Elizabeth Warren: She has a path to victory.

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren could win. She has a niche.

The process of picking a nominee is not designed to select the best president nor candidate. 

It is a game, and a poorly designed one for its actual purpose. The winner is the one who gets momentum in the right states at the right time. 

By the time people are thinking deeply about who ought to win, the nomination is long wrapped up. I am not intentionally trivializing something of grave importance: the future leadership of our Republic. Don't shoot the messenger. I am simply describing it.

Premise number one: Crowded field. The winner will get a plurality, not a majority.

Premise number two: They will cannibalize each other's votes. Bernie and Warren. Beto O'Rourke and Joaquin or Julian Castro. Biden and Sherrod Brown.

Premise number three: The one with the biggest niche will win. The anti-Trump vote was bigger than the Trump vote by far. But there were 15 of them and one of him. Trump got the "win," which fueled and justified the attention he got. 

This blog will look closely at the niches of other candidates as they announce. (Joe Delaney has already announced. He has no niche.)

Left progressive against corrupt elites.

Warren would win by getting a plurality of votes in Iowa; a big win New Hampshire because she is a familiar face via Boston TV; do OK in Nevada caucuses because she has energized female support; and then lose in South Carolina because black Democrats there will vote for a person of color and someone who expresses a more identity-aspirational message.

Then comes March. By March Warren would plausibly be the one to beat. March will be a referendum on her. The following states vote in March: California, Texas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Louisiana, Hawaii, Idaho, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, and Illinois.

Then Democratic voters will have eight months to wonder if they did the right thing.

Guest Post by Medford City Councillor Kevin Stine. Stine is an avid follower of horse-race political coverage, and he prepared this description of Elizabeth Warren.

Kevin Stine, Guest Post:

"Observations on Elizabeth Warren."

Guest Post by Kevin Stine

Elizabeth Warren is running for President, and she has already set a high bar for others to try to clear. Warren is a vibrant speaker, has a compelling life story, and has a strong resume. In the policy checkboxes that most progressives are looking for in a Democratic nominee, Senator Warren can cross them off.

Her introductory video is fantastic. It gives a short biography, followed by hitting hard on the pocketbook issues that we face. It contains some images of Trump, but doesn’t mention him by name. On the campaign trail, she also doesn’t mention Trump and says he is just a product of the system we have. I will also note that Warren mentions the even-deeper financial struggles of minorities. The nation, and especially the Democratic Party, is very diverse. No candidate should forget this.

Warren is a policy buff. She has no problem calling herself a “nerd”. When it comes to our financial and banking background, she will be second to none on the Democratic Party stage. She is also strong enough politically to be able to be able to talk about a very complex consumer system, and be able to put that into words that the general public can digest.

She’s been tested. She beat a popular incumbent US Senator by 7 points, in a race that other big name Democratic candidates passed on. She won by 24 points for re-election in a race that Republicans ignored. She has been on the public stage and is among the most famous members of the Democratic Party. Senator McConnell shut her down while she was trying to read Coretta Scott King’s letter about Jeff Sessions. Elizabeth Warren continued on, reading the letter outside the chamber on social media. 

“Nevertheless, she persisted”, spoken by McConnell, became her slogan.

She is a strong fundraiser. Whether we like it or not, fundraising matters. Campaigns are all about marketing. Marketing is expensive. Warren is a strong fundraiser as she received $25M in campaign contributions in 2018, despite having an uncompetitive race for re-election. That was 10^thhighest among all candidates.

She also has a strong base of financial support as $19.3M of her $34.7M raised in the 6-year Senate cycle came from small donors, which are donations under $200. That is important as those are the donations that keep campaigns going. A wealthy person can only give up to $2,700 to a campaign. That money dries up quickly, and not being to get consistent small donor contributions leads to many campaigns dying off before the Iowa votes.

She can unite the factions of the Democratic Party. She’s progressive enough to bring home those that may have voted third party or stayed home in 2020, but mainstream enough as to not alienate those that are moderate left-leaners. She wants to improve the capitalist system we have, rather than overthrow it.

I saw very few negatives from left-leaners on social media, but her age came up (only 3 years younger than Trump), her having the same profile as Hillary Clinton (older, white woman), her not endorsing Bernie Sanders (she stayed neutral until Hillary had the majority of pledged delegates), and how Trump would attack her.

Elizabeth Warren would become the oldest first-time President in history, and that is a valid concern, although I don’t share it. The comparisons of Hillary Clinton referring to gender are terrible, and there are articles out there that do a much better job of making that point than I can. Complaints of her not endorsing Bernie Sanders are grasping at straws to find ways to criticize her, and Trump will attack everyone viciously, so she’s in the same camp as everyone else although the content would be different.

Warren Facebook site

The Native American claim will come up, and already has. She’s going to get this in debates, TV interviews, and throughout the campaign trail. Trump and his followers have said and tweeted their racist thoughts and memes about it, and will continue to do so. These people are unlikely to vote for any Democratic nominee. 

Overall, she’s a strong candidate for both the Primary and General Election. There will likely be about 20 notable Democratic candidates pursuing the nomination, and right now all of them are paying attention to Elizabeth W.