Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are in a showdown, and anyone watching the Democratic debate on Tuesday night might want to grab popcorn.

While the two front-runners in the Democratic primary have typically played nice, Sanders will be on the offensive after what appears to be a Warren campaign leak saying Sanders once told the Massachusetts senator that a woman can't win the presidency.

When CNN first reported the news on Monday, Sanders vehemently denied it, saying, “It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn't win.”

Warren, on the other hand, appeared to distance herself magnanimously:



"Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate. I thought a woman could win; he disagreed. I have no interest in discussing this private meeting any further because Bernie and I have far more in common than our differences on punditry."



If her campaign leaked Sanders's comment, however, her position is not so magnanimous after all.

There is one candidate who comes out of this dust-up looking good, and she just might be able to benefit from it. No, it's not Warren — it's Tulsi Gabbard.

Late on Monday, the presidential candidate, who will not be on Tuesday's debate stage, tweeted: "I also met with @BernieSanders before announcing my candidacy. We had a nice one-on-one conversation and I informed him that I would be running for President. In that meeting, he showed me the greatest respect and encouragement, just as he always has."

In aligning herself with Sanders, Gabbard could be gunning for a role in a Sanders administration. At the very least, she distances herself from what appear to be Warren's disingenuous attacks on Sanders, and she adopts the posture of a trustworthy candidate — not one who will win the presidency, but one with more to gain if someone besides Warren nabs the nomination.