JOHN KASS: Hillary Thought Police and the Bernie kids.

Hillary Clinton’s most effective TV ad focuses on the faces of young children who sit quietly, staring wide-eyed at screens, watching Republican Donald Trump shout wild, angry and violent words.

It’s a powerful TV commercial, masterfully done, evoking child abuse while asking: “Our children are watching. What example will we set for them?” It is an ad designed to terrify parents and have them run into the warm, loving and omniscient embrace of Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Because with Hillary, it’s all about the kids.

Unless, of course, the kids are those thousands of idealistic young people — many of them college age or just older — who dared support the truly progressive Bernie Sanders for president against Clinton, the establishment candidate.

They felt the Bern and gave everything they had — their time, their energy, their spirit — to battle what they thought was wrong with America, the oligarchy, the political corruption, the control of the political process by the insiders with the money to buy politicians.

Those Sanders kids are angry. They aren’t quite ready to behave. Hillary knows this. And even Sanders, a tired old man prattling on about Wall Street, knows it as he bows to his Establishment Queen who sits on all that Wall Street cash.

So now it’s time for Hillary’s Thought Police — of Democratic Party operatives, political show ponies, and pro-Hillary pundits and talking heads — to begin the hard work of grinding those kids down. . . .

So the idea is to turn those kids into useful political beings by using their own slogans and reference points against them. First, though, they must be softened up by shaming. And the pro-Hillary media (and most of the media is decidedly pro-Hillary) has been relentless at shaming them to keep them in line since that DNC leaks story broke.

Shaming has been going on relentlessly on social media since these kids first touched a keyboard. They know how it works, they understand its conventions, if not its real purpose, which is to herd stubborn political ideas.

Indeed.