At Tuesday night's Democratic primary debate, the smallest to date and the last before the crucial Iowa caucus, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren reminded her rivals and the rest of the world of one simple fact: "Men are not electable."

"Men are not electable.

Men always lose elections. Always. And Warren came to Drake University in Des Moines with the receipt: the men who appeared on stage last night have lost elections 10 times. Warren and the only woman on stage, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, lost zero.

(Billionaire Tom Steyer also has zero losses, but that's because he's never run for anything before.)

Earlier this week, CNN reported that in a 2018 conversation about Warren's candidacy, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders told Warren that he did not believe a woman could be president, and Warren admitted it, resulting in an iteration of this particular electability debate.

Sanders remembers the conversation this way: "What I said that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, racist, liar who will weaponize anything he can. Of course. After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by 3 million votes in 2016." On Tuesday night, Sanders again denied that he had clearly told Warren that he didn't think a woman could win.

But of course, to be perfectly clear about your implication, you don't have to explicitly say that you don't think a woman can beat Donald Trump. A qualified woman can win, and I'm all for that, but she can't win because of the manipulative bias of others, not me.

And I have a fear that Sanders will use the same sexist tactics that Trump used against Clinton. In fact, it is almost certain that he will do exactly that.

The argument for electability boils down to this: do you think that playbook will work or not? Whether or not you think that sexism, racism, and other concerns about the redistribution of political and social power will outweigh the candidate's ability to govern, make policy, and lead in the minds of other voters.

Ultimately, concerns about suffrage come down to our understanding of other people. Neighbors, co-workers, aunts and uncles. Our greatest understanding of those who live in far-flung states we may never have visited. The electability argument always boils down to this: I vote for her.

And while it depends on whether pragmatism is considered a noble virtue or a necessary evil, in this business it feels like a pragmatic approach. And this is the moment when idealism seems an unaffordable luxury for many. But even "un-electable" candidates have a practical argument. In very recent history, some of those "un-electable" candidates have been elected.

That's because "unelectable" candidates have a way of bringing people to the polls who did not vote for all the "electable" candidates. Barack Obama did that. So did Bernie Sanders. And so was Donald Trump, the ultimate "unelectable" candidate. All three expanded the electorate by giving new voters something they had never had before: someone they actually wanted to vote for.

Warren pointed out that not only do men win elections, but also the men who stand on that stage can lose elections. Just as candidates who can win elections can lose, so too can candidates who "can't win elections" win. Warren's receipt was a reminder that winning an election is both an indisputable fact and a total mirage. It is not about the candidates, but about ourselves.

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