Bernie Sanders has his “oops” moment

| 11:48 pm EDT June 27, 2019
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From the start of Thursday night’s debate, the NBC moderators seemed intent on letting Bernie Sanders have a strong night. They started by feeding him a softball question, while hitting Joe Biden hard with gotcha questions. This should have been easy for Bernie. But then Rachel Maddow took over moderator duties for the second half of the night, and Bernie had his “oops” moment.

We all remember when Rick Perry said he wanted to get rid of five government agencies, than failed to name them all, before simply saying “oops.” Tonight, Bernie Sanders had a moment that wasn’t quite as much of a soundbite, but was nonetheless a terrible look for him. Maddow hit him with a question that was not designed to be an easy one.

Six years ago, Bernie gave an interview and said that gun control should be a state issue. Maddow quoted Bernie on this, and asked him to respond. Bernie insisted that this was a mischaracterization of his position. Maddow responded by pointing out that she’d just quoted his own words to him. From there, Bernie seemed to have no idea what to say. Gun control has always been a tricky issue for him because he’s from pro-gun Vermont, but he managed to trip over the topic in a manner that even Maddow seemed stunned by.

This moment won’t knock Bernie Sanders out of the race by any means. But he was already polling fairly poorly for someone who entered the race with so much built-in national name recognition left over from 2016. He’s been in a subtle slide in the polls for months, and this bizarre debate moment will likely end up causing that trend to continue. There are plenty more debates coming up, of course.