All eyes were on Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren as the candidates took the stage at Tuesday’s Democratic debate, just one day after the progressive rivals made headlines for Sanders’ alleged 2018 comment to Warren that a woman could not beat President Donald Trump. Prior to the debate, Sanders vehemently denied having ever said that a woman could not win in 2020, while Warren subtly confirmed in a statement that he had. And when Tuesday’s debate turned to the discrepancy, it didn’t really clear anything up.
When asked if he had told Warren in 2018 that a woman could not be elected president, Sanders once again insisted, “I didn’t say it.” “Anybody who knows me, knows that it’s incomprehensible that I would think that a woman could not be President of the United States,” Sanders said. “Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by three million votes, how could anybody in a million years not believe that a woman could become President of the United States?” Moderator and CNN anchor Abby Phillip then turned to Warren, asking her, “What did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?” Warren, not giving up her side of the narrative, responded, “I disagreed.”
However, the disagreement did not lead to fireworks as some had expected. “Bernie is my friend and I am not here to try to fight with Bernie,” Warren said. Instead of lingering on the issue of who is telling the truth, Warren pivoted to the question of women’s electability, acknowledging that “it’s time for us to attack it head on.” She noted that candidates ought to be judged by their “winning records”—and pointed out that “the only people on this stage who have won every single election that they’ve been in are the women.” She added, “the only person on this stage who has beaten an incumbent republican any time in the past 30 years is me,” and emphasized the need for a candidate “who will excite all parts of the Democratic party, bring everyone in, and give everyone a Democrat to believe in.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, the only other female candidate onstage, also made the case for her own electability, emphasizing that in order to win, “you have to be competent, and you have to know what you’re doing.” Both she and Warren also pointed out the power of women candidates and voters in the 2018 midterms, including gubernatorial wins for Democratic women in Michigan and Kansas. “Since Donald Trump was elected, women candidates have outperformed men candidates in competitive races,” Warren said. “Look, I don’t deny the question is there. Back in the 1960s, people asked, could a Catholic win. Back in 2008, people asked if an African-American could win. In both times, the Democratic party stepped up and said yes, got behind their candidate and we changed America. That’s who we are.”
Tuesday’s exchange between Warren and Sanders was emblematic of a largely cordial debate between the two leading progressives, despite fears that their simmering arguments could come to a head onstage. Their mutual restraint appears to represent a conscious decision on both senators’ parts to tamp down any signs of discord. After the initial blowup of the CNN story, both the Sanders and Warren campaigns have directed surrogates and volunteers to de-escalate their attacks against the other.