IOWA CITY, Iowa — Ann Stromquist watched this week’s Democratic presidential debate like the research scientist she is. She studied the candidates’ answers carefully, looking for something to help her make a final decision between supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren when Iowa holds the nation’s first caucus in a few weeks.
She didn’t find it. Not in the more than two hours of discussions about policy differences, and certainly not in the “he said-she said” over a comment Warren said Sanders made to her in 2018, a dispute that drew a scolding from this Iowan.
“What I think about the squabble is: Get over it,” said the 76-year-old Stromquist, who is leaning toward supporting Warren when she and her husband, a retired professor, caucus on the University of Iowa campus near their home on Feb. 3. “To me that’s not a big deal. Let’s talk about the future.”
The dispute has caused days of hand wringing among the most intensely focused activists about how it might change the race and prompted sometimes-ugly social media exchanges between the camps. But it seems to have landed with a thud among Iowa progressives. In interviews across the state, Democrats wearily described it as somewhere on the spectrum of “not a big deal” to “a contrived kerfuffle.” Few said it would stick with them come caucus day.