Hillary Returns to Her Sleazy Campaign Tactics

It's taken quite a while for Hillary Clinton, in her 2016 presidential run, to remind me of her most deceitful, dishonest moments of her 2008 presidential campaign against Barack Obama.
Yet, within the past several days, the "old" Clinton has re-emerged in her Democratic primary battle against Bernie Sanders.  What happened? Sanders, simply, began to catch up to Clinton in a couple of polls in Iowa and closed the gap significantly in a national poll.  The resulting pressure prompted Hillary to begin using her more sleazy approaches, which we saw in 2008.
Yes, Hillary has reasons to be more worried about losing Iowa now.  That would hurt her campaign and embarrass her and remind people of her 2008 experience - when Obama came back and defeated her in the Iowa caucuses.
But....Hillary still has the same huge advantages in her race with Sanders.  She still is very equipped to win Iowa and New Hampshire.  She has far more of a chance to win South Carolina and a host of other states.  She has loads of money, endorsements and the Establishment with her.  Plus, Sanders has to overcome the "small" difficulty of convincing people to vote for him despite his being a Democratic socialist.

So, why has Hillary and her campaign chosen to suddenly distort Sanders' positions and get sleazy?  Why not just rely on Hillary's considerable strengths in debating and describing the differences between her positions and Bernie's?

I don't know.  She doesn't have to do it.  But, consider just a few different ways she's gone after Sanders:  First, she keeps attacking him on his position on gun control.  Now, Clinton, without question, has a stronger anti-gun position than Sanders.  She has been far more outspoken about her concerns about gun violence....but, in recent days, in a number of television interviews, she has tried to paint Sanders as being terrible on gun safety.  One would think - from listening to Hillary - that Sanders was like a Republican opposing any and all gun safety proposals.  That is not at all true.
As Bernie has pointed out, the NRA once gave him a D- for his record.  Yet, Hillary keeps harping on a vote Bernie took in 2005 that concerned the liability of gun manufacturers in the event of hypothetical gun violence.  Sanders voted against it and I have no problem with Hillary criticizing him for it......but, in the midst of her "panic," recently, Hillary has taken all this further.  In an interview, she claimed that Sanders had been "a pretty reliable vote" for the NRA (or in words very close to that)  That remark was simply false and unnecessary. (Sanders called it "mean-spirited.")  And, while Hillary can and should try to distinguish herself from Sanders on gun safety, she should keep their differences in context.  Bernie Sanders is not an NRA "supporter."  He has supported some measures aimed at improving gun safety, including President Obama's recent executive actions. 
Second, Hillary's daughter, Chelsea, was incredibly misleading about Sanders' overall position toward health care.  In remarks to a New Hampshire audience, Chelsea said one false thing after another:
"Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance," Chelsea said.  "I don't want to empower Republican governors to take away Medicaid, to take away health insurance for low-income and middle-income working Americans.  And I think very much that's what Sen. Sanders' plan would do."
Sanders advocates what he calls a "Medicare for all" plan and wants the country to evolve to using a single-payer system.  That would involve much work and many stages and steps.  Chelsea - and later, Hillary - made it seem that those steps would involve stripping away programs when that is clearly NOT Sanders' intent.