BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Bernie Sanders says he speaks with Elizabeth Warren nearly every day — just not about 2020.

But with the two progressive behemoths on a collision course in the presidential primary — and with some progressive activists alarmed that they might split the vote, allowing a more moderate Democrat to win the nomination — Sanders suggested Friday that a pre-2020 discussion among like-minded potential candidates could be forthcoming.


Asked whether he and other progressive contenders should hold talks in an effort to ensure one of them prevails, Sanders told POLITICO, “I suspect that in the coming weeks and months, there will be discussions.”

Asked whether he has spoken already with Warren or Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) about the 2020 campaign, Sanders said, "No, not really."

An aide to Warren did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Sanders’ remarks come as progressive Democrats begin to grapple with the burgeoning field of prospective 2020 candidates. At least three senators — Sanders (I-Vt.), Warren (D-Mass.) and Merkley — are likely to compete for many of the same hard-left supporters Sanders drew in 2016.


Sanders touched off a nine-state midterm election tour on Friday, while Warren has been aggressively preparing for a 2020 launch. Other Democrats, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), have taken steps to advance tax and other policy proposals appealing to progressive Democrats.

The jockeying among progressive candidates has sparked worry among some hard-left activists, who fear they could split the vote in the 2020 primary, ceding ground to a more moderate Democrat.

“I hope there will be serious conversations between Sens. Sanders and Warren, and perhaps Sen. Merkley,” Jeff Cohen, co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction.org. “I think I speak for many progressives who dominate the Democratic Party base when I say we'd like to see one genuine progressive in the race and not two or three splitting the vote.”

It's unclear what any pre-election meeting would accomplish. Politicians more typically agree to sit out elections at lower rungs of government, where ingratiating oneself to the party establishment can result in support seeking an alternative office. It is far rarer for a presidential aspirant to check his or her ambitions.


But a pre-2020 agreement would not necessarily require any candidate to immediately step aside. Instead, candidates could discuss benchmarks — fundraising, polling or early primary performance — and at what point progressive candidates would throw their support to a fellow progressive in the race.

Larry Cohen, a former head of the Communications Workers of America who now chairs the board of Our Revolution, a political offshoot of Sanders’ 2016 campaign, said the large crowds Sanders drew on Friday in Indiana and Michigan were evidence that Sanders’ “message continues to be unique, and resonates with younger voters and their concerns with economic justice.”

“It is important that if there are other similar candidates in the 2020 presidential nominating campaign, that they support each other at least in minimal ways, or that they support each other as much as possible so that one of them is the nominee,” Cohen added.

Sanders demurred when asked to expand on any potential pre-2020 conversation with other progressives.

“We'll see what will happen," Sanders said. "I don't know what will happen. Of course, I speak to Elizabeth [Warren] almost every day. ... We will see what happens.”

He said, “The major issue right now is, I think, for progressives to expose Trump for the fraud that he is, and to come up with an agenda that makes sense to working families."

In 2016, Merkley was Sanders’ only fellow senator to endorse his presidential campaign. But the party has shifted left since the last presidential election, drawing closer to Sanders' positions on health care and college affordability. Earlier this week, Harris proposed a new tax break for average Americans, calling for a $6,000 tax credit for families earning up to $100,000.

The clamoring on the left has encouraged longtime progressives, including Sanders, who said that in his failed run for president in 2016, “I think we opened up the door for people to understand that the American people want real change.”

Now, Sanders said, “You’re seeing candidates coming up with ideas to try to address those issues.”


“In a sense," he said, President Donald Trump "has helped us, because he has said that deficits don’t matter, that you can give a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the top 1 percent. And that opens the door, I think, for progressives to start saying we’re going to use the federal government to protect the interests of working families, not just the people on top.”

Any effort by progressive candidates to coordinate ahead of the 2020 campaign could backfire, with many Sanders supporters still seething over his treatment by establishment Democrats in 2016.

In 2020, “It’s to the advantage of progressives in the party not to have the appearance of smoke-filled rooms," said Norman Solomon, who in 2016 coordinated the group "Bernie Delegates Network," which operated independently of his campaign.

Daily Kos national community organizer Chris Reeves, a Democratic National Committee member from Kansas, said the field of progressive candidates in 2020 will likely be winnowed naturally, anyway, by donors and in primary debates. And with Trump in office, he suggested intraparty friction over ideology will be less prominent in 2020.

“I would take a ham sandwich on rye over Trump,” he said.