New reporting by Ryan Grim suggests an explanation of how the recent Sanders-Warren drama came to be. It's worth spelling out.
A conversation in 2018 ended with Warren thinking Sanders was saying that a woman couldn't win the election. (I imagine him emphatically warning about how awful Trump would be to her, as she was aware, and leaving his purpose unclear. You can vary the details.) It affected her deeply, and she told some people in DC what she thought he said shortly afterwards. And now those people, or some entity down the rumor mill, leaked it.
Neither campaign says they leaked it. Both must be right. Obviously, both need the other's voters to come over if they win, and this story disrupts that. It's two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, which register second choices, so alliances benefit both. This exactly the time to stick together.
When would they leak this, if they were going to? Maybe before Super Tuesday, when second choices won't register and alliances don't work, to break a panicked deadlock as Biden towers over them. But not now. It's the worst time. These people didn't get this far by missing the most obvious strategic dynamic concerning their campaigns. That all means it's the perfect time for an enemy to drop a bomb on them. It's right after the weird Bernie instructions-to-volunteers memo put both campaigns on edge, and right before the final pre-Iowa debate.
Warren is honest, and she's telling us what she honestly thinks Sanders said. It's easy to see why he couldn't convince her otherwise under these conditions. Recognizing that you completely misunderstood what an old friend said a year ago is hard enough when the two of you aren't running opposed Presidential primary campaigns two weeks before Iowa, with all the tensions, communication barriers, and reasons for mistrust that involves. They're competing for the most powerful position on Earth, surrounded by employees whose job is to help them defeat the other. And they have powerful enemies who want to split them apart.
In best-case scenarios, Bernie and Elizabeth overcome all this, discover their enemy, and vow never to be separated again. Obviously, that's unlikely. But supporters of either candidate, or both, would do well to push in that direction.
A conversation in 2018 ended with Warren thinking Sanders was saying that a woman couldn't win the election. (I imagine him emphatically warning about how awful Trump would be to her, as she was aware, and leaving his purpose unclear. You can vary the details.) It affected her deeply, and she told some people in DC what she thought he said shortly afterwards. And now those people, or some entity down the rumor mill, leaked it.
Neither campaign says they leaked it. Both must be right. Obviously, both need the other's voters to come over if they win, and this story disrupts that. It's two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, which register second choices, so alliances benefit both. This exactly the time to stick together.
When would they leak this, if they were going to? Maybe before Super Tuesday, when second choices won't register and alliances don't work, to break a panicked deadlock as Biden towers over them. But not now. It's the worst time. These people didn't get this far by missing the most obvious strategic dynamic concerning their campaigns. That all means it's the perfect time for an enemy to drop a bomb on them. It's right after the weird Bernie instructions-to-volunteers memo put both campaigns on edge, and right before the final pre-Iowa debate.
Warren is honest, and she's telling us what she honestly thinks Sanders said. It's easy to see why he couldn't convince her otherwise under these conditions. Recognizing that you completely misunderstood what an old friend said a year ago is hard enough when the two of you aren't running opposed Presidential primary campaigns two weeks before Iowa, with all the tensions, communication barriers, and reasons for mistrust that involves. They're competing for the most powerful position on Earth, surrounded by employees whose job is to help them defeat the other. And they have powerful enemies who want to split them apart.
In best-case scenarios, Bernie and Elizabeth overcome all this, discover their enemy, and vow never to be separated again. Obviously, that's unlikely. But supporters of either candidate, or both, would do well to push in that direction.
