Democratic candidates turn to personal attacks
INDIANOLA, Iowa — The race for the Democratic nomination burst into a multifront flurry of attacks and counterattacks Sunday, as the largely issue-driven contest veered personal just two weeks before the first vote.
The aggression came from multiple candidates on multiple fronts, with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and former Vice President Joe Biden sparring about Social Security while Sanders aides excoriated Biden for his record on race.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., criticized Mike Bloomberg for postponing the release of his financial disclosure statements, saying that the billionaire and former New York mayor is “trying to skip the democracy part of the election” and that voters won’t know of potential financial entanglements until after Super Tuesday.
It is all unfolding in the midst of a confrontation between Sanders and Warren over gender and electability, which continued to play out Sunday, when Sanders said he believed gender is an obstacle for any female presidential candidate.
The pent-up feuds are unspooling at an unpredictable moment, with a quartet of candidates essentially tied in Iowa and trying to mobilize two of the most energized portions of the Democratic electorate: suburban women and black voters.
These dynamics are playing out in multiple early-voting states, including in Iowa, where some 60% of likely caucusgoers still undecided, and South Carolina, with its heavily black population, in which polls show Biden out ahead.
“There’s still such a large group of undecideds, and everyone’s goal is to sway the undecideds into their camp,” said Tameika Isaac Devine, the influential mayor pro tem of Columbia, South Carolina.
It’s unclear how these aggressive attacks will play in a contest where candidates who launch negative attacks are often penalized in the polls.
One of the most fraught areas of debate has been over the role that gender should play as voters consider who would is best-positioned to defeat President Donald Trump. Warren has said Sanders told her in a private meeting in 2018 that a woman could not win, a charge that Sanders denied. After a heated exchange on the debate stage last week, in which he continued to contradict her account, Warren approached Sanders, didn’t take his outstretched hand, and said, “I think you called me a liar on national TV.”
Asked on Sunday if he thought gender was an obstacle for female candidates, Sanders replied, “The answer is yes.”
“But I think everybody has their own sets of problems,” he said. “I’m 78 years of age. That’s a problem . ... If you’re looking at Buttigieg, he’s a young guy, people will say, ‘Well, he’s too young to be president. You look at this one, she’s a woman.’ So everybody, you know, brings some negatives.”
Warren declined to engage in any further debate on the subject. Sanders has said Biden has too much “baggage” that the president could weaponize.