Media Skewers ‘Sexist’ Sanders for Refusing to Bend the Knee

The media can’t forgive Bernie Sanders for refusing to “bend the knee” to Elizabeth Warren concerning her recounting of a now notorious December 2018 conference concerning the two, in which the Vermont senator allegedly claimed a girl could not be elected president.

On top of that, if you really do not concur with Sen. Warren’s model of situations, or if you point out her record of “embellishing,” you are a sexist and a misogynist just like Sanders. So tumble in line with the institution narrative, quick.

That is the obvious takeaway immediately after the media took off its fig leaf of journalistic impartiality at the seventh Democrat presidential debate in Iowa Tuesday.

Women make up about  70 percent of Sanders’ campaign leadership workforce. Young women truly make up a even bigger share of Sanders’s foundation than younger gentlemen do.

 During the discussion, CNN moderator Abby Phillips had this exchange:

Phillips: You’re stating that you hardly ever instructed Senator Warren that a female could not earn the election?

Bernie: Accurate.

Phillips: Senator Warren, what did you assume when Sanders stated a girl couldn’t win the election?

Warren: I disagreed. Bernie is my mate, and I am not listed here to test to struggle with Bernie.

This is “when did you halt beating your wife” level debate questioning from CNN. The concern is premised around  an anonymously-sourced tale CNN noted Monday describing a meeting in between Sanders and Warren in December 2018, where by the two agreed to a non-aggression pact of kinds. For the sake of the progressive motion, they reportedly agreed they would not attack each other all through the campaign:

They also mentioned how to most effective take on President Donald Trump, and Warren laid out two main good reasons she considered she would be a solid applicant: She could make a robust argument about the economic system and gain broad support from female voters. Sanders responded that he did not consider a female could gain.

In a statement to CNN, Sanders reported ahead of the discussion that’s not what took place at all.

“It is ludicrous to consider that at the same meeting wherever Elizabeth Warren advised me she was going to operate for president, I would notify her that a lady could not gain,” mentioned Sanders, chalking up the story to “staff who weren’t in the place … lying about what happened.”

“I considered a girl could earn he disagreed,” mentioned Warren in a assertion.

Cue CNN’s gladiatorial presidential debates.

Keen to strike all the appropriate female-electric power notes for the evening, Phillips adopted up by inquiring Sen. Amy Klobuchar the substantive plan problem, “what do you say to people today who say that a girl simply cannot gain this election?” and Warren gained cheers for a line about ladies efficiently profitable elections.

“Look at the adult males on this stage,” Warren mentioned. “Collectively, they have dropped 10 elections. The only people on this phase who have received just about every single election that they’ve been in are the females: Amy (Klobuchar) and me.”

Right after the discussion, media commentators roundly declared Warren the winner, and pundits attacked the pretty concept of questioning the veracity of Warren’s account.

Here’s CNN, just soon after the debate:

Chris Cillizza, CNN politics reporter: Sanders, glimpse, a great deal of it is particular desire. I did not assume his response vis-a-vis Elizabeth Warren and what was claimed in that discussion was especially fantastic. He was largely dismissive. “Well, I didn’t say it. Everyone knows I didn’t say it, we do not need to have to communicate about it.”

Jess McIntosh, CNN political commentator: And I feel what Bernie forgot was that this is not a he-claimed-she-said tale. This is a noted-out story that CNN was portion of breaking. So to have him just flat out say “no,” I think, was not nearly adequate to tackle that for the ladies viewing.

Joe Lockhart, CNN political commentator: And I can not imagine any woman looking at past evening and saying, I imagine Bernie. I consider men and women believe that Elizabeth.

Van Jones, CNN political commentator: This was Elizabeth Warren’s night time. She needed to do something and there was a banana peel sitting out there for Bernie to step on when it came to his opinions about gals. I feel Bernie stepped on it and slid all around. She knocked that moment out of the park.

But is not this story the literal definition of a he-stated, she-mentioned story?

The accusation may well have appeared in a “reported-out tale,” but these are its sources:

“The description of that meeting [between Sanders and Warren in December 2018] is primarily based on the accounts of 4 people: two individuals Warren spoke with immediately shortly right after the encounter, and two individuals familiar with the conference.”

Is it sexist to dilemma why this story would occur out on the eve of the debate—after months of the two candidates getting along as they had promised to do, when Sanders pulls in advance of Warren in polling?

If CNN were being neutral, they would have described the sourcing and timing of the tale, and Warren’s fraught background with the real truth. Warren has shown she is ready to notify lies in get to get a task she wants, like when she claimed to have Indigenous American blood. She has also claimed she go  fired from her training career for being pregnant, even when records contradict that. She’s explained her children went to community colleges, not non-public types, even though that is not real possibly.

In addition to Warren’s tenuous romance with the real truth, there also happens to be online video from the 1980s the place Sanders claims a lady could be president.

“In my look at a female could be elected president of the United States.” — Bernie Sanders, 1988pic.twitter.com/WJd847DdmA

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1988,@BernieSanders, backing Jackson:”The real issue is not whether you’re black or white, whether you’re a woman or a man *in my view, a woman could be elected POTUS* The real issue is are you on the side of workers & poor ppl, or are you on the side of big money &corporations?” pic.twitter.com/VHmfzvyJdy

— Every nimble plane is a policy failure. (@KindAndUnblind) January 13, 2020

Yet, you wouldn’t know any of that, listening to the coverage of the debate, where commentators waxed poetic about Warren’s “win” and how any attacks on her predilection for lying were misogyny itself.

Over on Sirius XM POTUS channel Tuesday, an executive producer on Chris Cuomo’s show (Chris Cillizza filling in) said that the suggestion from Sanders surrogates that Warren’s staff knows she is prone to “embellish” things is “a misogynistic thing to put out there … like, ‘oh well, look at the quaint housewife, she is prone to embellishment.’”

The New York Times also embraced the questionable sexism premise, writing that in“a conflict heavily focused on which candidate is telling the truth, Ms. Warren faces a real risk:  Several studies have shown that voters punish women more harshly than men for real or perceived dishonesty… If voters conclude that Ms. Warren is lying, it is most likely to hurt her more than it will hurt Mr. Sanders if voters conclude that he is lying.”

Over at Vox:

The over-the-top language — likening criticism of an opponent to a knife in the back— was familiar. When powerful men have been accused of sexual misconduct in recent years, they and others have often complained that they’ve been “killed” or that their “lives are over” … The situation between Warren and Sanders is very different from those that have arisen as part of the Me Too movement. But the exaggerated language around a woman’s decision to speak out is strikingly similar.

This sort of language is an insult to all women who have had to deal with sexism and misogyny, both in the workplace and in society, and this need to glom on to any aggrieved group, no matter how ill-fitting, is getting really stale.

Meanwhile, former Hillary Clinton and Obama Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri tweeted, “I just rewatched the footage from last night and found it odd that Sanders never says ‘a woman could beat Trump.’ His formulation is he believes a ‘woman could be president.’ It’s only when he speaks about his own abilities that he talks about what it takes to ‘beat Trump.’”

This is the old sexist standby: “I’d vote for a woman, just not that woman.” 

What is it that these people want, for Sanders to endorse his opponent, simply because she is female? Isn’t that the very definition of sexism? By virtue of the fact that Sanders is still in this race, he obviously thinks he can do a better job as president than Warren. There isn’t going to be another presidential race against Trump, but Palmieri still essentially wants Sanders to say, in a five-way race three weeks before the Iowa caucus, “Warren can beat Trump in November.”

The question here should be whether this is a person that we can trust, not whether the candidate is male or female. Does this person have a history of being honest, or do they have a history of lying?

No wonder Sanders was complaining  about liberals’ obsession with identity politics. As an elderly, Jewish socialist, he might be an endangered species, but he’s one minority group that intersectional politics has no use for.