Liz Plays Hardball

Before the campaign began Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders agreed to be polite to each other. Liz lied and it came to a head last week.

First there were two stories leaked to the press. One was that Sanders's campaign staff were presenting her as the candidate who mainly appealed to elitists and could not expand the party while Bernie was attracting first-time voters. The story may or may not be true. It sounds like how Bernie's supporters think. I did not see any attribution for the story but I'm betting it came from the Warren campaign as a way of signaling that Bernie attacked first so any counter-attacks by Liz are fair.

The second story is that at a private dinner in 2018 Bernie told Liz that a woman could not win the 2020 election. This was the same dinner that Warren told Sanders that she was running. CNN broke the story and, by coincidence, they also hosted the February debate.

Part-way through the debate Sanders was asked why he told Warren that a woman could not win in 2020. He denied saying it and pointed to his long record of supporting women candidates. He was asked again if he denied saying it and he stated that he uncategorically denied it. The moderator then asked Warren how she felt when Sanders asked that question. That caused a stir in the audience since the moderator just called Sanders a liar. CNN piled on by asking Amy Klobuchar what she thought when someone said that a woman could not win in 2020.

At the end of the debate Warren walked over to Sanders. He reached out to shake her hand and she pulled her hand back, making a fist then holding it with the other hand. She was caught on a hot mic saying that Sanders had called her a liar on nation-wide TV. He was incredulous so she repeated it. He threw up his hands, said something about "Don't do this" followed by "Do you want to do this?" and ended up walking away.

I'm sure that Warren orchestrated all of this with the help of CNN. Or maybe CNN orchestrated it with Warren's help. Either way, Warren realized that her support was shrinking and Bernie's was growing and she had to do something. CNN has a record of being establishment Democrat and Warren is much closer to the establishment than Sanders. There's no doubt that the moderators set Bernie up, asking him something they knew he would deny then asking follow-up questions in a way to show that they did not believe Bernie's denials.

Later CNN tried to insist that this was not a he said/she said situation because it had been reported on. But the only confirmation for the story came from four of Warren's staff who said that she told them about it. We don't really know if Bernie said it, if Warren made it up, or if Bernie said something about how difficult it would be for a woman to run against Trump and she took it the wrong way. What we do know is that CNN took sides, believing Warren's version and rejecting anything Bernie said.

Warren's reaction was interesting. CNN called Sanders a liar but she attacked him for calling HER a liar. Yes, if he'd thought about it he'd have realized the original story came from her but CNN never expressed it that way. They never said, "Elizabeth Warren says you told her this, how do you respond?" So was Warren's outrage rehearsed? And why was CNN still recording what was said? Why hadn't they cut the mics when the debate ended? Did a director say, "Look, Warren's going over to Sanders. Turn the mic back on?" or did Warren know ahead of time that the conversation would be recorded and was the whole thing staged?

We don't know. We do know that CNN was fanning the flames by releasing the post-debate conversation.

This would not be the first time something was staged during a presidential debate. Remember, in 2016 Hillary Clinton walked across the stage and stood in front of Donald Trump then complained that he was following her around. And CNN fed at least one question to Hillary Clinton before one of her debates with Sanders.

Chances are that all of this will be wasted effort on CNN's part to revive Warren's candidacy and may be a factor in Trump's reelection. Sanders' supporters were correct that he brings in new voters to the Democratic party but they are there for him. If they feel that he was treated badly by the party then they will stay home on election day or vote for the Green candidate in protest.