Why vote for Sanders when you can have Elizabeth Warren instead?

Senator Bernie Sanders announced his 2020 presidential run on Tuesday, reigniting old divisions within the Democratic party. His candidacy raises questions about the continued viability of the leftist resurgence that was ushered in partially by his influence in the 2018 midterms, and has sparked fights, similar to those that sprung from Sanders’ last unsuccessful presidential bid in 2016, over whether the Democratic base should commit itself to ameliorating economic inequality, or to fighting racist and sexist bigotry. Leftist feminists and racial justice advocates can be forgiven for already feeling very tired. It’s all just a little too familiar.

In the 2016 primary, Democratic voters were presented with a choice: Sanders, who represented the potential of redistributive policy, and Clinton, who represented the possibility of shattering, as she put it, the last, highest glass ceiling. She dismissed his ideas as impractical; his supporters attacked her with a virulent misogyny that belied their nominal commitments to equality. For leftist women, to express enthusiasm for Sanders’ policy proposals was seen as condoning the sexist attacks on Clinton. To defend Clinton from sexism meant that we would be accused of condoning the worst choices of her history. This choice, between Sanders and Clinton, redistribution and representation, has been the central conflict of American progressive politics in the years since. You can have either redistribution or representation, the thinking goes, but not both.

Sanders’ announcement, and the resurgence of the party divisions that it has already ushered in, is especially maddening to those of us who would rather avoid a repeat of this bruising 2016 primary fight, as there is already a candidate with a long record of commitment to redistributive policies and a proven ability to combat inequality: Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts.

Like Sanders, Warren has a long career of railing against the injustice of a country where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Unlike him, she has a proven track record outside of the Senate, helping to establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during the Obama administration and writing the book – actually, writing several books – on how to help working families by making finance and debt laws more fair.

But unlike Senator Sanders, Elizabeth Warren does not have the baggage of the 2016 primary, which will weigh Sanders down and alienate large swaths of the Democratic base. She is a woman, an essential identity trait in a party that is increasingly dominated by people of color and accounts for the votes of half of all white women, who rightly want to see themselves better represented in a party whose leaders have been much older, whiter, and more male than actual voters. And she does not ask voters to make the choice that was posed to them in the 2016 primary, between fiercely attacking economic inequality and tackling the gender and racial injustices that perpetuate and exacerbate it. Her statements and policy proposals, more detailed than those of the other early frontrunners, and show that she is committed to doing both.

Why would Democratic voters choose Sanders when Warren is running? The two are not ideologically identical, but the differences between their major policy stances, on regulation of financial services and the need to extend the welfare state, are relatively minor, especially compared to the rest of the field. Warren calls herself a capitalist, the Sanders partisans point out, while Sanders is unafraid of the label “socialist”. That’s one thing. But this point has the quality of a post-hoc rationalization. It is cited by those seeking a politically acceptable reason to vote for a man and not for a woman – those who would vote for this man, and perhaps not any woman, no matter what. The fact is that Warren is to the left of Sanders on some issues, notably gun control. If the primary contest becomes a race to the left, it is not entirely clear that Sanders would win.

But Warren’s primary virtue over Sanders is that she seems to understand the inextricable binds between racial and gender discrimination and the economic injustice that both candidates abhor. She has made statements about the reality of racial discrimination, how it compounds with economic injustice to keep people of color from entering and staying in the middle class.

Sanders, meanwhile, speaks about the struggles of the working class in reductionist and retro ways; he seems to hold an anachronistic understanding of the American worker as white and male, oppressed only by his bosses and not at the same time by the structures of racism and sexism. Sanders has made, and continues to make, tone deaf statements on race in particular. He dismissed voters who want to see themselves in their politicians as trafficking in “identity politics,” and was publicly dismissive toward Black Lives Matter activists who expressed concern over his approach to racial issues. He seems to have tolerated a gender pay gap and some truly repugnant sexual harassment in his 2016 campaign. But few scandals seem to stick to Bernie Sanders. Like Donald Trump, he has a base of hardcore supporters who will forgive him anything.

It is this base that has been blamed for much of the rancor of the 2016 primary, and this group may become liability for Sanders as much as an asset: much of the Democratic party’s black, brown, and female base feels antipathy toward his hardcore supporters. These Democratic voters imagine Sanders’ enthusiasts as young, urban white men who are arrogant, antagonizing, and enthusiastically sexist. Many Democratic voters are rightly wary, in an election against Trump, of a candidate whose political power seems as much grounded in a cult of personality as it does in the appeal of his policies. For many Democrats, particularly feminists, Sanders brings to mind the old joke about Jesus: he’s got some great ideas – but his fans are a problem.

Warren has her own problems around race – her stupid and unforced early errors regarding her family’s claims to Native American heritage appear destined to follow her forever, sticking to her in ways that Sanders’ missteps do not stick to him. But she understands that the American working poor is disproportionately composed of women of color, and she is putting forward policy proposals that reflect this reality. In her presidential announcement, she emphasized the role that racist discrimination plays in economic inequality. On the day that Sanders announced, Warren rolled out a comprehensive plan for universal childcare, more detailed and robust than anything that was put forward in 2016.

For those of the American left with a commitment to both social and economic equality, this rhetoric of representation or redistribution has been maddening: we know that it’s a false choice. In fact, a growing understanding of capitalism’s dependency on racist and sexist exploitation makes the choice represented by Sanders v Clinton, socialism v feminism, seem not only reductive, but dangerously obtuse. Redistribution and representation cannot happen independently. They will only achieve their goals together.

There is a particular pain in being thrown, by Bernie’s announcement, back into this false choice, back into the struggle of asserting that Democrats can have their identity representation and their Medicare for All, too. Part of it is the resigned knowledge that a worthy, rigorous, committed candidate like Warren will now be subjected to misogynist attacks from the left, as well as from the right. To feminists like me, misogyny from the left feels even darker and more viscerally offensive than misogyny from the right. From conservatives, we expect it. From leftists, it is a betrayal.

But Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy offers a third way for progressives who are committed to fighting both the real injustices derided as “identity politics” and the economic exploitation that has allowed a billionaire class to accumulate excess wealth with impunity. For too long, both the class-reductionist socialists of Bernie Sanders’ base and the opportunistic, corporate feminism that was represented by Hilary Clinton have lied to feminists and antiracists on the left, offering them a false choice.

We don’t have to choose anymore.

• Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist