She will lose if she becomes the Democratic candidate.
Thanks for the one-liner. It was very insightful. Only not.
Truth be told, there's a lot of reasons why Elizabeth Warren might lose if she were the Democratic nominee. Some might view her as too far to the Left side of the dial. Some are going to be put off by the clumsy way she handled Trump's taunts about her Native American heritage. Some might wonder if she's too old (69) though she's a kid compared to likely challengers Joe Biden (76) and Bernie Sanders (77).
Some might worry in trying to be Not Hillary, Warren will be baited by Trump into trying to go toe-to-toe with him and he'll clean her clock when it comes to fighting dirty. Some might be concerned Warren isn't up to the full-on assault from Fux News, the Trump Zombie Army and the big money of the Sheldon Adelsons and Robert and Rebecca Mercers of the Right.
Some may be fearful that the Bernie Sanders brigades are lying in wait with knives sharpened to come for Warren's throat after her "betrayal" of Sanders by not coming out to actively support her fellow progressive. Some will be scared the Democratic establishment will not get behind Warren and push another more moderate candidate to the forefront.
Elizabeth Warren is one of the smartest people in politics. She already knows what sort of shitstorm she'll be walking into as a presidential candidate and I'd bet the car payment she's ready for it. Or at least she
thinks she's ready.
Some will muse that if the multicultural base was tepid in their support of Hillary Clinton, what's going to motivate them to turn out en masse to push Warren over the finish line.
Those are legitimate concerns and reasons to think Elizabeth Warren may have misjudged the moment and will crash and burn in 2020.
What matters most is Elizabeth Warren is a smart, ambitious woman and
America puts smart, ambitious women through the wringer.
An odd thing happened to the woman who came onto the scene as an anti-banking, anti-establishment, burn-down-the-castle revolutionary: Elizabeth Warren became the castle.
In the past few years, she raised millions of dollars to build a political machine. She began talking up policy issues beyond the bread-and-butter economic proposals she became famous for. She bolstered her foreign-policy credentials with trips abroad. She built up a large team of staffers who carefully engineered policy rollouts and email blasts. She became a front-runner in the 2020 presidential race.
But as she announces her exploratory committee—which is really announcing her presidential campaign—Warren wants to be the outsider again.
As always happens with front-runners, Warren has become a target. She’s considered less shiny than some of the newer firebrands, who have themselves become the anti-establishment. Operatives working for several other Democratic candidates about to make their own announcements have insisted she’s the Hillary Clinton of 2020—and not in a complimentary way. They describe her as overly cautious and cold, carefully curating her “authentic” moments and struggling to escape a relatively small issue—her claim of American Indian heritage—that’s threatened to overtake her entire candidacy. Her big speech just after Thanksgiving on “a foreign policy that works for all Americans” sounded a whole lot like Clinton’s focus-grouped emphasis on “everyday Americans,” several operatives argue. She even has Bernie Sanders threatening to run to her left.
Along the way, each spot of drama—from the heritage controversy to whom she might pick as her campaign manager—has been hungrily covered by the press.
No other candidate has experienced anything quite like this this cycle. Then again, no other candidate has built herself up into quite this kind of dreadnought.
If the response to Warren's announcement has been somewhere between a
and a
, it's because there's going to be a LOT of Democrats testing the waters for the opportunity to slay the Donald Dragon. Warren is just the first one out of the gate and she may not reach the finish line, but she's got as good a chance as anyone and better chances than most.
Right about now I'd support a mean old mastiff with a broken leg on crutches than the Evil Orange Cheeto.
