Actress and activist Susan Sarandon took the gloves off at a Bernie Sanders rally by attacking Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren in one of the worst ways imaginable for a Democratic candidate, dredging up a little-discussed skeleton in Warren’s political closet.
Sarandon spent the 2016 presidential campaign attacking Hillary Clinton, but this time around, she’s set her sights on another woman who’s running against Sanders. At an “ice cream social” event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Sarandon introduced Sanders with an ode to his political consistency.
“I’m heartened by the fact that so many people are on the ground knocking on doors and helping to give information that the mainstream media either is suppressing or corrupting or misrepresenting,” Sarandon said. “It’s so, so important, because when people know and when they hear the senator’s policies, when they see his track record, when they know how authentic he is and how he has been fighting for these issues for so long, that he is the only one that had that reputation.”
“He is not someone who used to be a Republican, he is not someone who used to take money, or still thinks money, from Wall Street, he is the real deal,” Sarandon added.
She also body-checked former Vice President Joe Biden by saying “We don’t have time for middle ground,” a reference to a remark by
But it was Sarandon’s unmistakeable shot at Warren that was most significant. Although it hasn’t been discussed much in the political press, it’s also not a secret that Warren was a registered Republican until at least 1996. In a handful of interviews, Warren has chalked up her conversion from the GOP to the party’s economic approach.
When Sanders took the stage a few minutes later, he made no mention of Warren, or Sarandon’s attack.
In this cycle’s split-night debates, Sanders is the only top-tier candidate that Warren has had to face on the debate stage, and the duo teamed up to fend off the slate of lower-tier candidates they drew.
It remains to be seen if Sanders himself will eventually take shots at Warren on his own — he has thus far indicated he will not — but Warren’s GOP past could become an issue once she’s forced to share a debate stage with top-tier candidates who also were never Republicans.
That could become an opportunity for Warren to share a compelling narrative about her conversion, something she has yet to do. In stump speeches, Warren goes into Proustian detail about her upbringing and early political life, but doesn’t talk at all about her past support for Republicans.
But it could also become an opportunity for California Senator Kamala Harris to
Watch the clip above, via Bernie Sanders for President.