I’m still pretty shook from last night. Like, obviously every debate has corporate framed questions and how will you pay for it stuff but I just cannot believe the audacity of the CNN crew from start to finish.
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Holy fuck.
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The context of the initial report specifically mentioned a woman in race vs Trump, so unless we’re going with the theory that he’ll make himself dictator for life and live to be 100, the alleged statement can only refer to the 2020 race. If other reports are more ambiguous, that still doesn’t support Chris’s emphatic statement that “that’s what she claims he said.”
Did she say something that was sort of LIKE that, but not that exactly? Maybe, but that would already mean that Chris is exaggerating what was said, which is the simplest explanation here. I think Chris probably sincerely believes that she said something pretty close to what he’s accusing her of.
Here is part of what I posted in the primaries thread:
This from Salon describes what I think is the most likely scenario:
But the truth is, as philosopher Kate Manne explained on Twitter, there’s a space where both interpretations of this conversation have legitimacy. On one hand, it’s true that a female candidate would face an uphill battle against the ingrained sexism of the electorate, not to mention the vicious misogyny of Donald Trump. So it makes sense that Sanders sees these comments merely as “telling it like it is,” even if one wonders why he seemed to feel that Warren needed telling, when she’s got a lifetime of direct experience.
On the other hand, it’s also true that men often use the “it’s not me, it’s the world” cover to discourage women’s dreams and ambitions, and often for self-serving reasons. Many women have had the experience of a man who, because he likes having someone else do the housework or because he feels his ego is threatened, “informs” a woman in his life that she must scale back her goals because of sexism — not his sexism, of course, but you know, someone else’s.
So it’s entirely possible that both things are true and no one is lying: Warren heard him say a woman couldn’t win this election, and Sanders felt he was just telling it like it is. This would also explain why Warren is insisting this is no big deal, as his comments were, at worst, a bit of self-serving mansplaining rather than a real effort to shoot down her campaign.
This explanation fits what I perceive as the character of both candidates.
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Well the Warren statement makes reference to discussions about Trump in the first paragraph, so I guess that’s the context? The NYT headline is “Warren Says Sanders Told Her A Woman Could Not Win The Presidency”. Period.
You know what would help with clarifying that? If Warren told us exactly what Bernie actually said, in context, rather than her paraphrased interpretation of it. It apparently made a big impact on her, so she should be able to have a rough go at it. Right now I have no clue what Bernie said, I only know what Warren thinks he meant.
Edit: Like her statement simply says “I thought a woman could win; he disagreed” but that can’t literally be true. Like I’m pretty sure him saying “literally zero percent chance, logical impossibility” did not happen. “He disagreed” isn’t even a paraphrase, it’s a two word summary of what she thought he meant.
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Yea, I was hoping I’d wake up and shrug it off but I’m still beyond frustrated. It further emphasizes how Bernie and the rest of the field truly do not belong in the same party, since that party is currently completely aligned with the interests of the same people moderating the debates and Bernie is trying to fight those forces.
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Your citation for “Warren specifically said it applied to all future Presidential races” is a NYT headline that still doesn’t even say that?
Wait, I think ChrisV is right and I’m back on Team I think I’m Taking Crazy Pills.
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No, if you/we’re correct it means we don’t even know what Warren thinks he meant.
p.s. No, scratch that, we’ve both gone insane. It’s obviously 2020 but people are behaving as if it’s Ever because holy fuck this reaction to 2020 would be insane.
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Trump/2020: Fine, ok, uncontroversial analysis, a non-story.
Ever: Holy shit insanity.
Well having gone back and read the context in which Bernie’s words apparently occurred, I guess it is supposed to mean just against Trump. But just reading the summary of what was said, it’s not clear, and the reason it’s not clear is that at no point has anyone tried to provide an accurate rendition of what Bernie said. Like try to game the conversation out in your head. Is this what happened?
Warren: I’m thinking of running for Prez, do you think a woman can beat Trump?
Sanders: Absolutely not, zero fucking percent chance.
…and then what, Warren dropped it there and they moved on to other concerns? It’s completely implausible but that’s what Warren’s statement, read straightforwardly, says happened. If there was more to it than that, like additional context or nuance or whatever, then what was it? The executive summary isn’t good enough.
A: We can all agree misogyny played a role in Hillary losing and 2016 showed that USA#1 is still tragicomically behind the times with electing female heads of state. This much is obvious even if you view HRC negatively.
B: I agree, it is both tragic and comic. I fear the same fate will befall a female candidate in 2020.
A: How dare you say misogyny will play a role in a woman losing in 2020?!? That’s misogyny!
Like, just kill me now. You people too. Kill us now. A tsunami. I want to see a ten thousand foot wave blot out the sun.
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Sorry but it’s just beyond obvious that Sanders said something like “I think it’d be very difficult for a woman to beat Trump because he will maxbox misogyny etc” and that Warren chose to hear “very difficult for a woman to beat Trump” and got annoyed that it sounded like he was suggesting a woman wasn’t up to the job. I know that’s not very #believewomen of me but it’s by a mile the most plausible explanation for the whole controversy. As long as the Warren camp won’t provide a rough rundown of what was actually said, as opposed to a summary of what she felt he meant, then we’re all going to have to make up our own versions, and that’s mine.
Edit: Sanders may actually have gone as far as to say “I don’t think a woman can beat Trump” or words to that effect but it’s still not the same thing if you shear it of context.
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They don’t want Bernie to win. They run on advertising and those sponsors don’t want to see somebody that despises them becoming POTUS.
No anti-capitalist will ever get a fair shake on cable news or any television news for that matter.
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Even this doesn’t pass the smell test. Hillary was an awful candidate and only lost by like 50k in 3 states. Hell if they re-did Hillary v Trump tomorrow, Hillary is a favorite. Of course Bernie knows that.
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It’s clear that:
- Bernie didn’t say what he’s being accused of saying
- Warren is running with it because she knows it’s her only chance to win
- It’s unlikely to weaken Bernie’s standing in the primary, though it might stunt his growth as people drop out
I hope he runs as third-party if he gets ratfucked. Democrats need to pay and honestly, America needs more than two parties. Fucking Czech Republic has around a dozen for 10 million people. America has two for over 300 million.
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Bernie running third party does nothing for America but guarantee 4 more years of Trump. Two party dominance isn’t changing unless we change how votes are counted.
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Duverger’s Law is a real thing though.
At one of these debates someone should ask the candidates if they favor changing
that.
Again, no it’s not. Stop your shit posting if you’re not going to take the time to read what’s actually been said and/or think critically about it. This is the supposed rendition of what was said:
“They also discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: She could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters.”
“In relaying to Ms. Warren the challenges he thought her campaign would face, he said not only that President Trump would weaponize sexism, but also that such attacks would preclude a woman from being elected, according to the private accounts.”
Facts not in dispute: Warren and Sanders had a private dinner in late 2018 to discuss the 2020 election.
Bernie’s version of events: “It’s 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… What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponize whatever he could.”
Warren’s response: “I thought a woman could win, he disagreed.”
So how I’m gaming the conversation out in my head is that it was a long conversation, it included the topic of sexism, and Bernie at best suggested that Trump would weaponize Warren’s gender against her. I think this is a reasonable take on what happened because Bernie confirmed it, as opposed to your simplistic conversation based on nothing at all, presented I assume as a strawman to suggest the only reasonable explanation is that Warren is a dirty fucking liar.
How I also imagine the conversation playing out is that Bernie did in fact suggest that her gender would be a liability, if not explicitly then suggestively, because (1) that is Warren’s interpretation of the conversation, (2) Bernie would have motive to discourage her from running since he was clearly planning on running his own campaign at that point, and (3) when you’re having a dinner conversation with a woman about running for President, and by your own admission you suggest that sexism will be weaponized, at a minimum you’re being extremely insensitive to the implications of what you’re saying.
Now can we also talk about how Bernie’s response to this has been absolute shit? “I’ve been championing women for 30 years,” “Here’s another candidate who has little in common with Warren besides gender who almost won.” Say what you will of Bernie outside of this incident but this is the language oppressors use to handwave away their shitty behavior. Very reminiscent of men who couldn’t possibly be wife beaters, they’re such fine citizens, and this guy can’t be racist, he has a black friend. Warren’s been downright polite in her response to the excuses his campaign has been using to show Bernie must be the good guy in all this.
There is of course the unresolved criticism that this should never have leaked in the first place. I don’t know if Warren orchestrated it herself. She has motive, albeit a shitty one considering how this is playing out for her. There may be some dependencies between the two issues if you believe the entire thing is a poorly calculated and embellished political hit job, but we should be aware of the limits on the conclusions we can draw from that and avoid straight up conflating the two issues. Bernie had a meeting with Warren and discussed sexism in a way that could’ve made Warren feel like he was telling her she would lose to Trump because of her gender. These are facts confirmed by both sides, and any attempt to suggest that maybe something else happened instead is some straight up shit posting. If you’re doing it intentionally, stop gaslighting the forum, if you’re doing it unintentionally, educate yourself before posting further opinions.
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