Elizabeth Warren's Swan Song
I'm writing this blog post on the evening of March 3, 2020 while watching Super Tuesday results come in. I am expecting that Elizabeth Warren will have walked away without a 1st place win in any of the 14 states. She will earn some delegates, but who knows how much.
It's been almost one year since I've written about why I'm supporting her. It also happened to be my very first blog post on this platform as well.
I have believed—and even still do—that she is overwhelmingly more qualified to be President of the United States than the rest of the candidates. Recently, however, Elizabeth Warren's campaign has been very frustrating to experience. Yet here we are. I figured several weeks ago that her chances were in great decline, and here's what I've learned and concluded why:
She suffered for being the I'd-vote-for-her-if-I-knew-my-neighbor-was and I-can't-gamble-on-a-woman candidate. In any other just world, she would've swept the field. But this election is all about pragmatism and safe choices in the effort to beat Donald Trump. And it's even looking like Biden might take the nomination for that very reason. I wish this wasn't the case, but alas. This is the most painful point for me to write, and I hate it.
She muddied her message. I wish she had stayed clear and focused on tackling corruption and income inequality and all the ways it infiltrates real American lives and affects kitchen-table issues. But she went every which way trying to be all things to all people, and I think that hurt her. We didn't need a plan for everything. We needed a clear and simple narrative and theme for why she was running. I knew what that was because I've been a fan for years, but I'm an extreme outlier.
She had some bad political instincts. The debate hot mic “scandal” with Bernie, and even her very aggressive attacks on other candidates like Bloomberg likely did very well with her core supporters, but was probably less effective with less-engaged voters. I wish she stayed on message and made Donald Trump and the “corrupt” her target of ire, but she often didn't.
She was loved by the intellectual class. That doesn't win elections. And despite all of her messaging and outreach to middle America, it just wasn't winning. I think that had a lot to do with my first point. The New York Times has an excellent article making this point. It's worth the read.
She was the progressive sacrificial lamb. Bernie benefited by being vague and speaking in slogans. Warren revealed detailed plans for people to be able to criticize.
So where do we stand now? Her campaign has a strategy to try to stay in the race as long as possible and accumulate as many delegates as they can along the way to pave the way for a contested convention. The more likely scenario is that she'll have just enough delegates to play a kingmaker of sorts and give her delegates to the candidate that makes a deal with her.
If I were a betting man, I bet that she drops out in a week or so after a poor Super Tuesday performance.
Fare Thee Well? Probably.