Bernie Sanders steps up appeals to women after flap with Elizabeth Warren

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders stepped up his pitch to women in early-voting New Hampshire on the heels of a squabble over sexism in politics with fellow progressive and 2020 rival Elizabeth Warren. The Vermont senator delivered a brief speech Saturday at the Seacoast Women’s March in Portsmouth, saying that "we are in this together.”

“Men, if you think abortion rights, if you think equal pay for equal work is just a women’s issue, you are dead wrong,” Sanders said. “It is a human issue and the men have got to stand with the women.”

Sanders did not stay to march, heading instead to the next campaign stop. His remarks at the event came a day after his campaign released two television ads in New Hampshire. The state’s primary is set for Feb. 11, eight days after the Iowa caucuses lead off the nominating contests. One of those ads, “Our Side,” says that, under President Donald Trump, “women’s rights are under attack.”

“Bernie Sanders is on our side and always has been,” a female narrator says over images of Sanders campaigning with and posing for pictures alongside large groups of supporters, most of them women. “Fighting to protect a woman’s right to choose, to fully fund Planned Parenthood, make child care affordable and guarantee paid family leave and equal pay.”

In Portsmouth, Sanders said, “What the Women’s March, and what we are all about, is saying that it is the women of this country who have the right to control their bodies, not politicians.” Sanders didn’t mention Warren or the flare up-with his longtime friend, a Massachusetts senator who overlaps with him on many policy initiatives that seek to overhaul the nation’s political and economic system. Warren said this past week that, during a private meeting between the two in 2018, Sanders disagreed that a woman could win the presidency — a charge he’s forcefully denied.

That has raised deeper questions about societal misogyny that female candidates have to overcome. The senators then clashed about the “he said, she said” feud during a debate last week. Warren refused to shake Sanders’ hand afterward as both of them called the other “a liar.”

They were in the Senate for the start of Trump’s impeachment trial on Thursday and said they’d not subsequently spoken about the incident. Warren, campaigning in Iowa on Friday, declared that “ I don’t have anything else to say on this.” A second Sanders ad airing in New Hampshire, “Strive,” strikes a less gender-specific message, evoking John F. Kennedy and rejecting “half measures” to real political change. Later Saturday in Des Moines, Iowa, Warren planned to focus on abortion rights during a “fireside chat” at a private home with Planned Parenthood activists.