2020 Democratic Primaries

Did Bernie Sanders Just Subtweet Elizabeth Warren?

Sanders’s campaign says its finger-wagging tweet was about centrist Democratic groups like Third Way, not his progressive rival. But the underlying truth for the Sanders campaign is that its ideological ally is gaining ground.
Bernie Sanders
By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Getty Images.

On Wednesday, Bernie Sanders tweeted a more or less typical anti-establishment attack: “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 big banks, taking on drug companies and raising wages is the real threat to the billionaire class.” The hang-up? The tweet linked to a Politico story about a recent conference held by Democratic centrist group Third Way, the headline of which read, “Warren emerges as potential compromise nominee.”

The story itself described how conference attendees are warming to the idea of Elizabeth Warren, whose policies Third Way once called “disastrous for Democrats.” The endorsements from people like Dan Gerstein, a former speech writer to übercentrist Joe Lieberman, reflect her growing popularity both in the crowded primary field, and as an alternative choice to that old, frightening socialist bogeyman from Vermont. “What Warren has tapped into is that to most Democrats, it’s not about ideology [or] liberalism—it’s about the economy’s out of balance,” Gerstein said, adding that he appreciated Warren’s pro-business approach. “She’s doing it in a way that doesn’t suggest she’s a socialist or she wants to kind of blow up the economy”—a dig at Sanders if there ever was one.

As Sanders’s tweet began to make the rounds, his campaign rushed to clarify that it had been aimed not at Warren, but at “centrist Democrats like Third Way,” whose executive vice president of public affairs, Matt Bennett, declared last October that he would support any Democratic nominee with “the exception [of] Senator Sanders. We’re open to everybody except for him.” Sanders followed up by saying that he was “committed to supporting the nominee” before launching into another attack on Third Way. To some, however, the backtrack rang hollow. “This would make sense as an explanation if the piece were about Third Way Democrats saying they want ‘anybody but Bernie.’ But the piece is actually about various establishment Democrats saying they really like Elizabeth Warren,” noted Pod Save America host Jon Favreau.

It’s impossible to divine the true intentions behind Sanders’s tweet. But it touched a nerve for a reason. As the primary barrels on, observers predict it’s only a matter of time before the Warren and Sanders camps are forced to distinguish themselves from each other—a necessity that could easily play out by way of Twitter potshots. Moreover the underlying truth for the Sanders campaign is that its ideological ally is gaining ground. On Wednesday Monmouth released a poll showing that when it comes to whom Democrats consider electable, Warren now leads Sanders by a point, 15 to 14—a five-point jump from May that places her second behind Joe Biden. What’s more, Warren is drawing most of her support from self-identified liberal Democrats: 25% said they would vote for her, while only 17% swung for Sanders. As the Monmouth University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray pointed out, the numbers show Warren is consolidating inside the left, not among centrists. “Not to say she can’t get centrist voters. It’s just not happening yet,” he said, describing the Politico story as “anecdotal.”

So far the Sanders campaign has handled the fallout by knuckling into Third Way. After all, attacking the organization, which progressives have long disdained for its shadowy corporate backers and milquetoast approach to societal ills, is a predictable stance for a candidate who challenged Hillary Clinton over her alignment with the group’s values in 2016. Sanders’s perceived Warren swipe, meanwhile, has gone unaddressed. Sooner or later, though, the gloves are bound to come off, particularly if Warren is still perceived as a threat down the line. And indeed, New York’s Ed Kilgore predicts, she might be. “Elizabeth Warren quite possibly could become one of those Democratic politicians uniquely capable, with her combination of passion and intellect, of putting together a mind-bending coalition of supporters who dislike each other,” Kilgore notes. “If Joe Biden continues to become less and less plausible as a unifying figure for Democrats, someone needs to take his place. Why not Elizabeth Warren?”

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