Debate: Sanders Denies Saying a Woman Can't Win White House

Video courtesy of CNN.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren dove into their dispute over whether a woman can win the 2020 presidential election, with Sanders flatly denying he ever said it was impossible. Warren was having none of it.

”Look at the men on this stage -- collectively, they have lost 10 elections,” Warren said in a Democratic presidential debate Tuesday in Iowa. “The only people on stage who have won every single election they’ve been in are the women.”Asked about the high cost of prescription drugs, Warren defended her proposal for the government to manufacture generic drugs.

“Let’s give them a little competition,” Warren said of pharmaceutical companies.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, who often criticizes Warren’s plan to abolish private insurance, said she was open to the proposal on generics but would first let Medicare negotiate the price of drugs and allow imports of cheaper drugs from other countries.

Democratic Presidential Candidates Participate In Presidential Primary Debate In Des Moines, Iowa

Joe BidenPhotographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images

Biden and Buttigieg are in a competitive four-way battle with Sanders and Warren for the campaign’s first contest: the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3. Also participating in the debate were Klobuchar and billionaire investor Tom Steyer.

Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Pete Buttigieg are clustered atop the field in recent Iowa polls, with Elizabeth Warren in shooting distance.

The issue has strained a previously civil competition between Senators Sanders and Warren, who are fighting for the same progressive votes.

Pressed for more details by debate moderators, Sanders and Warren set out to clear the record on their conflicting statements about a 2018 conversation in which Warren contends Sanders said a woman couldn’t beat President Donald Trump.

Tuesday’s debate is the last such forum before the Iowa caucuses. It’s particularly important for the senators — Sanders, Warren and Klobuchar — who will have to break away from campaigning as soon as this week to be sworn in as jurors in Trump’s impeachment trial. After that, the trial could require their presence at the Capitol for weeks.

Warren said it’s her constitutional duty to be present during the impeachment trial. “Some things are more important than politics, she said.

Klobuchar said impeachment was a “decency test” comparable to the McCarthy hearings of the 1950s. If the Republican-led Senate doesn’t allow for witnesses to be called in the trial, she said of Trump, “they might as well give him a crown and scepter.”

While the Democratic primary started with the most diverse field of candidates in history, only white candidates made it to Tuesday’s debate stage. Cory Booker dropped out of the race on Monday while Andrew Yang, Tulsi Gabbard and Deval Patrick all missed the polling and fund-raising requirements to qualify for the January debate.

Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is self-funding his presidential campaign so he didn’t meet the donor requirement to participate. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg L.P., the parent company of Bloomberg News.

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