She didn't do that, though. She said he didn't think a woman could win. People here have said the same thing. It doesn't make them sexist - it just means they might think a bunch of voters are sexist.
You could say the same about saying Hillary is not qualified to be President. Or Pete holding fundraisers. Or billionaires participating in campaigns. Or Warren having educated/affluent voters supporting her. Bernie has used all these things out of context to attack opponents and paint them as corrupt or unelectable or whatnot. For some reason, it seems to be fair game against everyone else but not for him.
Weaponizing an alleged snippet of a private conversation, when that snippet is otherwise counter to all available evidence seems very different to me. I get it: politics is a dirty business. To me, however, this just adds more fuel to my concern that Warren could not function as a uniter. She hasn't united people in the Senate. She's not uniting people in the DNC. She's not even uniting the far left. She always just gets to act smarter than everyone else in the room, and if that drives people apart, so be it. Blech. She's fallen to nearly a Steyer type level in my rankings, but I'm just one voter in a largely irrelevant state.
Labels of sexism or racism are an attack on deep rooted personal character. Stating that you have corporate interests at heart more than the average citizen is a populist message. Yes, Bernie stating that Billionaires are out of touch with the issues common Americans face is not an attack on the character of the individual. And those billionares candidates along with Hillary claim that Bernie is irrational with his policy proposals. To me those are fair lines of attack. Bernie claims that the other candidates value corporate interests too much for his taste and those other candidates claim that Bernie is naive and not pragmatic. Sexism and racism are far more serious accusations where you better have the receipts with proper context.
What evidence is it counter to, though? No woman ever has won the Presidency. Hillary just lost to Trump. Data suggests that women in genreal struggle more in winning executive roles (governor, etc) relative to legislative roles. It wouldn't be at all surprising to me if he expressed this. She took something he said out of context and used it in a campaign. That's basically what every political ad does. It's what Harris used against Biden in debate #1 that everyone raved about. The fact that it was a private conversation is meaningless to me - both Bernie and Warren are the ones that pride themselves on transparency and rail on other candidates saying things to donors behind closed doors - and use that as evidence of their possible corruption. As Nook said, if Bernie said it, and he has every opportunity to explain the context. It's not her job to explain it away for him. However, he hasn't gone that route - he's denying entirely (his advisors have tried to explain it away, but he hasn't). So then we're in position of judging which one of them is a liar. I agree with that - I don't think she's a great candidate and never have. I also think she's slimy, as we saw with her M4A waffling and wine cave stuff. I just think it's funny that progressives think their candidates are somehow morally superior than everyone else or should be teaming up and protecting each other, and they are having their bubble burst. These are all politicians and they are all trying to win an election. They'll go to the same lengths as everyone else. And let's not forgot the bigger context of all this - she released her attack *after* Bernie's campaign ended whatever weird non-aggression pact they had with his own campaign. I don't think Bernie gets to say "well I only violated our truce a little bit, so it's not fair you responded more harshly". Everything's fair game.
Thanks for the reply; we have a lot of agreement. Just want to clarify what I meant on this one point though: I meant the evidence is counter to the notion of what Bernie believes. His points are quite good. He tried to get her to run in the last election. Empirical evidence shows that a woman can get enough votes to become president, etc. There's just not any real empirical evidence that Bernie (whatever his warts) has any kind of anti-woman bias or similar. That's what I meant. Cheers.
She isn’t framing the discussion any particular way. Sanders had every opportunity to provide context if he said it. His position is that he never said it.
Stupid move on her part. She is right not to provide context or discuss it more than she has. Talking about this is a waste of time and distracting from 3 dozen things that are more important.
This is just stupid and petty from King. It would make sense if Warren interpreted that as Sanders saying a woman couldn't win. That isn't a lie. Petty little bickering like that is ridiculous. Bernie would do well to continue as he did in the debate. Stick with him not saying it and move on to something important.
This whole Bernie-Warren "scandal" is so lame. Like, really, who believes Bernie is misogynist and even if he did say he didn't think a woman could win that is just an opinion based on looking at the state of the country... it's not even necessarily a misogynistic statement... it's an opinion that doesn't make any sense either because as Bernie pointed out... Hillary Clinton definitely could have won.. she didn't but clearly the support was there... it just worked out that some states didn't go her way... but she won the popular vote by 3 million and got 65 million people to vote for her. But now everyone is all riled up and Warren had that frosty exchange with Bernie ... the 24 hour news cycle is going crazy with it... the lamest "scandal" *yawn*
The problem here is that there's actually nothing sexist about the statement even if he did make it. I'm sure plenty of people in 2008 thought a black person couldn't win either. They weren't racists. Warren didn't accuse Bernie of being sexist. If anything, she accused Bernie of thinking some voters are sexist.
Of course she did. Sanders operatives have been telling voters Warren cannot win. Warren leaked that Sanders said he didn’t believe a woman could win the presidency. Sanders had ample time to say that the discussion was taken out of context. His position is that he never said it. Voters can formulate their own opinions about whether he said it and if he did what importance it carries. I’m not holding her up as some clean as snow, but I really do not see it as shocking. It is not really any different than why Harris did at the beginning of this campaign.
I have an extremely hard time believing Mayor Pete will attract evangelicals and a chunk of the boomer population because he's gay. Therefore, I think it would be much harder for him to win the presidency over an equally-qualified straight man. That observation doesn't make me homophobic. I truly believe Sanders (along with most others) have expressed doubt as to a woman's viability after 2016, just as a black man's viability prior to 2008. The US isn't the standard-bearer for racial and gender inclusion. Warren and Klobuchar would readily admit that it's harder for a woman to win. It's a whole different argument if Sanders said "women are not, and will never be, qualified to run a country." I HIGHLY doubt Sanders said anything remotely similar to this. He's always been progressive on equal rights.
I think you are really overvaluing the impact of debates, when was the last debate you saw a candidate gain real traction.
Trump only won because of 80'000 votes between 3 states with a low democratic turn out. He has not gained any new voters. He is underwater in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, he is in danger of losing Florida and Arizona. Non of those metrics are good for Trump. People need to actually realize the actual metrics of why Trump won.
