Sanders has always been vulnerable to this kind of attack

And so is AOC.

5 things Bernie Sanders doesn't want you to know about socialism

The attack does two things.

First, it accurately paints Bernie as perhaps more sympathetic to outright Communism than a democratic socialist should ever have been.

Second, it tells the time-honored and ludicrous lie that progressive advances in the taming of capitalism, this time those in the Bernie/AOC agenda, are socialism and major, destructive, and dangerous steps onto a slippery slope to the destruction of the American economy.