“On the Holmes Front,” with Frank Holmes
The Democratic primary debate on Tuesday was a low-rated snooze-fest, but there was one moment the media couldn’t stop talking about: Elizabeth Warren’s charge that Senator Bernie Sanders told her a woman couldn’t be elected president.
But, as usual, there’s another story the media won’t touch: The reason Warren stooped to leaking this (obviously false) story in the first place.
The sexist smear was a Warren-CNN tag-team effort to put Bernie’s candidacy down for the count—and cover up the fact that Warren’s campaign is on the ropes.
Warren’s staffers pumped the story out to the media just before this week’s Democratic debate, the last one before the Iowa caucuses on February 3.
Bernie has been standing up as a populist who will represent “the people” against billionaire elites—but Warren has staked her role as the champion of woke ideology. Playing the sexism card would win her points with key Democratic voting blocs, like gender studies students.
CNN broke the story and then set Bernie back on his heels at the debate, too. After he denied he ever said these words, CNN’s Abby Phillip asked Warren, “Senator Warren, what did you think when Senator Sanders told you a woman could not win the election?”
Left-wing writer Matt Taibi called her actions “villainous,” “shameful,” and “as transparent a media ‘f— you’ as we’ve seen in a presidential debate.”
After their closing arguments, Warren confronted Sanders on a hot mic, angry that he called her a liar on national TV. Reporters played the video of their awkward post-debate face-off over and over again. Then, after CNN found the audio, it played the clip a million more times.
Claiming that Sanders hates women is as ridiculous as it is pathetic. A video from 1988 showed Sanders saying “a woman could be elected president of the United States,” and Tulsi Gabbard said he was nothing but supportive when she threw her hat in the ring. Sanders is a socialist, not a chauvinist pig.
“In my view a woman could be elected president of the United States.” — Bernie Sanders, 1988 pic.twitter.com/WJd847DdmA
— Meagan Day (@meagankday) January 13, 2020
You can bet anything that Sanders didn’t say this—just like you can bet Warren isn’t a Cherokee, wasn’t fired for being pregnant, and isn’t the daughter of a janitor.
So, why did Warren throw such a desperate Hail Mary pass just before the debate?
Experts say if something big doesn’t change, fast, Warren’s presidential bid could end on February 4.
First, her campaign coffers are running down. Warren’s donations dropped 30% during the last quarter.
Second, important “progressive” activists that Warren was counting on to endorse her backed Bernie Sanders instead. Their commitment and get-out-the-vote ground game will be decisive in a state with caucuses like Iowa. (I’ll explain why in just a minute.)
But if the donations and endorsements are embarrassing, her polls are enough to leave her red-faced.
The Massachusetts liberal hasn’t led the polls in Iowa since November. At the same time that Bernie has surged to a tie for first place, polls have Warren crashing to fourth.
But even that is not Warren’s biggest headache.
The catastrophe keeping Warren and her staffers up at night is that her poll numbers aren’t just low…they’re downright dangerous, because of the way the Iowa caucuses work.
Caucuses aren’t like primaries, where people go to private voting booths, pull the curtain and vote for their favorite candidate.
In Iowa, people meet in gyms or auditoriums and declare their vote in front of everyone…but a candidate only gets delegates if he—or she—wins at least 15% in each precinct. A candidate who doesn’t crack that barrier will see lots of his supporters pick their second choice.
Right now, Warren’s RealClear Politics average is 16%—and it’s been sinking.
“If she really got 16% statewide, there would surely be many precincts, maybe half of them, where she was not viable,” explained conservative columnist Tim Carney in The Washington Examiner. “In other words, a fourth-place finish for Warren could end up looking like a distant fourth-place finish.”
“Iowa could knock her out of the race,” he said.
That’s even worse than it seems on the surface. Warren has decided to make her closing pitch by saying she’s the most electable candidate.
Recent campaign dropout Julián Castro calls Warren “the candidate who can unite the entire Democratic Party” in public, and Barack Obama quietly talks Warren up to left-wing megadonors in private.
You don’t let Barack Obama down.
So, when Bernie’s polls went high, she went low. She painted Sanders as a charter member of the He-Man Woman-Haters Club.
Looking at Warren and Sanders clawing at each other for the presidential nomination, we feel like Ronald Reagan when he saw Iran fighting Iraq: It’s too bad they can’t both lose.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”