I’m banking on this one, actually. It seems by far the most plausible.
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It’s possible Bernie is remembering the words , but Warren is remembering the gist. So Bernie doesn’t think he said what is obvious to any woman (like Elizabeth) who has had to fight her way to acceptance in a male-dominated profession.
Even this whole “clip” is about words versus meaning. No, he didn’t say “you’re a liar” on national television. OTOH, when someone says “this was my experience” and someone else is “it didn’t happen like that. Quote me or retract your statement!”, the are, in fact, insinuating that the first person is being less than honest. It’s an awful lot like the same persons who say “well, I have never used the word [slur] with xist intent, so how dare you, a member of x minority-power group call me xist for saying it.”
Isn’t it funny though that people insist that Warren’s fuck-ups on race are something she needs to do better (rightly), but it’s unpossible! that Bernie could fuck up on the gender front and needs to learn nothing, because he’s perfect.
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Entirely so. Of course, none of us were in the room. I don’t think either of them are liars, and I can see him being blinkered on these issues with regards to women in male-dominated professions. It’s depressing, but not really surprising.
This gets to one of things I’ve been thinking about this long ass election cycle… none of these candidates are going to be perfect and if we keep expecting that of them, and rejecting them when they do fuck up, we’re not going to get far. We need to push BOTH of them to improve and to push policies that we want to see in our society.
Which ever of them is the candidate (if it’s one of them and I hope it is), we need to keep up the pressure on specific issues where they have blind spots.
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I can easily imagine a conversation going down something like this:
S: Looks like we’re going to be facing off for the 2020 nomination next year.
W: Yep, looks that way.
S: Well, good luck! I just hope whoever wins can take down that clown in the general election.
W: Of course. It’s bound to get ugly.
S: Especially for a woman.
W: Excuse me?
S: I’m just saying, we all know Trump is going to use every dirty trick in the book, including exploiting sexism. That’s going to make things even harder for a woman candidate.
W: You’re saying a woman can’t win?
S: I’m saying we shouldn’t be naive about how this campaign is likely to play out.
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Gee I wonder why he’s that popular with gens y & z 
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So I’ve been thinking about this and imagining myself in Warren’s place. As a female politician with aspirations and ambitions, how would you recieve the revelation that your male peer believed that you didn’t have the chance of success based on your gender? How useful or helpful would it feel?
Even if he framed it as American sexism and not his per se- he is again stating that he isn’t interested in solving gender related issues and that he sees them as a hinderance to the democratic cause. I love Bernie, but the isn’t the first time that he has said or done things to demonstrate this.
I’ve also been thinking about how much more willing people are to overlook this comment than they would if it were race-related. If the tables were turned, and Warren had told Bernie that she thought “the country was to racist right now to elect a Jewish president, and here’s why” would have had a very different reception.
Edit: qualifier
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I see debating about who really said and remembered what as a distraction (like so must else in our politics).
This much is really not in dispute: A description of a private conversation that happened more than a year ago was leaked by the Warren campaign to a friendly news outlet, two days before the last debate before voting (and caucusing) starts. When asked about it, Warren indicated she considered the description to be accurate. After the debate, Warren accused Sanders of calling her a liar.
Warren didn’t have to do any of the above. To me it represents a kind of sleazy politics that I’m not going to support or vote for. I’m done with it, and I’m not going to be cowed into being silent about it by Trump-is-bad-we-have-to-be-unified-no-matter-what nonsense.
The way to beat Trump is to present a clear, principled alternative. Sanders beats Trump.
Absolutely. Even if Sanders laid it out like a strategic planning session, where he stated that it was going to be a “challenge” or an “uphill battle” and proceeded to point out the likely steps Trump would take against a woman candidate, and how to counter them, it would at least partly sound like discouragement. And in memory, it’s that feeling that sticks with us much longer than the words.
So Sanders remembers it as him being helpful, and Warren remembers it as him discouraging her from running.
That is all speculation (though no more so than the assertion that either candidate is lying, or that one or the other campaign “planted” it), but, as others have expressed so well, it is the most likely explanation given that both candidates are human.
ETA:
You don’t know that. None of us do. As has been pointed out, while Warren did not throw the people who reported it to CNN under the bus, she has been downplaying it from the moment it broke.
As for calling CN"How will you pay for it?"N a "friendly news outlet, huh? Just because they don’t have a media blackout on Warren the way they do on Sanders, doesn’t make them friendly. CNN has made it clear that Biden and Buttigieg are their chosen ones.
And every poll so far shows, so do Biden, Warren, and Buttigieg. At this point, my priority #1 is getting Sander or Warren to the nomination over the centrists. Then we can worry about Trump.
And one more edit:
@etpol01 I am happy to lend my voice to back you up, as I have done so here over and over again. but if you’re going to cite The fucking Hill for political analysis,
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That strikes me as an entirely proper response if the conversation transpired as she claimed, or if she honestly remembers the 2018 conversation that way. She didn’t even bring up the subject in public.
Warren’s statements are only inappropriate if she’s lying about the 2018 conversation. So are Bernie’s for that matter.
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We have no reason to think she did not remember it that way. It’s clear they both agree the conversation happened, at the very least, and that something along those lines was said. They have different takes on what it meant. I do hope they talk about it and come to terms on it, and issue a joint public statement so we can actually move the fuck on with our lives, given the stakes of this election.
It’s frustrating that so many people have just jumped to the conclusion that she’s lying about it… typical of how women are treated across the board.
Again, I’m supportive of Sanders, but I in no way believe he’s not prone to the exact same prejudices the rest of us are living in a sexist/racist society. I wish MORE men would look at their actions and examine them a bit more deeply in regards to their knee jerk reactions to women and the things we say.
[ETA] And I REALLY hope that Sanders does so, because we need to look forward to the election. I’d hate for us to end up with Biden or Buttigieg because of this.
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That part is not even disputed. CNN themselves said that it was leaked by the Warren campaign.
The part we don’t know is whether it was a leak or a plant. That is to say whether or not Warren signed off on it. If it was a leak, the best way for Warren to get out ahead of it would be to fire the people responsible, both to make it clear that it was actually a leak, and to stop them from doing more damage to her campaign.
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Unless they’ve changed their story, their exact words were, “according to four sources, two from inside the Warren campaign and two who have knowledge of the conversation but were not a part of it.” You have to be really careful with how CNN words things. The “two from inside the Warren campaign” could be anyone from her campaign manager to a guy who overheard something while fixing the plumbing. And it wasn’t an official release.
Also, when you have billionaire opponents like Steyer and Bloomberg in play, you have to bear in mind that even good people can be bought. To go Agatha Christie on it, who benefits the most? It’s not Warren and it’s not Sanders. It’s the centrists, especially the ones who are clawing for support.
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Right? I’m bloody sick of all this tedious, interminable speculation about something that’s ultimately indeterminable. Especially given that Warren has publicly de-escalated it and said that she doesn’t want to discuss it.
And here we are, in a thread on Sanders and the youth vote that’s been hijacked by this other topic! (Maybe this diversion should be forked into its own thread?)
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She didn’t say it in public, or at least not to be heard by the public. CNN went through their backup recordings later and found a mic that was still on. But that’s exactly what you say in private if you believe it.
More importantly, arguing about the candidates is good, but I’ve now seen hundreds of completely idiotic Bernie supporters on Twitter now spouting “#NeverWarren.” (And I hope people like @NoThisIsPatrick don’t mean “She’s lost my vote” for the general.) What the actual fuck? She is as close to Bernie as is possible to be possible on nearly every issue. Sure, you can take somewhere where there is daylight between them and make it your pet issue, but the idea that a person is now not going to help defeat Trump because democratic voters picked someone else is asinine, and highlights (1) their privilege that they are not among the millions of people who are actually getting harmed by Trump, and (2) their ignorance that their children won’t get harmed by global climate change.
I think Sanders is a good person, despite his supporters – I voted for him in 2016. I think Biden is not a great person, and I will donate to all his challengers, but guess what? If he is nominated I will do everything I can to get him elected, including donating and calling, because he sure as heck is a million times better than Trump.
Edit: While I’ve looked at many of the profiles of the people spouting “#NeverWarren” stuff, and they are genuine Bernie supporters, I also have no doubt that the Russian state trollies are in a tizzy whipping this up so that the Democratic party eats itself, and many supporters are being played by playing into this.
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It could also be merged to the 2020 Election thread.
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Frankly, CNN doesn’t have any more journalistic integrity or credibility than FOX news, and if Warren hadn’t confirmed this story I would have been more than happy to assume they made it up from whole cloth.
That said, those two sources in the campaign, to be privy to that kind of discussion, are much more likely to be people in positions of trust than someone who just overheard something, and I think the best way to move past this would be to fire them before they do any more damage to her campaign by going off on their own script.
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Firing staff for making truthful statements about something she shared with them could easily backfire, especially if she never specifically instructed them to keep it secret.
Warren might not be eager to turn that 2018 conversation into a major campaign issue but she probably doesn’t want to make it look like she’s punishing her own people for discussing the very real problem of sexist biases in politics.
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