Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University, said it was not “the strongest journalistic moment.” But a generous framing of the question wasn’t necessary to set up Warren’s withering rebuttals, she suggested.

“I think that in Elizabeth Warren’s case she very clearly knew what she wanted to say on the topic,” said Martin. “It really didn’t quite matter what the question was.”

As other commentators have pointed out, though, there could very well have been a discrepancy between what Sanders said and what Warren heard. It’s plausible that Sanders expressed something that many of us said, thought, or wrote over the past three years: that the 2016 presidential election showed quite vividly how hostile much of America still may be to the notion of women’s leadership. That’s not an endorsement but a concern raised by voters who know exactly what to expect from the nation’s Caricaturist-in-Chief.

Warren’s campaign apparently wanted to address that, said Martin, whose institute is working with The Barbara Lee Family Foundation on an ongoing analysis of the election, called Gender on the Ballot.

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