Elizabeth Warren undermined her own pitch that she’s the candidate who can fuse the Democratic Party’s two competing factions by going after Bernie Sanders.
Tensions between the two were palpable this week during the Iowa debate on Tuesday. When pressed by the moderators, the Vermont senator, 78, denied the Massachusetts Democrat’s claim he told her during a 2018 private meeting he didn’t believe a woman could win the White House. Warren, 70, turned the line of questioning into a quotable soundbite.
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“Can a woman beat Donald Trump? Look at the men on stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women,” she said.
Warren, whose campaign is suspected of having leaked the original story before it was confirmed by the senator herself, refused to accept Sanders’s extended hand after the broadcast.
On Wednesday, the top-tier candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, who spent the weekend in Iowa making the case to Democrats she was the middle-ground contender between socialist Sanders and center-left former Vice President Joe Biden, was trolled on Twitter by “Bernie bros” with the snake emoji. The fervent nature of the Sanders fans’ tweets resulted in the #NeverWarren and #WarrenIsASnake hashtags trending to No. 1 in the United States.
The confrontation between the former ideological allies marks a stark departure from their nonaggression pact, a ceasefire agreement that’s been in place for the primary until now. The cracks emerge as Iowa’s opening caucuses on Feb. 3 draw closer and as recent polling reveals a tight race among Biden, Sanders, and Warren, as well as Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana.
According to the Des Moines Register/CNN/Mediacom poll released late last week, Sanders is the preferred White House hopeful for 20% of likely caucusgoers. Warren is No. 1 for 17%, Buttigieg for 16%, and Biden for 15%. At the same time, Warren is the most popular second-choice candidate, with 16% of respondents divulging they’d break for her if their favorite failed to reach the caucuses’ 15% viability threshold.
Leveraging those numbers, Warren last weekend embarked on a two-day swing of the first-in-the-nation state, lobbying Democrats in Mason City and Marshalltown.
“We all saw the impact of the factionalism in 2016, and we can’t have a repeat of that,” she told reporters when grilled on a leaked Sanders campaign memo questioning her electability because of her narrow appeal to “highly educated, more affluent people.” “Democrats need to unite our party, and that means pulling in all parts of the Democratic coalition,” she added.
Her message was reiterated by Julian Castro, a former rival-turned-supporter.
“She can bring this party together. She can unify Democrats to defeat Donald Trump in November of 2020 so that we have a new president, with a stronger America, a better America, America where all of us can succeed,” the former Obama administration housing secretary, 45, said.
But Tom Cochran, a partner at public affairs firm 720 Strategies, doubted the cogency of Warren’s argument.
“Just because you’re between two candidates doesn’t make you the compromise pick, because you still have to get people to compromise. It’s not that easy,” he said.
Cochran also warned friction between Warren and Sanders benefits one other person, echoing the fears of leading left-wing groups.
“There’s a lot of overlap there. If these camps start bickering, it’s Biden who wins out,” he said.
For Stefan Hankin, Warren shared more in common with Sanders, but he wasn’t convinced she could woo “Bernie bros” as a woman.
“We saw it in 2016. We’re seeing it in what is happening now. When you even say ‘boo’ about their guy, they will come after you. She should expect to see more of this moving forward,” the Democratic strategist said, referring to allegations of sexism toward then-opponent Hillary Clinton.
“The other question is, ‘Can she get people who are saying they’re supporting Biden now but maybe aren’t totally shot in the ass with an older white dude?’ Can she pull enough over to get her numbers back up so it’s a three-way race?” he asked.
