DES MOINES, Iowa — With tensions rising between 2020 Democratic rivals Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, what started as a good week for Joe Biden could get better.
On Sunday, reports surfaced that the Sanders campaign had been instructing its staffers to tell Iowa Democrats that Massachusetts Sen. Warren was incapable of building a broad coalition of voters to beat President Trump in a general election. Warren, 70, responded by saying she was “disappointed to hear that Bernie is sending his volunteers out to trash me.”
The following day, CNN reported Sanders, a Vermont senator, told Warren in a 2018 meeting that a woman couldn’t win the White House. Sanders, 78, denied such a conversation took place, and those close to his campaign accused Warren of leaking the story in an act of desperation amid her lagging poll numbers.
Warren stuck by her guns, insisting the meeting had occurred and all but guaranteed that the issue wouldn’t be put to rest.
“Bernie and I met for more than two hours in December 2018 to discuss the 2020 election, our past work together, and our shared goals: beating Donald Trump, taking back our government from the wealthy and well-connected, and building an economy that works for everyone,” she said in a statement.
That same day, a new poll of likely Iowa caucus-goers found Biden, a two-term vice president and Delaware senator for 36 years, leading his rivals by six points. The Monmouth University survey showed him at 24% support, while Sanders placed second with 18%, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg with 17%, and Warren at 15%.
Biden had also just announced the endorsement of Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is the longest-serving attorney general in the nation’s history at ten terms. During a Monday campaign stop at a campaign field office in Des Moines, Biden joked to his young volunteers that they were smiling because of his rising poll numbers.
Following his brief remarks with Miller, Biden turned to the press in anticipation of answering some questions. When the Washington Examiner asked if Sanders should apologize for his alleged remarks, Biden promptly turned around and exited the event in a signal that this wasn’t a battle he saw a benefit in participating.
Liberal groups fretted that the fighting between the two candidates risks destroying any chance of creating a unified front against Biden’s candidacy. Even the Progressive Campaign Change Committee, which works closely with Warren, released a statement urging a detente.
“A back-and-forth about this private meeting is counterproductive for progressives,” said Adam Green and Stephanie Taylor, founders of the group. “In this pivotal moment of the campaign, progressives must work together to defeat Donald Trump and prevent a less-electable establishment candidate like Joe Biden from getting the nomination.”
Individuals close to the Sanders campaign told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday that they believed the entire controversy was merely a creation by the media — in a move to deescalate tensions before the night’s debate, where both candidates will surely be asked to comment on the controversy.
The escalating feud between Warren and Sanders is reminiscent of the 2004 Democratic primary when establishment favorite Sen. John Kerry won the Iowa caucuses after his two of his rivals succumbed to negative campaigning. In that race, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean ran on a liberal, anti-war message that energized the base and launched him to first in Iowa polls.
A desperate Democratic Rep. Dick Gephardt, a former House leader who aggressively courted the union vote and banked that his 1988 Iowa primary win could be replicated, relentlessly attacked Dean in the months leading up to the caucuses. In January of that year, Gephardt called Dean a “weather-vane Democrat,” and accused him of dishonesty.
But that strategy backfired. The two candidates ended up placing in third and fourth place in that contest, while Kerry enjoyed a decisive win in the Iowa caucuses, setting him up for the Democratic nomination that summer.
