WASHINGTON For the senators running for president, Tuesdays debate carried extra importance.
It wasnt just the last debate ahead of the states caucuses just three weeks away it was also potentially their last big hoorah in the Hawkeye State before theyre stuck in Washington for the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump thats set to begin next week.
Some things are more important than politics, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said when asked whether she was concerned the impending impeachment trial would keep her off the trail. She quickly pivoted to how impeachment underscores one of her messages: corruption.
We need to draw that distinction and show that as Democrats, we are not going to be the people who are just out for the big corporations, people who want to help themselves, Warren said.
The CNN and Des Moines Register moderators only posed that question directly to Warren, but the compressed timeframe was no doubt part of the calculus of Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota on Tuesday night too. (Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, the only other senator left in the race after New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker dropped out on Monday, did not qualify for Tuesdays debate.)
Theyll all be hard-pressed to get back to Iowa much before the Feb. 3 caucuses. The House is voting on sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate today, and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has indicated the trial will begin next Tuesday the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The trial is expected to run six days a week.
The senators occupied half the debate stage the smallest one so far and the first one since Trump ordered the killing of an influential Iranian commander. The setting gave them a platform to tout their congressional experience and expose their differences.
Can a woman win?
Heading into Tuesday night, all eyes were on Sanders and Warren to see whether simmering tensions would bubble up on stage before they retreat to the more staid corridors of the Senate next week.
The campaigns last-minute squabbling began with a Politico report over the weekend of a Sanders campaign script for volunteers that criticized Warren. On the eve of the debate, CNN reported on a 2018 private meeting where Sanders reportedly told Warren a woman couldnt win the presidency.
Sanders on Tuesday night continued to deny that account, which Warren had previously verified in a Monday statement.
Anybody who knows me knows that its incomprehensible that I would think that a woman could not be president of the United States, Sanders said, adding that he held back on launching his 2016 campaign until Warren whose supporters were trying to draft her took a pass.
Warren again said she disagreed with Sanders alleged doubts about a womans electoral viability, but she stole the moment when she pointed out the winning records of the men and women on stage.
So, can a woman beat Donald Trump? Look at the men on this stage. Collectively, they have lost 10 elections, Warren said. The only people on this stage who have won every single election that theyve been in are the women, Amy and me, she said. Both Warren and Klobuchar won their first elections as underdogs.
After an awkward moment when Sanders challenged Warrens assessment of his electoral history, the two-term Massachusetts senator again pointed to the success of women this time highlighting the role female candidates, voters and donors played in the 2018 midterms.
