states (currently, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are the three former Soviet states that are NATO members) joining NATO would provoke Russia have been proven to be true (example: pro-Russia forces attacking Ukraine). Additionally, the fact that Clinton's attack dogs are attacking Sanders for opposing allowing countries that sold nukes to Iran and North Korea effectively amounts to tacit support by Correct the Record for nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea, which would guarantee a costly war with one or both countries. Regarding the oil deal between Venezuela and Vermont, even though Sanders isn't a fan of the Chavez regime in Venezuela by any rational person's imagination (in fact, Bernie recently sent out an email referring to Chavez as a communist dictator), the oil deal provided less expensive oil to Bernie's constituents in his home state of Vermont.
You might as well call Correct the Record, the pro-Clinton group behind this sleazy attack against Bernie, Distort the Record, as that's exactly what they're doing. They're trying to tear down Bernie Sanders by associating him with two people, one of which is a prominent British politician that 99% of Americans couldn't tell apart from a mud puddle, and the other is a deceased former Venezuelan dictator. The truth of the matter is that Bernie is far more supportive of common-sense foreign policy than Jeremy Corbyn is, and that Bernie is far more supportive of democracy than Hugo Chavez was.
Even worse, Correct the Record, the pro-Clinton rapid response SuperPAC, is coordinating with Clinton's official campaign by exploiting a legal loophole in federal law, which normally prohibits SuperPACs from coordinating with official campaigns for federal office, but exempts some forms of internet communication from anti-coordination laws:
...Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton rapid-response operation, announced it was splitting off from its parent American Bridge and will work in coordination with the Clinton campaign as a stand-alone super PAC. The group’s move was first reported by the New York Times.
That befuddled many campaign finance experts, who noted that super PACs, by definition, are political committees that solely do independent expenditures, which cannot be coordinated with a candidate or political party. Several said the relationship between the campaign and the super PAC would test the legal limits.
But Correct the Record believes it can avoid the coordination ban by relying on a 2006 Federal Election Commission regulation that declared that content posted online for free, such as blogs, is off limits from regulation. The “Internet exemption” said that such free postings do not constitute campaign expenditures, allowing independent groups to consult with candidates about the content they post on their sites. By adopting the measure, the FEC limited its online jurisdiction to regulating paid political ads.
It's 100% clear to me that Hillary Clinton's political allies, with at least some level of coordination with Clinton, have launched a full-blown War on Progressives against Bernie Sanders and his nationwide legion of supporters.