The 2020 race for the Democratic nomination has been absurd for quite some time, but, as we approach the beginning of the home stretch, the claws are really coming out.
At this stage in the game, there are about four-and-a-half serious candidates: Former Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and there’s even half a chance that Senator Amy Klobuchar could sneak into the top tier in Iowa.
Among these candidates, the latest drama has involved Buttigieg and Warren, who have been sparring over the former’s reliance on big-money, “wine cave” donors while the latter professes to fundraise solely in a grassroots manner, eschewing those with a silver spoon of any sort on their record.
But is this a case of the pot calling the kettle black?
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s “wine cave” attack on fellow top-tier Democratic nomination rivalPete Buttigieg grabbed headlines and became the most memorable moment out of last week’s debate.
But the aftermath of the jab over the South Bend mayor’s ritzy Napa fundraiser also illustrates how her escalating feud with Buttigieg has opened her up to charges of hypocrisy. Buttigieg, on stage, pointed to the Massachusetts senator’s own past fundraising in arguing she’s imposing “purity tests” she can’t pass. Critics later seized on a Senate re-election fundraiser she held at a winery in Boston a year-and-a-half-ago — though her campaign rejected the comparison.
It gets wilder…
As the populist, progressive senator successfully pushed for Buttigieg to release a list of clients from his McKinsey days, he, in turn, applied pressure over the senator’s past legal work in the private sector. That helped spur her own disclosures that she made nearly $2 million in consulting for corporations and financial firms during her years as a law professor at such prestigious schools as Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.
And while she pushed Buttigieg toward transparency by arguing any potential “conflicts of interest” should be out in the open, Warren has done additional advising work apparently not highlighted by the campaign. Court documents reviewed by Fox News reveal that Warren advised numerous foreign countries on bankruptcy reform during her years as a law professor.
“I have served as an American Adviser to the German Government Task Force on Bankruptcy Reform,” Warren wrote in a legal document submitted in the case Bolin v. Sears, Roebuck & Co., where she served as an expert witness nearly two decades ago.
The two will likely continue to spar over these issues in the coming weeks, as the Iowa caucus is little more than five weeks away.
