During last week’s debate in Iowa, Democrats drew familiar battle lines on a number of issues, including health care, climate change, trade policy, and America’s endless wars in the Middle East. One question that was not debated was whether a female candidate can win the presidential election — literally everyone on the stage, with the possible exception of Joe Biden, is agreed on that point. Of course a woman can win.

For most Democratic voters, the real question was the same as it has been since the primary began: Who is the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump?

With a friendly assist from CNN’s moderators, Elizabeth Warren used the podium to deliver an applause line about her superior prowess as a general election candidate — and take a not-so-veiled shot at Bernie Sanders. “Look at the men on the stage,” she said. “Collectively, they have lost ten elections.” Here Warren was apparently counting Sanders’s four runs for office on the fringe Liberty Union Party ticket in the 1970s, along with his two failed independent bids in the 1980s. She continued: