Meh ... maybe. Maybe not. I try not to ascribe motivation to people ... though it does seem obvious at times.
Personally, I think it was an eminently fair question. Imagine, if you will, that a national socialist was running for president. Wouldn't you agree that it would be incumbent on that individual to distinguish his policies from those of Hitler? I daresay that most people would demand that he do so before they would offer him more than the few milliseconds it takes to catch the persons name.
Bernie put himself in this position. He has long associated himself with the failed socialist governments of the USSR, Cuba and more recently Venzuela. He now seemingly wants to distance himself from them ... but that's a recent development.
Apparently, neither Bernie nor his supporters can answer the question of how his policies are significantly different than those of the failed socialist states of the USSR, Cuba and Venzuela. They should be able to answer the question ... but they can't. His policies aren't greatly different. The policies of those failed states are the policies Bernie has revered his entire life. Unfortunately for Bernie, they're inconvenient for his immediate political goal.
