| No Images? Click here   By Elise FoleyBefore launching their presidential campaigns, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren reportedly did something unusual for political opponents: They promised to avoid attacking each other. Now, things are starting to change, and we talked to HuffPost reporter Daniel Marans about why.Your story looks at how the nonaggression pact between Sanders and Warren appears to be fraying. When did you start noticing that shift?Sanders campaign spokeswoman Briahna Gray’s tweets about Warren on Sunday and early Monday struck me as different because of how overt her criticism was. She argued, among other things, that under Sanders’ labor reform law, the Warren campaign would be forced into federal mediation for its failure to complete contract negotiations with its unionized workforce more rapidly. I followed up to ask what she meant by it and whether the campaign was shifting toward confrontation with Warren. Rather than downplay it or walk it back, the campaign stood by her tweets. That’s different than a few months ago when the Sanders campaign actively dispelled speculation that comments of theirs were directed at Warren.Isn't it normal for campaigns to go after one another?Absolutely! Reports that Sanders and Warren made a truce before launching their campaigns were the outlier. Progressives had been pleased by the arrangement since they worried that a fractured left would lead to the nomination of a centrist like Joe Biden. A lot of those people really enjoyed seeing Warren and Sanders jointly dispense with second-tier moderate candidates in the July 30 debate in Detroit. And Sanders’ campaign argued to me as recently as a couple weeks ago that they saw Biden, whose base skewed more working class, as their chief rival.But both candidates are fighting to win the Democratic presidential nomination, so it was always unlikely that the nonaggression pact would last forever. Warren’s steady ascent in the polls and receipt of the Working Families Party endorsement has increased pressure on Sanders to distinguish himself.You list some of the specific claims the Sanders campaign has made about Warren. Which do you think could be the most damaging?To be honest, I’m skeptical that any of them will be damaging. Even before it began criticizing Warren, the Sanders campaign’s response to her rise has been to hammer the idea that he is the truest, most authentic vehicle for progressive change. But the voters most open to that argument — and fine parsings of Warren’s ideological bona fides — are likely already in Sanders’ corner.One area where Sanders has an opportunity to draw a more meaningful contrast with Warren is on foreign policy. He’s been more active than she has in that area, particularly since his first presidential run. I guess we’ll see if Sanders’ campaign goes there in the coming months.When you talk to voters, do you find many of them are making similar critiques of Warren to those from the Sanders campaign?Some make those critiques, but I have yet to meet anyone making them who is not already a die-hard Sanders supporter. More often, I hear people who voted for Sanders in 2016 saying they’re opting for Warren or other candidates this time, because they think Sanders is no longer fresh, Warren is more electable, or they just like her more. There is also a significant share of Sanders 2016 voters who did not particularly like him, but just strongly preferred him to Hillary Clinton. Now that it’s not a binary race, those voters have cast their sights elsewhere. 🔥 More Must Reads 🔥
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