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Seth Meyers: Not Even Trump's Team Can Defend His Shifting Iran Lies

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retired cynic1/14/2020 7:18:01 am PST

Charlie Pierce adds a different angle to the Sanders - Warren spat. It appeared that Warren was the aggressor, in talking about the convo that the two had had a year ago. However:

The other real news in advance of Tuesday night’s debate in Des Moines is the spat over the weekend between the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Senator Professor Warren. Both of the candidates expressed shock that actual politics had broken out during a political campaign. Somebody leaked some talking points from the Sanders campaign in which volunteers were instructed to talk down SPW as an elitist who could not expand the party’s base. This was recognized to be the end of the non-aggression pact between the two campaigns.

SPW said she was “disappointed” that the Sanders forces had chosen to “trash” her. Sanders, meanwhile, explained that the two of them were still thick as thieves, and all of the folks who have parachuted into Iowa for the next few weeks had something interesting to write about. But there’s no question that the Sanders campaign was the initial belligerent here, and SPW, for her part, handled it in the proper Federalist Papers fashion.

“We all saw the impact of the factionalism in 2016, and we can’t have a repeat of that. I hope Bernie reconsiders and turns his campaign in a different direction.”

This was a nice riposte, sending a hardly subliminal message to those Hillary Rodham Clinton voters who are still frosted over the damage they believe Sanders did to HRC last time around. As for Tuesday’s debate, it’s no better than 6-5 that Sanders’s primary target will be Biden, and not Warren. But the narrowing of the field paradoxically means less ground to fight on. Small things become bigger. Lighter issues gain substance and weight. Factionalism rears its head, just like it was supposed to long ago.