That supposedly contentious moment between 2020 rivals Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) after Tuesday night’s debate truly wasn’t that big a deal, if Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir’s account is anything to go by.
“She came to raise a concern, and he said let’s talk about that later,” Shakir told the Washington Post.
Many news outlets have made hay over Warren’s “snub” after she ignored Sanders’ handshake while briefly speaking to him after the debate.
However, the two progressive candidates refused to take the bait when the CNN moderators pushed them on Sanders’ comment to Warren about women winning the 2020 race.
Sanders and Warren have declined to attack each other for much of the primary race. However, cracks in the alliance began to show this week in wake of a Politico report on a Sanders campaign script that criticized Warren, followed by a CNN report on a conversation alleging that Sanders had told Warren that a women could not win the presidency in 2020.
Sanders has strongly pushed back on CNN’s report, and both candidates have emphasized that they wish to move on from the controversy.
It didn’t look like that to me. It looked like they had words, and that Bernie shut it down and turned away.
All of that seems underlined by Steyer’s reactions as he tried to walk up and shake both of their hands.
Sanders again reiterated he didn’t say that. Warren however, reiterated that he did, and did not look too happy about his denial again.
And if we back up to the original flare up, the canvassing script…after the Sander camp denied that it really was a thing, they came out last night and said “Well, yeah…its a thing that we have released and are running in several early states”
Sanders camp can tell her that everything is lovey dovey between them all they want (and they definitely want to, at least publicly), but she would be a fool to believe it. Sanders campaign is going into gloves off mode with everyone right now.
In other words, Liz had better watch her back.
Didn’t the Sanders Camp also say (read: lie) that Bernie didn’t have a heart attack? Yea, not really gonna take them at face value.
If she believes any alliance they may have formed is still in place, yes.
But this is Presidential politics. I think any candidate in the top tier believing that is naive. Everyone should be in “gloves off” mode now. Its a long, long road of continuous GOTV from here until a nomination is secured.
For what its worth, in my opinion, Sanders probably had similar alliances in place with at least Yang and Williamson…possibly Tabbard. Williamson is out of the race, and Yang is off the debate stage…but Sanders will still expect Yang to hold up his part of the deal and throw his eventual support behind Sanders.
Which, in my mind, is probably what the conversation was really about. Sanders was discussing an alliance that consisted of “I won’t attack you, you don’t attack me, and when I eventually pull ahead, you endorse me”. Warren disagreed that he would eventually pull ahead, but was fine with the “don’t attack me, I won’t attack you” part. The discussion of “when I pull ahead” is where something about a woman’s chances came up. It wasn’t the important part to Sanders, so he doesn’t remember it that way. Warren probably remembers it differently, but now that the “I won’t attack you” part is off the table, she is miffed.
Yup and some of the Bernie Bros have been on twitter lately saying they will vote for Spanky and blow up the election for Dems again if Bernie is not nominated. In the immortal words of Yogi, It is deja vu all over again.