When the average voter thinks about the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, two names immediately come up: Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. For the past decade, these two powerhouses of the American left have been close friends staunch political allies in the Senate. Indeed, during the initial primary season back during 2015, there was a concerted effort to push Senator Warren into the presidential race as a challenger to Hillary Clinton. It wasn’t until she declined to run that Senator Sanders jumped into the race, paving the way for his historic campaign in 2016.
In today’s race for the White House in November 2020, many . While they ultimately differ in implementation, the two share many policy positions. These position overlaps range from a wealth tax, to offering free public college, to the progressive litmus test of Medicare for All. And until recently, the two candidates have had maintained a sort of non-aggression pact both on and off the debate stage. Although they both present a similar vision for the country, Sanders and Warren have mostly refrained from policy attacks on one another, opting instead to team up against the remaining moderates in the race.
However, recently that tentative alliance between the two camps has finally started to break down. Earlier this week, Politico reported on an apparently leaked memo sourced from a field organizer working for the Sanders campaign. The memo gained national attention for including a response script for supporters of Elizabeth Warren, categorizing them as ” highly-educated, more affluent people” and asserting that the Senator brings “no new bases into the Democratic Party”.
This tension was brought to a whole new level after a CNN report dropped on Sunday night about a conversation between the two senators in 2018. According to sources listed in the CNN article, Sanders told Warren that he didn’t believe a woman could defeat . Sanders himself has denied these comments, whereas Warren has doubled down on the assertion but also appealed for an easing of tensions. This came to a head during last night’s 7th Democratic Debate. By the end of the night, the post-debate displayed a testy exchange by the podiums where Warren appeared to snub a handshake from the Vermont Senator. With this break finally emerging, one can only watch to see if further escalation will arise before the Iowa caucuses on February 3rd.
