Liz Warren Drops Out
Elizabeth Warren’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination comes to an end after a disappointing Super Tuesday:
Even Warren’s blockbuster debate performance a few weeks ago that brought in tens millions of dollars — and almost singlehandedly crushed the candidacy of Michael Bloomberg — wasn’t enough to revitalize the senator’s campaign. She continued to struggle to win over people of color, particularly black voters, as well as moderate and working-class white voters.
Despite her loss, Warren and her campaign shaped the 2020 primary — something unimaginable a decade ago. She rose from mostly unknown Harvard professor to top progressive figure, combatting the Obama administration and helping to reanimate progressive activists around economic issues.
It is unknown whether she will endorse either of the two top remaining candidates, Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.
I am sad to see her leave the race, but consoled by the facts that 1) She remains a formidable force in the Senate; 2) still has delegates she can use to drive platform and campaign decisions at the convention, and 3) is a serious VP contender. Next time she chooses to grab at this brass ring she needs better advisers however.Report
We can’t have nice things.Report
I’m thinking that she will not get tapped for VP. I think a woman, or a person of color, is in the cards, but I think someone younger than 70 is also important.Report
Not to mention her Republican Governor would replace her with a Republican Senator which is, flat out, a deal breaker.Report
Only for six months, but it is a factor.
The Governor has to call for a special election by then.Report
I’m very sick of Sanders and Warren supporters at this point. They are mirror images of each other. Warren fans rightly point out that Sanders lost because he did not properly make outreach to the African-American community. They then wail and complain bitterly at the Patriarchy (TM) because few people saw their candidate as the most kind and wonderful person to run for the Presidency and they want a woman to beat Trump damn it. They also get angry when you point out that they are acting like Bernie Bros.Report
An interesting essay in NY Magazine by Eric Levitz. Although addressed to Bernie fans, it could just as easily speak to Warren fans:
“But the stakes of electoral politics at this moment are exceptionally high. And the opportunities for left-wing movements to win and exercise power through the Democratic Party are abundant. Electing a Democratic president in November probably won’t make Medicare for All a reality; but electing some of the most conservative Democrats in the country to governorships in Louisiana and Kentucky was sufficient to extend public health insurance to tens of thousands of low-income Americans and thus to keep many people’s loved ones on this Earth and out of bankruptcy. Are they not worth fighting for? By primarying Joe Crowley, supporters of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez secured a megaphone and massive fundraising platform for radical environmental and economic reform. By running in the Democratic Party primary for Philadelphia district attorney, Larry Krasner has progressively remade criminal justice in America’s sixth-largest city. And, of course, a socialist remains within striking distance of the Democratic nomination, trailing a front-runner whose personal liabilities are so profound and conspicuous the party’s moderate donors were unwilling to finance his campaign until the last possible moment.
To fully exploit its opportunities for making America a less cruel and undemocratic society in the near term — and laying the groundwork for more radical change in the long run — the left will need to make peace with the concessions and compromises inherent to electoral politics. All I am saying is give that peace a chance.”Report
Neither Sanders or Warren supporters to be willing to give peace a chance. They are crying outrage. Sanders supporters are writing about the DNC paid heed to their corporate paymasters and made sure that Sanders would suffer in South Carolina and on Super Tuesday. Warren fans are crying about the Patriarchy and how the Democratic candidate can’t be a white man and a woman needs to beat Trump because reasons.Report
Well, that’s what their core supporters are doing, I doubt their regular voters care or notice.
That kind of sentiment does make it hard to merge volunteers and donors though.
It does allow committed left-wingers to engage in their favourite pastime of pointless infighting, so at least they have that to balm their disappointments.Report
From the woman herself:
“We fundamentally changed the substance of this race.
You know a year ago, people weren’t talking about a two-cent wealth tax, universal childcare, cancelling student loan debt for 43 million Americans while reducing the racial wealth gap, or breaking up big tech. Or expanding Social Security. And now they are. And because we did the work of building broad support for all of those ideas across this country, these changes could actually be implemented by the next president.
A year ago, people weren’t talking about corruption, and they still aren’t talking about it enough. But we’ve moved the needle, and a hunk of our anti-corruption plan is already embedded in a House bill that is ready to go when we get a Democratic Senate.
We also advocated for fixing our rigged system in a way that will make it work better for everyone — regardless of your race, or gender, or religion, regardless of whether you’re straight or LGBTQ+. And that wasn’t an afterthought, it was built into everything we did.”
The fight goes on.Report
[Mechanic from under the hood]
Well Ms. Warren, I think we’ve located the source of your problems:
two-cent wealth tax
universal childcare
cancelling student loan debt for 43 million Americans
reducing the racial wealth gap
breaking up big tech
expanding Social Security
rigged system
If I were a political consultant, I’d say those are all items from Column D. Column D is where we put all the candidate’s bad ideas and tell them they can pick *one* and talk about it after, and only after, they’ve mentioned the items from Column A, B *and* C three times… if there’s any time left. On Wednesdays. Purely for candidate morale. 🙂
If I squint, I could see maybe one of those items (reconfigured, of course) being salient in 2024; if there are two or more, I’ll buy you one officially sanctioned OT Beer at the next meet-up…Report
Is this just like your opinion, man, or are you reporting on what All Americans think?
Because the winning candidate last time ran on at least two of those Bad Ideas.Report
Oh yes, definitely invoking the Royal All… that’s why I’m willing to risk a beer.
I realize that “bad ideas” might be more than I intended… I’d rephrase as “pet” ideas. I mean they aren’t all categorically bad morally… one or two could be scrubbed and polished into a Solid C.
But I am serious that if these were the *reasons* for her candidacy, then she was poorly advised. And, I really don’t think they will be salient issues in 2022 or 2024… they are wide of the mark.Report
Doesn’t it seem that, given that the winning candidate last time promised “great healthcare for everyone” and talked about breaking up big tech and how the system was rigged, that maybe those aren’t reasons for losing?Report
In the section you quoted, Warren *doesn’t* cite Healthcare at all; that’s part of the problem. She didn’t move the needle on Healthcare… not in a positive direction, anyway.
No, I don’t remember Trump “campaigning” on breaking up big tech. All my Google searches turn up Trump mocking Warren for suggesting such in 2019. My recollection is that breaking up big tech is a post electoral manifestation of the Russian Influence panic.
Which leaves rigged election. Even for Trump that was a Column D issue and clearly he was setting the stage for his positioning after he lost the election. At any rate, if one was going to hijack an issue from Trump, that wouldn’t even be in the top 20… and I’m not 100% sure Trump has 20 decent ideas to steal.Report
Weren’t there a spate of articles about Trump being a populist, the working man’s friend who was going to fight the elites and that’s how he won the white working class in the Rust Belt?
Aren’t there still articles from people like Joel Kotkin claiming that the elites include tech workers in their coastal enclaves, detached from the humble proles in flyover?
And Trump did promise great Healthcare for everybody, right?
And isn’t “Free Trade Neoliberalism” practically an epithet nowadays, even in Republican circles?
And isn’t the Republican President, at this very moment furiously writing out welfare checks to strapping young bucks, er, farmers all across the Midwest?
I’m not seeing how anti-wealthy populist sentiment is political poison in 2020.Report
I didn’t say that a certain sort of economic populism couldn’t be successful in 2020. I pointed out that Elizabeth Warren doesn’t know what that would be.Report
No? Bernie is in the process of losing to Biden because of this because the Dems at large think it will make him unelectable. Biden is showing signs of senility and doesn’t have Bernie’s charisma or vigor. Warren was socialist enough to be scary without being charismatic enough to steal Bernie’s thunder. Poisonious yes, popular with certain Dems, also yes.
RE: cancelling student loan debt for 43 million Americans
Free money will definately be popular with the 2%(?) or so of the population who have serious problems. Of course they don’t vote much, and this is running the risk of annoying the much larger group of people who were stupid enough to pay for their own college.
This might be something that could be polished into something (make student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy and you’re basically there)… but this hits the radar as something that would end up being a Trillion plus handout to the colleges.
RE: universal childcare
Could be turned into a policy that would get votes. In practice it’d only be available for the white upper class but voters might not realize that.
Might also be seriously expensive and it’s unclear to me that the gov is good at childcare.
RE: rigged system
I’d love her (or someone) to make sensible reform proposals. Outlawing the millions she, personally, and other politicians make on of their “book sales” would be one idea. Outlawing various relatives of powerful politicians getting fluff jobs is another.
However afaict this is rhetoric on how unicorns will magically give all of her followers the jobs they “deserve” after she’s in office and/or a vague excuse for whatever Progressives want at the time. Now maybe that will win votes if she keeps it vague (or if she’d focused on the abuses she and her fellows are doing).
RE: breaking up big tech
All you Amazon workers? Your jobs need to be destroyed. You know, for the good of The People.
RE: expanding Social Security
Old people, don’t worry about us not knowing how to pay for what we’ve already promised you, also don’t worry about being last in line after the re-org. We’re going to do lots of new things with your money, it will be fine.
RE: reducing the racial wealth gap
All you deplorable whites, even if you are poor, you’re still seriously privileged because of your skin color. Suck it up. No job for you until we have employed all minorities, and we’re going to take your stuff and give it to the deserving poor who vote for us. Vote for us you racist scum.
RE: two-cent wealth tax
You mean 3%. Eating the rich won’t have side effects, stop comparing this to Venezuela and stop bringing up France’s experiences with it. This time it will be different. We would never again create a company as successful as Microsoft so there’s no need to worry super successful companies need to be built in other countries.Report
Free money will definately be popular with the 2%(?) or so of the population who have serious problems.
Free money to pay off student loans would be popular with a large percentage of the people who have student loan debt, regardless of whether they can afford it. I didn’t have any trouble paying back the $40,000 in loans I took out, but I wouldn’t have complained if someone had just given me the money to pay them back.
I respect others’ right to keep the money they earn, of course, but that’s a fairly fringe position.Report
I have two girls in college. Their combined loan total is thus far zero.
The older one wanted to go to an expensive top of the line college and take lots of loans. Social pressure was put on her until she saw the wisdom of going to a much cheaper one where she had significant scholarships.
Pay off everyone’s loans and my expectation is colleges raise their prices so the rest of my girls have no choice but to take lots of loans and hope they’ll be paid off with some magic wand.
The bulk of the problem is college debt isn’t dischargeable in bankrupsy.Report
It is technically dischargeable but it has a heightened ‘undue burden’ standard meaning it is far more difficult (though from what I’ve read in the lawyer media more have been succeeding lately).Report
A practical decision, good for Senator Warren. I wonder who she’ll endorse?Report
Seems to me like the smartest play is to endorse nobody.
Biden doesn’t need it and it could back fire (DNC rigs the race memeing).
Sanders looks like a sinking ship and proping him up probably isn’t enough and his core supporters have already turned on you.
Best to stay out of it and not burn either sides bridges if you want to do this again in 4 years if the nominee fails.
If she wanted VP it would be worth it to throw in with somebody but I don’t think that job does anything for her and the party would want someone younger for succession purposes anyway.Report
The problem:
She was running in the Woke lane. Biden? Not particularly woke. Bernie? It’s all “class, class, class” for him. That’s only kinda woke and not fully woke.
If she goes for Bernie, she gets some long-term “yay, she’s actually progressive!” cred.
If she goes for Biden, she gets some short-term “yay, she’s a team player!” cred (and might even get VP!).
But both of the above also have downsides.
And waiting for the convention and then campaigning for the winner has fewer downsides (but fewer upsides).Report
She’s an odd duck in a way. Easy to see her spending all her cash in points on something of no personal benefit like having a big role in writing the platform.Report
Oooh! Let’s come back to this after the convention!
I do *NOT* think that that will happen and so this is something that is actually testable.Report
My prediction: the only way this works is if Biden agrees to adopt some of her policies *before* the convention. Her window of leverage is rapidly closing, so she’ll only endorse Biden if he agrees to adopt some of her policies at the time of the endorsement. But Biden is a pretty bad politician, and he may just promise her a cabinet level position to “fix American’s wealth problem” by going house to house confiscating rich American’s assets. Can’t rule that out either.Report
Warren supporters are Real Democrats: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-drops-out.html
Even in the end, Ms. Warren’s supporters never turned on their candidate, or the party that rejected her candidacy. In Illinois, where Ms. Warren’s campaign was scheduled to hold a post-Super Tuesday phone banking session, staff and supporters refused to cancel. They decided to use their time to support Marie Newman, the Illinois congressional candidate running against an incumbent Democrat opposed to abortion rights.
“Our work continues,” Ms. Warren told her staff in the call informing them she was quitting the race. “The fight goes on, and big dreams never die.”Report
“Candidate supported by Real Democrats comes in 3rd in Massachusetts.”Report
In fairness she was/is supported by real Democrats. She just isn’t the first choice of enough of them for the nomination.Report
“ Politicians in a democracy are engaged in national scale popularity contest. It’s your job to know who you are, know how you are perceived, and get people to like you. Believing you can harangue and shame people into liking you is the surest loser’s path.”
-Wesley Yang, on the last days of the Warren campaignReport
One thing that I think represents the problem is her inability to read the room.
Here’s a thread from October 15th, 2018, 10AM MST. It was when she announced the results of her DNA test proving a Native American Ancestor.
Here’s a thread from about 5PM that same day.
Watch how the comments evolve and the narrative changes before our very eyes.
Periodically, we talk about “Gotcha” questions. The quintessential example is Mike Dukakis being asked about the death penalty and flubbing the answer. What made it a “Gotcha” wasn’t the question. A skilled person would be able to answer it quickly and easily and well. (I’m sure that any/all of us could come up with a couple of paragraphs answering the question well.) What made it a “Gotcha” was that Dukakis flubbed it SO BADLY that the fault was obviously on the reporter for asking it. Asking a trick question. Asking a “Gotcha”.
Elizabeth Warren Dukakised this up. Something awful.Report