Sanders under fire again
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders speak after the January Democratic presidential debate, with Tom Steyer looking on. Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images. Retrieved from: https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/sen-elizabeth-warren-and-sen-bernie-sanders-speak-as-tom-news-photo/1199565315?adppopup=true
Maximilian Weber / January 29, 2020
( 8 min read )
Suffering a shocking defeat to the populist Republican Donald Trump left the US Democrats in an uncertain position. Clinton, despite winning the popular vote and running on a strong feminist narrative that appealed to the liberal voters, lost. This narrative was especially important for the Democrats, as they had effectively sabotaged the campaign of Sanders, and thus needed to find a candidate which would fill the shoes of the Social Democrat. The Democrats thought they found that in Clinton. Though I am not sure if it was the humble but inspiring “Pokemon go-to-the-polls” speech or Clinton’s rather opportunistically changing view on Gay Marriage that convinced the Democrats that Clinton would be the better candidate, it was Clinton that ended up representing the Democrats in their failed bid for taking the Presidency in 2016. Now, as the 2020 elections are approaching, it seems like there are forces at work to keep Sanders away from the Presidency once again.
The Accusation
On the thirteenth of January, CNN released a hit-piece article on Sanders, in what seemed to be an attempt to smear his reputation in the eyes of the public, and more specifically, shift the Democratic voter base away from Sanders, towards Warren. The CNN article claimed that during a supposed meeting at Elizabeth Warren’s apartment that took place in late 2018, Bernie Sanders allegedly remarked that a woman wouldn’t be able to win the Presidency. This was supposedly said in the context of a discussion about future campaigns for the democratic party. There are, however, numerous issues with this claim.
We must also remember that this alleged remark happened in late 2018, which puts over a year in between the contemporary media hit-piece on Sanders and the actual occasion during which Sanders might have said something offensive. Had Warren wanted to put forward a genuine complaint, she had more than a year to do so, but, instead, she had chosen to wait until this exact occasion, which makes this allegation even more suspicious, and even more politically motivated. This is because the article which first slammed Sanders for his quote on quote “sexism” was published merely a day before the Democratic Debate for the upcoming DNC nominations. At this point, it wouldn’t be unfair to throw into question the motivation of Warren when she decided to approach the CNN about the “incident”.
The Debate
The other problem was the content of the debate itself. It would be pointless for Warren to come complaining about the alleged sexism of Sanders to CNN if she didn't have any intention to use the accusations for even more political leverage. And that is exactly what happened during the debate, hosted by CNN. During the debate, Sanders was asked if he did indeed tell Senator Warren that a woman cannot win in the Presidency. Sanders denied this and provided several arguments against any allegations of him saying such a statement, citing Clinton winning the popular vote by 3 million, challenging his accusers to look for 30-year-old videos of him on Youtube, and even his own endorsement and support for Warren during the 2016 Presidential Elections. CNN then proceeded to ask Warren this question “Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”. This deliberate phrasing shows, at the very least, a level of cooperation between Warren and CNN against Sanders. Rather than use neutral language, the moderatress is implying that Sanders did indeed tell Warren that a woman can’t win (which we have no proof of). And if this was not enough, just to add insult to injury, the moderatress asks this question right after Senator Sanders specifically denied ever having made such preposterous claims.
"A very suspicious man might say that there is a strong effort by Warren to discredit Sanders on grounds of sexism."
This conflict between Sanders and Warren continued even after the debate. Upon the end of the programme, Sanders approached Warren in a friendly manner, wishing to shake the hand of his friend and rival in the presidential race. Warren however, refused to reciprocate the friendly gesture and engaged in a conversation with Sanders while the cameras were still running. During the first airing of this debate, it was thought that the microphones the candidates used had been turned off, so the content of the argument was for the time being unknown. However, 24 hours later, thanks to CNN releasing the audio content of the post debate talk, we found out that the microphones were still on but simply muted at the time. The conversation that is revealed by this recording does not paint Warren in a good light. Warren accuses Sanders of calling her a liar on national television, with Sanders trying to stay diplomatic about the situation. Sanders even in supposed privacy denies calling Warren a liar, and encourages Warren not to start drama in public. He also very clearly highlights that Warren’s insistence on the authenticity of her story makes him look like the liar. When one takes into account the slanted way in which the meeting was depicted by CNN, we can see how the deck has been stacked against Sanders rather than against Warren.
Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, pictured during a Democratic debate, spoke privately in December 2018 before they each announced their campaigns for president.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/13/us/politics/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-woman-president.html
Public Reception
Sanders’ voter base did not take kindly to the beatdown Bernie received by CNN, and the way that Warren seemingly stabbed Sanders in the back. This is because the two candidates, prior to this incident, had a sort of non-aggression pact. Not just that, but Bernie Sanders’ campaign stands on a platform that is very strictly against attacking other candidates. Thus, this seemingly unprecedented accusation of Sanders was not taken kindly by many of Sanders' supporters, who took to Twitter en masse in a rush to show their displeasure with Warren, calling her a snake and calling her out for making unfounded accusations against Sanders. Meanwhile on youtube, CNN videos depicting the debate received a large amount of dislikes and negative comments.
This mass social media attack on Warren and the CNN resulted in an even more bizarre occurrence, where Sanders’ supporters received sympathy from Trump supporters. This was largely due to the fact, that many Trump supporters felt that the “Fake News” rhetoric that Trump used during his Campaign and Presidency was largely validated by this occurrence.
Concluding thoughts
This aggression would not be the first time that the establishment put itself in opposition to Sanders. In 2016, wikileaks released documents and emails that proved the Media and Democrats collaborated to make sure that Hillary Clinton was nominated as the Democrats’ candidate for the 2016 elections. With this recent occurence, one might infer that this is happening again.
Yet, it might shock many foreigners that there is even a competition between Sanders and Warren, especially since Warren chose to backtrack on her promise of Medicare for all. The problem is, that even though what Sanders is campaigning for may be already commonplace in places like the EU, and most of Europe as a whole, in the American context Sanders is seen as incredibly left wing. In fact, it would not be entirely out of place to place Sanders on the left-most boundary of the American Overton Window of politics. This would mean that while most reforms that are proposed by Sanders seem common-sense to Europeans and other parts of the Anglo-Saxon world, they are very much controversial in the USA. This would make Sanders a dividing figure, not only for American society as a whole, but potentially for some further right-leaning Democrats as well. Not only that, but many Democrat lobby groups and medical companies feel threatened by Sanders. But this is not all bad news for Sanders, and it could indeed be turned around to work in his favour - if Sanders does indeed represent the leftmost Boundary of the American Overton Window he can prove to be a strong opposition against Trump, and even serve to denormalize extremism after four long years of the Trump administration. But for all of this to happen, Sanders must first be able to win the democratic nomination, which seems, at least for now, to be an upward fight.
