The Warren-Sanders handshake is keeping us from discussing sexism - Vox - 0 views
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Perhaps it was an intentional snub and Warren didn’t want to shake his hand. It could also have been an awkward oversight akin to not noticing someone trying to give you a high-five or waving to someone only to realize they weren’t waving at you. It’s even less clear what they discussed.
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In some ways, all the attention heaped on this one moment was unsurprising, coming after several days of escalating tension between the two progressive leaders
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Making a handshake the biggest moment of January’s debate has drawn attention away from important things that informed it: narrowly, Sanders and Warren working hard to bury the hatchet in the name of advancing the progressivism they share, and broadly, conversations around the sexism inherent to questions of whether a woman can be president.
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Warren and Sanders have had a nonaggression pact throughout the campaign, but that truce was broken following a report from Politico’s Alex Thompson and Holly Otterbein that the Sanders campaign had given volunteers a script that attacked other candidates, including Warren.
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The Warren campaign responded to this by saying Sanders told Warren during a private meeting that he didn’t think a woman could win the White House in 2020. Sanders and his surrogates said the Vermont senator said no such thing. Warren and her surrogates said he did.
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But the peace and goodwill engendered by the debate itself was largely derailed — among the senators’ bases, at least — by the moment CNN captured after, when no handshake occurred.
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Obviously, this little moment is getting so much attention because the Iowa caucuses are now about two weeks away. Voting in New Hampshire comes directly after that, then contests in Nevada and South Carolina. In other words, time is running out.
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That hesitancy is reflected in polls on the issue, many of which show that individuals want — or at the very least have no problem with — a woman nominee, but that they don’t believe other voters feel the same.
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haven’t swayed voters in favor of the Minnesota senator. Instead, Biden, who has lost elections, and who does not have as strong a record of winning in Republican areas, is seen as Democrats’ best chance to beat Trump, according to recent polls. And it is Biden who leads nationally.
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In 2020, anything could happen: Trump enjoys the advantages of incumbency and the Electoral College system, but experts have said the Democratic base is incredibly energized and is expected to show a strong turnout. Respondents to polls may believe Biden has the best chance against Trump, but experts have told Vox that no research argues a woman would be destined to lose in November because of her gender.