Bernie Sanders supporters are questioning Warren’s progressive bona fides — and for the first time, the campaign is going along with it.
As Sunday turned to Monday, Briahna Gray, national press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, posted a series of criticisms of Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Twitter.
Gray’s comments in themselves were not out of the ordinary. Sanders campaign aides are notoriously feisty and independent on social media ― a marked contrast with the boringly disciplined etiquette of other campaigns’ staffers. The much-vaunted détente survived two nationally televised debates in which the two contenders shared a stage. They eschewed the moderators’ efforts to drive a wedge between them in favor of teaming up against moderate rivals.
Gray’s remarks follow more implicit steps in this direction by other Sanders lieutenants. Amid left-wing uproar over the Working Families Party’s endorsement of Warren, top Sanders spokesman Mike Casca gave his blessing to calls for the WFP to release a breakdown of its endorsement vote that would show whether the group’s national delegates overrode the will of pro-Sanders dues-paying members and activists.
The campaign aides’ jabs at Warren, however tame and haphazard, provide an official imprimatur to a broader argument that Sanders surrogates and partisans have been making more openly for some time: that Warren’s progressive bona fides are questionable and that she is a flawed general election candidate. Below is a summary and explanation of their various claims against her.
“My administration will also take whatever legal steps it can to stop states from preempting local efforts to enact tenant protection laws,” she wrote in a Medium post outlining her housing plans. As a result, a video of Warren’s exchange with the activist in Iowa posted by California-based labor organizer Brett Banditelli sparked biting criticism of Warren on social media. For example, Cea Weaver, who helped pass New York state’s new rent regulations, suggested that Warren’s lack of interest in national rent control reflected an elitist reliance on economic orthodoxy.“Bernie says yes to [national] rent control [because] we can, we should, & we must,” she wrote.
“She’s simultaneously trying to tap into the activist energy and enthusiasm that activists have spent years building for single-payer and Medicare for All … without forfeiting any of the plausible deniability or the support of people who wouldn’t want to go that far,” Natalie Shure, a member of the Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, told HuffPost.
Susan Sarandon, an Oscar-winning actor and prominent Sanders campaign surrogate, caused a stir in August when she took a veiled swipe at Warren while introducing Sanders at a campaign event in Iowa. “No ones [sic] been more consistent then [sic] Bernie for justice,” he tweeted on Monday night. “Warren was a republican as an adult - glad she figured out supply side economics was a hustle - but come on.”
Krystal Ball, a co-host of Hill TV’s digital show “Rising,” made the case on Monday that Warren’s appeal is stronger among more educated and successful Democrats because her focus on “plans” appeals to their meritocratic faith in common-sense problem-solving. Warren’s failure to resonate with working-class voters despondent in the country’s institutions make Ball “terrified” that Warren will lose to Trump, the pro-Sanders commentator said.
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