Just how committed is Michael Bloomberg to winning the Democratic primary? Enough to have his adviser Tim O’Brien drop this bombshell on a stunned Alisyn Camerota this morning on CNN’s New Day. Just as Camerota made an argument that Democrats might not want to go full tilt against Bernie Sanders if he’s likely to end up the nominee against Donald Trump, O’Brien promised that Team Bloomberg would hammer Sanders with everything they have.

And it’s remarkable how much information a news-media mogul can find, isn’t it? Such as advice for parents of toddlers to allow them to run naked and explore each others’ genitalia, for instance, O’Brien offers. “I’m sorry — what?” exclaims Camerota:

JUST NOW: @MikeBloomberg Senior Adviser @TimOBrien goes there on @BernieSanders.

Orgasms. Rape fantasies. Children running naked. All there.@NewDaypic.twitter.com/EUckLVYNR0

— John Berman (@JohnBerman) February 25, 2020

CAMEROTA: Look, I hear you but, I mean, it’s still a Democratic primary. You’re still — if you’re trying to avoid the circular firing squad, this is still the circular firing squad if you’re going after another Democrat.

O’BRIEN: But we’ve got a candidate who’s got a better record. We’ve got a candidate who has more governing experience than anybody on that stage. We’ve got a candidate who has risen in the polls because of his track record. Bernie has all of this loopy stuff in his background, saying things like women get cancer from having too many orgasms or toddlers should run around naked and touch each other’s genitals to insulate —

CAMEROTA: I’m sorry, what?

O’BRIEN: — themselves from porn.

CAMEROTA: What?

O’BRIEN: Why has this stuff not been more surfaced? He’s written about women’s rape fantasies. That hasn’t been surfaced. That’s the looney side of Bernie. The policy side of Bernie is he has not been good at immigration, he has not been good on criminal justice reform. He was an avid backer of the ’94 crime bill. He’s bad on guns, bad on immigration. And as a legislator — as a member of the Senate, I think he’s only sponsored seven pieces of legislation; two for post offices in Vermont.

The rape-fantasy writings issue got surfaced four years ago by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, although it didn’t get much attention from the media. To the extent that it got discussed at all, it was generally shrugged off as Sanders’ attempt at literary writing, not a manifesto or a political position.

The naked-toddler argument might be tougher to slough off. Sanders included it in a 1969 Vermont Freeman article that was all manifesto. This too surfaced on the fringes of the 2016 campaign but never got picked up by the national media. It was part of a Sanders screed headlined “The Revolution Is Life Versus Death,” written when Sanders would have been 26 years old, hardly a case of college-student indiscretion. It’s a typically jumbled set of observations tied together with a typical socialist Come The Revolution theme, where the alternative is:

The years come and go, suicide, nervous breakdown, cancer, sexual deadness, heart attack, alcoholism, senility at 50. Slow death, fast death. DEATH. …

The Revolution is coming and it is a very beautiful revolution. It is beautiful because, in its deepest sense, it is quiet, gentle, and all pervasive. It KNOWS.

The part about toddlers exploring bodies comes just before the “it KNOWS” declaration:

That may not be posed explicitly as advice, but it’s not far off from it, and it’s consonant with everything else in this nonsensical screed by Sanders. Later, Sanders advises that the revolution will come when parents refuse to send their children to school but puts them in communes instead, and “when a girl pushes aside all that her mother has “taught” her and accepts her boyfriend’s love.” Ick.

That’s not even the most shocking  part of this story. The fact that Camerota got blindsided by this when it’s been in plain sight since 1969 is a massive indictment of the mainstream media, which has covered Sanders for decades without ever bothering to do any kind of actual research on his politics or ideology. This is the same media that made Mitt Romney’s high-school hazing antics a national headline story in 2012, let’s not forget.

That lacuna also indicts Mike Bloomberg, whose own news outlet failed in precisely the same way. He’s only surfacing it now because of the personal benefit he might get out of it. When Bloomberg starts opening up the sluice gates on Bernie, don’t forget that he’s been complicit in keeping all this under wraps, too.

Update: In regard to Sanders’ intense focus on sex and children, this was a big part of the Left at the time. It didn’t catch on much in America, thank the Lord, but it did in France and Germany in their “1968 Movement.” France in particular is only now beginning to address the damage done.