Sanders/Warren Alliance Falling Apart, Report Says

According to a long form Friday report in New York Magazine, a pact between Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), both presidential candidates, appears to be falling apart.

“Warren and Sanders would not go after each other directly on the campaign trail. That’s not what they wanted 2020 to be about,” the magazine said.

The pair – long considered to be legislative allies on Capitol Hill – made this arrangement upon deciding that both would run for president, which neither attempted to dissuade the other from doing. But early in Democratic Party primary, the pact appears strained.

From The New Yorker:

Half a year of campaigning later, with the pair running second and third in the Democratic race to take on Donald Trump, that arrangement held. Then, on Wednesday, Politico shared a story on Wednesday by tweeting, “Centrists are coming around to Elizabeth Warren as an alternative to Bernie Sanders,” and Sanders responded by retweeting it from his account, noting, “The cat is out of the bag. The corporate wing of the Democratic Party is publicly ‘anybody but Bernie.’ They know our progressive agenda of Medicare for All, breaking up the big banks, taking on drug companies and raising wages is the real threat to the billionaire class.” Political Twitter perked up — here was a real shot in the war so many had so long expected — until Sanders went on CNN a few hours later to tell Chris Cuomo, “That tweet was not about Elizabeth Warren, at all.”

But the Twitter scrum isn’t the first bump on the road between the campaigns. U.S. News & World Report published an early June story wherein an anonymous Sanders adviser claimed that Warren could not possibly win the general election.

“Warren fundamentally fails a basic threshold question: Can she beat Trump? Look at the general election polling. She does the worst of all candidates tested. That’s the DNA test debacle. It just fundamentally killed her. People want somebody who can beat Trump. She loses that argument,” the advisor reportedly said.

The Sanders campaign rushed to clarify for Warren’s camp, making it clear that the position of the advisor did not reflect that of the entire campaign.

The pair is now running second and third in major primary polls. Some polls have Warren leading Sanders, some reflect the opposite. Former vice president Joseph R. Biden Jr. still leads the polls despite a turbulent week.


Follow Peter D’Abrosca on Twitter: @pdabrosca

Like Peter D’Abrosca on Facebook: facebook.com/peterdabrosca

Preorder Peter D’Abrosca’s Book: Enemies: The Press vs. The American People”

Our Latest Articles