Lafayette The pundits and wizards are already writing the obituary for Massachusetts’ Senator Elizabeth Warren. You can read them in the New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and about anywhere else. The reasons offered are varied and many, but she won’t drop out at the same time as Mayor Pete, Minnesota Amy, or Bay Area Tom Steyer. Both her fans and her haters need her to stay in past Super Tuesday, and they know it. Mark my words, she’ll be gone before the end of the week, but no matter the whining there was no way she would be out before Super Tuesday.
The rap on Warren is across the waterfront.
One says, she should have run more “as a woman” and less as Betsy the cheerleader from Oklahoma. Another says, she should have reminded more people that she was Betsy the cheerleader from the “hard edge” of the middle class in Oklahoma in order to rinse away the notion that she’s a smart-alecky lawyer, living in Cambridge, and a professor at Harvard University. Others wanted her to be less the “I have a plan” for everything and more the I’m one of you people-person-populist that would be able to give Trump fits. Less the lecturing teacher you remember from high school and more the 10,000 selfie-monster she has proven on the trail.
Reportedly, a memo has already circulated among Warren’s campaign team conceding that her only path to the nomination for President now is through a brokered convention and super-delegates in the second round. Tactically, in order to be in the good graces of the super-delegate teams, and that means surviving Super Tuesday, especially California, no matter how bad a beating she might endure. Simple reason: she has to take votes away from Sanders.
Taking votes on the left-liberal axis away from Sanders lowers his delegate count and perhaps keeps him in reach, or blocks the runaway, for his nomination and helps someone like Vice-President Joe Biden emerge to make the rest of the Democratic Party happier. You wouldn’t have Buttigieg or Klobuchar running down to Texas to shout Biden’s praises in an endorsement if they didn’t both want to keep their options open for a potential high-level, Cabinet-sized job if Biden is elected President.
Warren’s strategy may be as good as her tactics on Super Tuesday. She may be hoping by currying favor with the party and the superdelegates as a good solider and taking one for the team, that she might also be on the short list as a Vice-President option to run with Biden. Reportedly, Biden hinted at a South Carolina rally that he might make Senator Kamala Harris his VP choice, but that may have been just a vote-pimping move in a state where there is almost no chance of it ending up in the Democratic column in November, and long forgotten before then.
It’s all getting muy complicado now, but the voters are speaking and the professional pols are listening and jockeying, so we’ll see how this horse race comes out. Keep you money in your pockets right now, because there are no safe bets.