What Elizabeth Warren lacks in honesty she makes up in chutzpah. So it was that the woman famous for her myriad lies approached Bernie Sanders after the debate and attacked him for calling her a liar. And Bernie, fiery Bernie, made no defense.

It all started when Bernie's campaign finally went negative against Warren by essentially accusing her of being a limousine liberal, presumably in contrast to Bernie's authentic Leftism. To that end, his campaign claimed that her supporters are "highly-educated, more affluent people."

In the land of everlasting wokeness and victim status, those are fighting words. Warren responded by accusing Bernie of telling her during a private conversation in December 2018 that a woman could never win the presidential election. Bernie, in other words, is an old-fashioned misogynist. Bernie denied saying such a thing.

The whole matter escalated on Tuesday night when a CNN moderator asked Bernie point-blank if he'd ever told Warren a woman could not win the election. Bernie again, quite firmly, denied saying that.

To the amusement of those suspecting that the entire Democrat establishment is worried that an open socialist might be the Democrat presidential candidate, the same moderator asked Warren to talk about her feelings when Bernie told her a woman could never win:

Warren, sensing blood in the water, decided that the best defense is a good offense. Accordingly, when the debate ended, and the participants were shaking hands, Warren forewent the handshake.

Instead, viewers saw the two engage in a brief, clearly hostile discussion. Yesterday, possibly hoping to show that Warren is a fighter, CNN released audio from that discussion:

There are a few points to be made. First, because each called the other a liar on national TV, Warren gets no umbrage points.

Second, when suddenly confronted, Bernie had no idea how to respond and punted.

Third, can you imagine Trump being slow and passive in the face of that kind of attack? My guess is that he would instantly have responded by saying something along the lines of, "You are a liar, Pocahontas."

Indeed, Trump being Trump, he might have had chapter and verse at his fingertips about Warren's endless lies. So far, in order to advance her academic and political careers, Warren has been caught in the following lies:

She lied about being a Native American.

She lied about the circumstances surrounding her parents' marriage.

She stole a New York Times recipe as her own for a cookbook put out by Native Americans.

She lied about being fired because she was pregnant.

She lies about her father having been a janitor.

She lied that her children never attended private schools.

Sanders, on the other hand, has many worrisome faults, but to date, lying hasn't been one of them. He's intellectually dishonest (e.g., when he gained money and fame, he shifted his attacks from millionaires to billionaires), but he's not a habitual liar.

Overall, the whole affair has reflected badly on two of the top Democrat primary candidates. For many, it's reinforced the fact that Elizabeth Warren is vicious and cannot be trusted. It also shows that Bernie is too slow for the cut and thrust of the highest executive office in the land. And of course, it highlights what happens when identity politics, in this case both racial and sexual, become the coin of the realm.

Update from Thomas Lifson:

Last night, Tucker Carlson tore into CNN's biased debate coverage, making the point that the network and its boss Jeff Zucker are doing the Democrat establishment's bidding in trying to sabotage Sanders, whose nutty socialist/communist ideas frighten their donor class and will likely result in a landslide GOP victory if he is the nominee.