A key liberal activist group asked Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to halt hostilities that have flared between the Democratic primary contenders with voting set to begin in less than three weeks in Iowa.
Democracy for America, fretting that the Sanders-Warren feud could empower President Trump and boost Joe Biden or other perceived centrist Democrats, urged the two liberal senators to stand down.
The group’s ask is a tall order. Sanders of Vermont and Warren of Massachusetts are proposing related agendas, and both appeal to similar Democratic blocs. Winning the nomination could prove impossible if they split the left-wing vote, a factor driving apart these erstwhile allies.
“@BernieSanders and @ewarren, you both are progressive champs & our movement needs to see you working together to defeat your corporate Dem opponents — not attack each other,” Democracy for America tweeted on Monday. “Progressives will win in 2020, but only if we don’t let the corporate wing or Trump divide us.”
Neil Sroka, a spokesman for Democracy for America, said in a press release that the group would have more to say about Sanders and Warren in the coming days. The group was founded by Howard Dean, former Vermont governor, 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, and ex-chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
Sanders, 78, a socialist, and Warren, 70, maintained a nonaggression pact for most of the Democratic campaign, saving their attacks for Biden, the former vice president, and Pete Buttigieg, former mayor of South Bend, Indiana — both liberal but viewed by many as centrists. But less than a month before the Iowa caucuses, the Sanders-Warren detente has collapsed.
The Sanders campaign ordered grassroots volunteers to criticize Warren when contacting voters. Warren responded by revealing a private conversation she had with Sanders in 2018, accusing him of telling her that a woman cannot win the presidency. Before Warren herself issued a statement, the news had been leaked, presumably by her campaign, and was initially reported by CNN.
Even as some establishment Democrats are worried that Sanders might win the nomination, left-wing activists are concerned that centrists will profit as he and Warren turn their fire on each other. In recent polls out of Iowa and New Hampshire, which holds the first traditional primary contest and votes second, Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders, and Warren are bunched near the top.
