The 2020 primary infighting has just officially leveled up.
In December 2018, before either candidate had announced they were running, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren met privately at her Washington DC apartment to discuss the 2020 presidential race. According to a report published Monday on CNN.com, during that meeting, Sanders told Warren that he didn’t believe a woman could win the presidency. And oh boy did things get messy from there.
Sanders denied he said this at all and Warren’s team initially refused to comment, though CNN said they had four sources to back up the claim that they published anyway: “two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting.” In his response, Sanders made the assumption that the sources were members of Warren’s staff.
“It’s sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren’t in the room are lying about what happened,” he told CNN. A lot of Sanders supporters latched onto that message and accused Warren of allowing or even encouraging her staff to use smear tactics against him. #ITrustBernie and #RefundWarren were trending online Monday and into Tuesday.
After the CNN article was published, Warren’s communications director released a statement in which Warren stands by the account but gives some important nuanced context.
In response to a great deal of questions we’ve had today, below is a statement from Elizabeth Warren: pic.twitter.com/PdBCHJQCJE
— Kristen Orthman (@KristenOrthman) January 14, 2020
“Among the topics that came up was what would happen if a Democrat nominated a female candidate,” the statement reads. “I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.”
A lot of the replies to the tweet of that statement are still criticizing Warren for accusing Sanders of sexism which … she’s not. It seems pretty clear that what Warren describes is a conversation about “electability”–itself a garbage and pointless subject, but one that’s very different from expressing a personal sexist opinion.
In his denial to CNN, Sanders said “Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016.”
“What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could,” said Sanders. Which is definitely true! I also totally believe that the issue of electability and the misogyny that played a role in both the lead-up to the election and the outcome from the electoral college came up in that conversation. That’s very different than accusing Sanders of being personally opposed to a female candidate.
Warren said in her statement that she and Sanders “have far more in common than our differences on punditry,” which sounds like it essentially translates to, “this is a non-issue, let’s move on.”
The 2016 flashbacks are way too strong here. We have a headline describing a non-event designed to turn factions against each other (in a discussion about sexism, no less), followed by a possible bad-faith, or maybe just clumsily presumptuous comment from a candidate that stirred up a lot more vitriol that it was probably meant to.
According to CNN, in that 2018 meeting, “The two agreed that if they ultimately faced each other as presidential candidates, they should remain civil and avoid attacking one another, so as not to hurt the progressive movement.” Well, that sure would be nice.
This isn’t the first headline to apparently create a division where one doesn’t exist. Over the weekend, Politico ran an article titled “Bernie campaign slams Warren as candidate of the elite.” The implication is that Sanders or someone high-up in his team made that statement. In reality, it’s part of a script used by volunteers in their phone-banking efforts.
The script instructs Sanders volunteers to tell voters leaning toward the Massachusetts senator that the “people who support her are highly-educated, more affluent people who are going to show up and vote Democratic no matter what” and that “she’s bringing no new bases into the Democratic Party.”
“I like Elizabeth Warren. [optional]” the script begins. “In fact, she’s my second choice. But here’s my concern about her.” It then pivots to the criticisms of Warren.
I got one of these texts about a month ago, and while the Sanders volunteer and I had a pretty nice conversation, I’ll admit I was turned off when their script (which was very similar to the one obtained by Politico) turned negative. That said, this headline is a major exaggeration of what actually happened. And in that case, it was Warren who seemed to take offense at the headline without knowing much more about the reality of the situation. At the time, she told reporters she was “disappointed” he was “sending his volunteers out to trash me.”
“I hope Bernie reconsiders and turns his campaign in a different direction,” Warren added.
I absolutely disagree with those who argue that being critical of primary candidates will hurt the Democratic Party. There are things we absolutely should look closely at and the primary is the time to fight for our values and the candidates that best represent them. So yes, let’s talk about Biden’s voting record or Buttigieg’s shady fundraisers or Warren’s DNA test controversy or Sanders’ reductive “identity politics” framework or whatever else concerns us about a given candidate. Because they all have issues.
This particular round of in-fighting feels different. It feels manufactured and it feels far beneath the candidates involved. Let’s hope they can get back to “not to [hurting] the progressive movement” as quickly as possible.
In the meantime, there’s another Democratic debate tonight, which is shaping up to be a big old mess.
(image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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