Sanders and Warren Battle Accusations of ‘Fairy Tale’ Promises as Center-Left Rift Flares – The New York Times

Ms. Warren fired back that “seeking refuge, seeking asylum” is “not a crime.”

A similar crossfire unfolded on trade, as Mr. Hickenlooper and Mr. Delaney accused Ms. Warren of pursuing a trade agenda closer to Mr. Trump’s than to that of the last Democratic president, Barack Obama. Ms. Warren’s agenda, Mr. Delaney said, “would isolate America’s economy around the world.”

“What the congressman is describing as extreme is having deals that are negotiated by American workers for American workers,” Ms. Warren retorted. “American workers want those jobs. And we can build the trade deals that do it.”

The evening seemed to expose the rifts in the party that might ultimately define the Democratic debate once the party’s primary field narrows, and Mr. Biden comes face to face in future debates with Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren. Most of the men criticizing the two populists on Tuesday are at risk of failing to qualify for future debates, leaving them to act as a kind of preliminary stand-in crew for the centrist side of the ideological battle that may ultimately settle the primary.

Mr. Ryan, another such marginal candidate, at one point delivered something of a cri de coeur for the party’s dwindling constituency of blue-collar men. Democrats risked eliminating that slim part of their base, Mr. Ryan said, if they did not “talk about the working class issues.”

“We’ve talked about taking private health insurance away from union members in the industrial Midwest, we’ve talked about decriminalizing the border, and we’ve talked about giving free health care to undocumented workers when so many Americans are struggling to pay for their health care,” Mr. Ryan said. “I quite frankly don’t think that that is an agenda that we can move forward on and win.”

Yet Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren, faced with such unsparing criticism, did not back off. Indeed, perhaps the most notable conflict in Detroit was the one that did not happen, as the two populists locked arms rather than trading blows.

Ms. Warren ignored a question about her boasts that she’s a proud capitalist – a barely-veiled contrast with Mr. Sanders, a democratic socialist – and used the prompt instead to talk of her battles with Wall Street. Mr. Sanders even praised his colleague at one point, echoing her tough talk on corporate America.

“Elizabeth,” he said, “is absolutely right.”