Bernie Sanders told Elizabeth Warren a woman can't win US presidency: Report
They are longtime friends in politics who are challenging each other to seek a nomination for the Democratic presidential candidate for this year’s election. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and his Massachusetts counterpart Elizabeth Warren are also among the top contenders in the Democratic fray and could see their rivalry going down to the wire.
Going back to December 2018, as the two veterans were preparing to join the race to beat President Donald Trump in 2020, they met at Warren’s condominium in Washington, according to The New York Times. Its report had confirmed then that the two senators told each other about their serious plans to enter the race.
According to the CNN that cited sources, the two septuagenarians had agreed on the condition that if they eventually faced each other as presidential candidates, they would abide by the law of civility and take care of the fact that the progressive movement is not hurt. On the occasion, Warren expressed confidence that she would be a strong candidate by presenting a strong case about the economy and earn broad support from women voters.
But Sanders’ response was a straight one and he said he did not believe a woman could win. The details of the meeting were based on the accounts given by four persons -- including two with whom Warren spoke to directly after her meeting with Sanders and two others who were also familiar with the meeting, the CNN report added.
On Monday, January 13, Warren said partly in a statement: “I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.” She also agreed to disagree with Sanders, who reportedly became frustrated with what he saw a growing focus on identity politics among the Democrats, one source was cited.
Sanders himself had lost to a woman presidential candidate in 2016
The Vermont senator, who himself lost to a woman candidate in Hillary Clinton in the primaries of the 2016 election, denied the report and called it “ludicrous”.
In a statement to CNN, he said: “It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win. It's sad that, three weeks before the Iowa caucus and a year after that private conversation, staff who weren't in the room are lying about what happened. What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016.”
Warren's communications director Kristen Orthman did not make any remark.