Sanders campaign turns on Warren

Published January 12, 2020 6:11pm EST



DAVENPORT, Iowa — The ceasefire between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren could be over.

Sanders, 78, and Warren, 70, have frequently paired up to defend their liberal policies, such as “Medicare for all,” from takedowns by more center-left rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

But with new polling suggesting Sanders, the senator for Vermont, has a slight edge on the top four contenders in Feb. 3’s Iowa caucuses, his campaign has attacked his senatorial colleague from Massachusetts.

According to a talking points script obtained by Politico this weekend, Sanders volunteers are being encouraged to tell voters leaning toward Warren that brings she “no new bases into the Democratic Party,” appealing only to “highly-educated, more affluent people who are going to show up and vote Democratic no matter what.” It is unknown whether the script was used for door-to-door canvassing or phone banking, nor in which states it is being deployed.

Prior to the script, Sanders, who said he was “sick” of hearing about Hillary Clinton’s “damn emails” in 2016, had only differentiated himself from Warren, describing her as a “capitalist” and sending oblique tweets about her more pragmatic “Medicare for all” transition plan.

Meanwhile, the socialist hasn’t pulled his punches with opponents such as Joe Biden, 77.

“It is appalling that after 18 years Joe Biden still refuses to admit he was dead wrong on the Iraq War, the worst foreign policy blunder in modern American history,” Sanders senior adviser Jeff Weaver said in a statement Saturday. “Unlike 23 of his Senate colleagues who got it right, Biden made explicitly clear that he was voting for war, and even after the war started, he boasted that he didn’t regret it.”

Sanders supporter Nina Turner also wrote an opinion piece published Sunday in South Carolina, slamming Biden over his record with the black community and racial justice issues.

Sanders and Biden have previously clashed repeatedly over healthcare, most vocally over the former vice president’s preference for a “public option” as opposed to Sanders’s signature legislative proposal.