At Wednesday night’s Democratic town hall in New Hampshire, Cooper mentioned a flattering anecdote about Sanders’s days campaigning “on the front lines” for desegregation at the University of Chicago (the Vermont senator was arrested during one protest). “I think a lot of people don’t know much about your background on this issue,” Cooper said. “What motivated a 20-year-old white kid from Brooklyn to do that?”
Sanders’s answer wasn’t particularly impressive, but perhaps he was caught off guard. After all, most questions about his past aren’t so favorable. Take, for example, Cooper’s question during the CNN debate back in October, a true masterpiece of the genre: “You—the—the Republican attack ad against you in a general election—it writes itself. You supported the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. You honeymooned in the Soviet Union. And just this weekend, you said you’re not a capitalist. Doesn’t—doesn’t that ad write itself?”