Bernie Sanders told Elizabeth Warren in private 2018 meeting that a woman can't win, sources say
- 4 years ago
(CNN)The stakes were high when Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren met at Warren's apartment in Washington, DC, one evening in December 2018. The longtime friends knew that they could soon be running against each other for president.
The two agreed that if they ultimately faced each other as presidential candidates, they should remain civil and avoid attacking one another, so as not to hurt the progressive movement. They also discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters.
Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win.
The description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting.
That evening, Sanders expressed frustration at what he saw as a growing focus among Democrats on identity politics, according to one of the people familiar with the conversation. Warren told Sanders she disagreed with his assessment that a woman could not win, three of the four sources said.
Sanders denied the characterization of the meeting in a statement to CNN.
"It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win," Sanders said. "It's sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren't in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016."
Warren's communications director Kristen Orthman declined to comment.
These previously unreported details from the two senators' private meeting shed new light on the careful efforts that Warren and Sanders appear to have made to manage their friendship and political rivalry even before the 2020 race was officially underway. From the start, even as both candidates were determined to capture the Democratic nomination, they were also keenly sensitive to the risk that their rivalry could divide the progressive movement.
The conversation also illustrates the skepticism among not only American voters but also senior Democratic officials that the country is ready to elect a woman as president, several years after one clinched a major political party's nomination for president for the first time. Many Democrats believe sexism played a role in Hillary Clinton's defeat in the 2016 general election, and voters say they are torn about whether to try again to put a woman in the White House in 2020.
The revelation that Sanders expressed skepticism that Warren could win the presidency because she is a woman is particularly noteworthy now.
The two agreed that if they ultimately faced each other as presidential candidates, they should remain civil and avoid attacking one another, so as not to hurt the progressive movement. They also discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters.
Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win.
The description of that meeting is based on the accounts of four people: two people Warren spoke with directly soon after the encounter, and two people familiar with the meeting.
That evening, Sanders expressed frustration at what he saw as a growing focus among Democrats on identity politics, according to one of the people familiar with the conversation. Warren told Sanders she disagreed with his assessment that a woman could not win, three of the four sources said.
Sanders denied the characterization of the meeting in a statement to CNN.
"It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win," Sanders said. "It's sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren't in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016."
Warren's communications director Kristen Orthman declined to comment.
These previously unreported details from the two senators' private meeting shed new light on the careful efforts that Warren and Sanders appear to have made to manage their friendship and political rivalry even before the 2020 race was officially underway. From the start, even as both candidates were determined to capture the Democratic nomination, they were also keenly sensitive to the risk that their rivalry could divide the progressive movement.
The conversation also illustrates the skepticism among not only American voters but also senior Democratic officials that the country is ready to elect a woman as president, several years after one clinched a major political party's nomination for president for the first time. Many Democrats believe sexism played a role in Hillary Clinton's defeat in the 2016 general election, and voters say they are torn about whether to try again to put a woman in the White House in 2020.
The revelation that Sanders expressed skepticism that Warren could win the presidency because she is a woman is particularly noteworthy now.