Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders Are, Actually, Here to Make Friends

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

Either way, when asked, Warren told Cooper, “Bernie and I have been friends forever, long before I ever got involved in politics, I went up to Vermont and did town halls with Bernie. I’ve given Bernie much of my work when the housing crash was coming. So I’m always glad to be anywhere with Bernie.”

Then during the second debates, progressives got their wish. The line-ups were announced, and Warren and Sanders were chosen for the same night. And how did the two fair on stage together? They were teammates, shoring up against all the other candidates who came at their plans. Warren nodded along as Sanders talked about the health care industry. At one point, after Warren spoke about trade deals, Sanders told the audience, “Elizabeth is absolutely right.” And they seemed to sneak each other small glances while the others talked on and on about how wrong they were. Warren and Sanders were, in essence, the Jim and Pam of the Democratic race.



It's obviously not that Sanders and Warren are secretly in love with each other and waiting for the end of season 3 to finally start dating. But rather, in the crazy, confusing world that is the 2020 race, they seem to be on the same page—or at least more of the same page than anyone else. (Again, did I mention the small glances?)

(snip)

BuzzFeed News similarly reported after the debate: “Few really expected Warren and Sanders, the highest-polling candidates in the first of two Democratic debates this week, to go after each other here in Detroit. The two senators, both dominant and at ease onstage, instead worked in lockstep at points to bat back moderate critics, even as moderators attempted to incite a conflict between the two big-name progressives.

(snip)

https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a28612663/elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders-friendship-2020/

Kudos to Bernie and Elizabeth.

[sheshe2]

1. Link please.

[highplainsdem]

3. It's from Elle magazine:

https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a28612663/elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders-friendship-2020/

[sheshe2]

6. Thank you.

[Uncle Joe]

5. Got it,

thanks for the heads up.

[sheshe2]

9. Welcome.

During the first night of the 2020 Democratic debates, Senator Elizabeth Warren stood alone. Up there on that stage in Miami, there were other talked-about candidates, sure (Beto O’Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker), but none that were polling as high as her. She ended the night a clear star.

https://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/a28612663/elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders-friendship-2020/

Love my Senator Warren. She is a brilliant, dynamic woman.

[jimlup]

2. Go Liz and Bernie!

How about a Warren-Sanders ticket with Liz as President!

[highplainsdem]

4. Warren and Sanders look extremely uncomfortable in that photo.

[Uncle Joe]

8. Eye of the beholder, I see determination and resolve.

[Princetonian]

13. I see that too. Both know these debates are a horse-and-pony show.

[highplainsdem]

7. They've had a non-aggression pact since last December:

From New York magazine in June:


http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/06/sanders-and-warren-had-a-non-aggression-deal-is-it-over.html

When Elizabeth Warren hosted Bernie Sanders at her place in Washington for a private meeting late on the second Wednesday of December, both senators finally came clean with what was, by that point, obvious but unspoken. They were almost certainly going to run for president. Neither tried dissuading the other — they’d long been allies on Capitol Hill, a political friendship more than a deep personal one, though little like the rivalry that many on the outside assumed. But they did make one agreement, multiple senior Democrats briefed on the conversation confirmed to New York: Warren and Sanders would not go after each other directly on the campaign trail. That’s not what they wanted 2020 to be about.

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 this was the second rapid escalation and cleanup of the month. On June 7, U.S. News & World Report published a story quoting an anonymous Sanders adviser hacking at Warren’s prospects: “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.” After it appeared, Faiz Shakir texted Kristen Orthman, his former colleague in Harry Reid’s office. This doesn’t reflect Bernie’s thoughts, or mine, or the campaign’s official position, Shakir, now Sanders’s campaign manager, told Orthman, now Warren’s communications director and one of her closest advisers.

This was true: Sanders himself, true to form, only reads polls when his closest aides shove them in front of him, and he’s far more preoccupied with his own campaign’s social media metrics than the narrative that Warren is surging. But at least one of Sanders’s advisers had, in fact, felt strongly enough about Warren’s political threat to the Vermonter to make some noise. Others were starting to let their annoyance with the new “Warren rising” commentary be known with not-so-veiled tweets about how to interpret the polling, and others still were questioning internally why Sanders was choosing to give his big speech about defining democratic socialism now, in mid-June, when it would obviously be read as an acknowledgement of his fellow progressive’s new strength.

-snip-

More on their non-aggression pact, from CNN before the last debates:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/28/politics/bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren-detroit-debate-progressives/index.html

[sheshe2]

10. Thank you!

Great article.

[highplainsdem]

11. You're welcome! There are two articles linked there. (Just checked to make sure I had the links

to both, since I screwed up a link in another post earlier today, linked to another page on the same site.) I'd remembered reading about their non-aggression pact and fortunately was able to find the articles again.

[sheshe2]

15. I remember something about that...

With so much going on it slipped my mind. We shall see if the pact holds.

[Princetonian]

12. Last week, I noted Bernie's defense of "Elizabeth" and wrote Bernie ❤️ Liz.

I like both of them very much. Bernie is a mensch and Elizabeth is classy and brilliant.

Neither of them is a scheming bullsh*tter who would try to kneecap a longtime friend.

[Uncle Joe]

14. Well said Princetonian.

[highplainsdem]

18. I hope you're right. I have to admit that when I heard that Sanders adviser David Sirota said a

couple of months ago that Bernie was well positioned to win a brokered convention

Link to tweet

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/448291-top-sanders-adviser-says-brokered-convention-definitely-possible

I wondered if Sanders supporters are planning to insist at the convention that Sanders has more of a right to leadership of the progressive wing of the party than Warren has, which would make her almost a proxy for him to claim more support than he has on his own.

Non-aggression pact or not, I really can't see either of them stepping aside in favor of the other, or their supporters going along with it if they did.

Warren has been gaining support, but apparently more at Sanders's expense than Biden's. So there's likely to be some power struggle eventually between Warren and Sanders, unless one does simply decide to step aside.

Or unless they decide to form a ticket, and then I can't see either of them agreeing to be VP.

[Nanjeanne]

16. One of my fav videos of the two from 2017

&feature=share

[Uncle Joe]

17. Thanks for the addition Nanjeanne.