Yes, of course, Warren is a snake. She should be shunned by anyone left of radlib for lying about Bernie and doing everything she could to tank his campaign...
BUT... she also wasn't relevant in terms of votes and she wasn't the reason Bernie lost. Or at least, she was way down there at like #9 on the list. It feels like a lot of Bernie supporters kinda want it both ways. They want to put a lot of the blame on Warren for Bernie losing but also want to mock her for only getting like 17 votes. She got third in her home state. But it's one or the other. Either she's irrelevant and no one voted for her, or she killed Bernie's campaign.
I get the argument that she should have endorsed Bernie when it was clear she wasn't going to win and Bernie at least had a shot (and he could have used it after Obama put his finger on the scale). Of course she should have, if she had any real leftist principles - but she doesn't, because she is a snake. And I dunno, I don't know if you can expect people to just drop out. Every single politician has a massive ego (even Bernie) and they play to win the game. If we ever get to a place where AOC and Rashida both want to run for president, I don't expect them to sit down together and politely discuss who should run. It's a competition and these are competitive people.
I disagree. The mere presence of Warren in the campaign drastically altered Bernie's style of campaigning and greatly weakened him even before even a single vote was cast. Because Warren and Bernie kept trying to out-progressive one another to win the "progressive/soft left" vote, Bernie did not focus nearly enough attention on the candidate who led the polls for 90% of the primary campaign. Bernie had to spend much of the fall and winter distinguishing himself from Warren. Remember, Warren was ahead of Bernie in the polls for most of the campaign before Iowa. All that time Bernie spent winning back Warren's voters in November/December/January could have been spent on winning over Biden voters had Warren not been in the race. Plus, remember, Bernie's campaign staff still come from the political world/DC bubble. Bernie's staffers saw many of their political-world friends praising Warren or outright defecting to her. Warren's campaign was poor, but it was almost surgically designed to look threatening to the people making strategic and tactical decisions for Bernie.
Secondly, there is a progressive media/organizing/donor class that would have gotten behind Bernie had Warren not been in the race. Look at how many progressive (but not explicitly socialist) representatives and organizing groups either endorsed Warren, endorsed Bernie but only when it was too late, or did not endorse at all. If Warren doesn't run, the Working Families Party endorses Bernie in September 2019 and campaigns hard for him. The Justice Democrats did not endorse Bernie until March 2020. If Warren doesn't run, they jump on the Bernie train in the fall. Would Sunrise Movement had gone for Bernie before January had Warren not run? Tough to say, but possible. Would Ayanna Pressley joined the rest of the Squad and endorsed Bernie (possibly putting him over the top in Massachusetts)? Perhaps. The Nation (the magazine) waited until after Super Tuesday to endorse Bernie because they didn't want to pick a side in the Bernie-Warren fight. Top Medicare for All activist Ady Barkan? Picked Warren over Sanders. Union leader Sara Nelson? Stayed neutral.
Many, if not all, of those organizations and individuals would have backed Bernie from the start had Warren not been in the race.
All of that nonwithstanding, we should also point out that Warren made a concerted effort to harm Bernie's campaign even before Iowa. Sure, Warren didn't have a lot of supporters when she dropped out. But she outright called Bernie a sexist three weeks before Iowa when they were tied in the polls. If you don't think that started turning (white) women voters against Bernie at least a little, you're kidding yourself. Polls in February showed Bernie easily being the second choice for most Warren supporters. But during the final months of the campaign, Warren made up a story calling Bernie a sexist and outright said his campaign is based on a foundation of hate. She said Bernie has zero accomplishments as a Senator. Even groups like Justice Democrats - which stayed away from the Warren/Bernie feud, admonished Warren for her scorched-earth smear campaign against Bernie after dropping out. Warren was calling out Bernie's supporters as bigots even as she declined to condemn someone who invaded a Bernie rally with a swastika. And by the time Warren dropped out, her supporters split between Bernie and Biden fairly evenly (IIRC like 55/45 Bernie).
Warren may be an incompetent campaigner and all around piece of shit, but she did irreperable harm to Bernie's campaign. I would go as far as to say she did as much harm to his campaign as Obama or Jim Clyburn did.
This is great info. If you look at my comment below, it was all Warren’s to lose and she fucking blew it. Because she blew it we have nearness bias, but the impact on bernies campaign was insurmountable.
Not sure I'd go as far as to say it was Warren's to lose (She never had any Black support - Biden would have massacred her in South Carolina and beyond), but she absolutely blew what should have been at least an easy second place.
Well, the primary was hers to lose. There is a path to victory without black support, which arguably she could have had but fucked up from the get go with her white upper middle class oriented campaign. Had she swept the first three states, South Carolina wouldn’t have mattered. She would 100% lose black votes to trump, and would have lost to trump. No question. It’s not a conclusive “Warren would have won” but she had the path to victory
Definte agree that Trump would have taken her behind the woodshed had she won that primary lmao. That election would have been embarrassing to watch.
I mean, Covid may have changed that a bit, but had we not had Covid it would have r/cringeanarchy material
I’ll take the bait. Warren could have won. Hindsight makes it easy to say she was irrelevant, but she could have won. She and her campaign were historically bad. Exceptionally poorly thought out. Literally did everything wrong. Just take a moment and consider how popular she was in 2015, even in 2018, and what happened next.
Remember her video about her heritage? Remember the DNA test? Remember the bourgeoisie marketing bullshit that appealed to no one with out a masters degree or six figure income? Remember putting a doomed to fail Medicare for all plan and then walking it back to passing it after RE-ELECTION IN 2024? Remember surrogates like Roxanne gay and the lady who went on twitter rants about Asians? Remember “he said a woman couldn’t be president?”
All of that, and much much more, happened before a single vote was cast. She was clearly leading in the polls in summer 2019 DESPITE THE DNA TEST VIDEO!
Truly remarkable. Then after it was all over, she went on SNL.
She got third in MA, but if even 1/3 of her voters went Sanders instead, he would have won MA over Biden. I don't think saying that she hurt Sanders and that she was doomed to fail are contradictory. There's quite a few states where Sanders likely would have won outright (Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, possibly Oklahoma and Texas) if she wasn't in the race. There's definitely a debate you could have over just how many of her voters would have gone to Sanders, though.
if even 1/3 of her voters went Sanders instead, he would have won MA over Biden
... uhh even if a 10th of the remaining 2/3 had gone to Biden, Biden would still have won MA
Again, this is why I said there is a debate to be had about who goes where from her voters. That still leaves 57% of her voters unaccounted for.
I think Warren dropping out and endorsing Bernie early on would have made him much more competitive in many states. Mostly because better showing for B on super T could have helped stave off the media narrative that Biden was unstoppable. Then again I think there were a lot of PMC soft Warren people who went Biden over Bernie.
After Bernie lost I myself lost all faith in electoralism here. Reforming the USA from inside the system is like reforming the Confederacy from inside the system. Impossible.
It ultimately makes things worse to say that leftwing Democrats are better. Would we say the same if people managed to elect leftwing representatives to the Confederate congress?
It took all the other skde combining their power against a porgressive side split two ways to win and it was a squeaker at that.
Any bit of leeway in the system and it could have gone the other way.
Given what we have seen it's still possible for bernie to have dropped the the ball