Elizabeth Warren exits the US Presidental race
March 5, 2020 6:28 PM Subscribe

She was on top, until she wasn't, and now she's out. Elizabeth Warren ended her presidential campaign today without endorsing one of the remaining candidates. She'll leave a legacy as an authentic candidate and the field is poorer without her voice, but I'll leave any other comments for MeFi.
posted by lon_star (504 comments total) 52 users marked this as a favorite

Dammit. I hope she'll try again.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:30 PM on March 5, 2020 [40 favorites]

Possibly the greatest president the US never had.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:34 PM on March 5, 2020 [241 favorites]

Maybe she'll try again, but maybe the nominee will make her VP or put her in the cabinet. She has the ideas - and she could make policy with those. Probably worth noting that whoever the nominee is could promote unity by including her and Bernie somewhere in the government. That could prove to be valuable in the general.
posted by cybrcamper at 6:38 PM on March 5, 2020 [20 favorites]

I'm hoping she'll make for a ferocious AG who puts the fear of hellfire into corporations.
posted by kokaku at 6:39 PM on March 5, 2020 [81 favorites]

I really, really wanted her to be our next president, but now I'm preparing to vote as hard as I can for whoever gets the nomination, while dreaming about an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez win in 2024.
posted by kristi at 6:45 PM on March 5, 2020 [30 favorites]

Her exit is due to misogyny and the boredom of competence.

It could have been beautiful, America.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:45 PM on March 5, 2020 [195 favorites]

My greatest misgivings about Warren as a candidate were that she really shines as a gadfly in the Senate, and I think we need her talents there. Whether she goes on to a role in the executive branch or not, I feel confident she'll continue doing good for the country.
posted by biogeo at 6:46 PM on March 5, 2020 [27 favorites]

You know what? This one's a wash. Let's wipe the server and reboot from scratch.
posted by Scattercat at 6:48 PM on March 5, 2020 [19 favorites]

But I was looking forward to most of the US media showing, say, pictures of the new President at a presser with Biden and the caption like "Second-rated democratic hopeful Joe Biden stands next to some woman."
posted by pompomtom at 6:48 PM on March 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

I bought Warren yard signs after she eviscerated Bloomberg. They'll arrive later this weekend, and, dammit, I'm still putting them up and leaving them up.
posted by RakDaddy at 6:51 PM on March 5, 2020 [83 favorites]

I wanna write her a thank you letter on behalf of myself and my parents. Is this a thing that can still be done? We are so sad.
posted by Kitchen Witch at 6:51 PM on March 5, 2020 [24 favorites]

My theory: Warren waits to endorse until Monday, March 9th, exactly one day prior to the next big primaries. She then endorses Bernie at a critical media moment, giving him extra momentum.

I bet she is very quite for the next few days.

as an Oregonian this is all fucking horse race bullshit for me so I might as well indulge in armchair quarterbacking
posted by chuntered inelegantly from a sedentary position at 6:53 PM on March 5, 2020 [12 favorites]

Saturday, Democrats Abroad Australia, are running their primary, and I was all set to vote Warren. Now it's Uncle Gaffe or Grampa Shouty. Well, I still want Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.
posted by lipservant at 6:53 PM on March 5, 2020 [11 favorites]

I voted for her Tuesday even though she didn't have a shot since she's the only candidate (even more than Bernie I think) who the financial industry actually seemed to be legitimately afraid of winning.

I'd love her as AG or Sec. of Treasury or something. Biden would be wise to include her in his administration in a major role to bridge that gap within the party and utilize her immense knowledge of where the problems are.
posted by downtohisturtles at 6:55 PM on March 5, 2020 [14 favorites]

So now it's just a question of which oldest whitest mannest man we put up in screaming matches against Trump for the next however many months, the guy who thinks economic equality solves racism, or the guy who thinks racism is already solved because some of his best Presidents are black.

I do like that the idea of Warren as the first woman Senate Majority Leader, at least.

And this is probably what gets me to start actually volunteering for the ranked-choice voting non-profit in my state. 'Cause I firmly believe that if we'd had ranked choice voting for the primary, she'd have won it in a walk. She was the unity candidate.
posted by solotoro at 6:57 PM on March 5, 2020 [65 favorites]

I also voted for her because her policy proposals made everyone else's look like crayon scrawl on butcher paper. I think it's unfortunate that neither Biden nor Sanders have decided to just straight up plagiarize her plans, because they were solid.
posted by tclark at 7:00 PM on March 5, 2020 [55 favorites]

Definitely my favorite politician of the past decade and more. I wish this country sucked less.
posted by OHenryPacey at 7:01 PM on March 5, 2020 [25 favorites]

I wrote her in for the primary in 2016. I believed then and believe now she would be one of the most, if not the most, effective Presidents this country has ever had.

I find it especially inspiring how many acts she’s had in her life. It’s never too late to take your career or life in a new direction. Share your gifts with others and let your hard work take you to unanticipated places.
posted by sallybrown at 7:02 PM on March 5, 2020 [45 favorites]

Warren is wrapping up a heck of an interview on Rachel Maddow's show now, at a time when she damn well deserves to be drunk and in bed, with a detailed analysis of both the precarious economic and public health situation we find ourselves in, how the two intersect, and what we need to be doing. As Maddow just put it at the end of the discussion (slight paraphrase on this quotation): "it would be amazing if we had a President who understood all that once and could spout off on them off the top of her head without notes and without warning I was going to ask about that."

Yeah. That would have been amazing.

Also, Bailey, wearing a CFPB collar, came over during the commercial break and ate some of Maddow's notes, continuing the stress eating from the burrito the pup stole earlier.
posted by zachlipton at 7:03 PM on March 5, 2020 [80 favorites]

I like Elizabeth Warren, but I really liked her in the early phase of her campaign last year (and previous to that). She had a genuinely progressive platform, but at some point it seems like her staff and others that had her ear pushed her more towards the center. Namely with her partial backtracking on Medicare for All, which was a crucial blunder, IMHO. Progressives looked at Sanders' unwavering position on M4A, shrugged, and said we'll stick with the true believer on this. For centrist and right-leaning Democrats, it wasn't enough; they backed "We can't do it" candidates like Klobuchar and Buttigieg. For me, that's when Warren lost her mojo and never really got it back. It's a shame--I'd happily vote for her in the general, and I hope whoever becomes president gives her a plum position in the cabinet.
posted by zardoz at 7:03 PM on March 5, 2020 [21 favorites]

(If i were her, my ask for Presidential candidates seeking my endorsement would be to lead the transition and have some concrete control over appointments. Warren knows how much policy is made in the small print.)
posted by sallybrown at 7:04 PM on March 5, 2020 [16 favorites]

You can just say 'old man.'
posted by 99_ at 7:04 PM on March 5, 2020

I'm close to heartbroken, and I'm not even an American. It's my partner who's going to have to hold her breath and vote for Biden this fall. God what a waste.
posted by jokeefe at 7:05 PM on March 5, 2020 [12 favorites]

Is there some way to jump into the alternative universe with a Warren/Castro ticket? Why can't we have nice things?
posted by eotvos at 7:05 PM on March 5, 2020 [30 favorites]

You know all the talk about voting your heart in the primaries? My heart was always with Bernie, but my gut was with Warren. Bernie inspired me, but I always felt Warren would make a better President on almost every measure. My state doesn't vote for a few months, so I didn't have to make a decision, but if it had come to it, it would have been a hard one.
posted by brook horse at 7:07 PM on March 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

Why Elizabeth Warren is losing even as white professionals love her - "Many college grads are living in the Warren bubble." Matt Yglesias, Vox
posted by the man of twists and turns at 7:08 PM on March 5, 2020 [12 favorites]

She's a great Senator and I don't like the idea of pulling D's out of the Senate. It is, after all, Congress that drafts laws and sets public policy.
posted by sjswitzer at 7:08 PM on March 5, 2020 [12 favorites]

I phone banked for Warren's campaign and it was the most thoughtful, structured, empathetic political volunteer experience I have ever had. As phone bankers we were given a structured training, and the training included instructions not to criticize other Dem candidates; to listen more than we talked; to really ask, and seek to understand, why the voter did/did not support Warren; and to connect personally. There was a portion of the training where we practiced active listening with one another. We even watched a video of Warren doing phone banking to show us how it was done!

In all other campaigns I have been given a terse script to repeat and that's it. Dumping on the candidates is fair game or even encouraged. Not Warren's leadership style. Even her staff were genuine, friendly and truly respectful of volunteers (this does not happen often!).

The whole experience gave me even more respect for Warren. She's not a politician, she's a leader, and I'm so bummed that her lack of politician-ness means she won't be our nation's leader. I hate that it looks like Biden will be the nominee, even though I will campaign for whoever gets the nom. I hope we get many more years of Warren making the world a better place.
posted by rogerroger at 7:13 PM on March 5, 2020 [178 favorites]

I voted for her, knowing it was already over.

I'm fine with Bernie, if not super excited. The attempted anointing of Biden is making me ill.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:15 PM on March 5, 2020 [18 favorites]

That Vox article is the equivalent of Bush (former alcoholic) is a guy I could have a beer with or Trump is a great businessman... just another bs way to just-so why smart women (and smart candidates in general) don't appeal to the American voter while ignoring the sexism or racism that is the ocean in which we swim.
posted by kokaku at 7:16 PM on March 5, 2020 [30 favorites]

I'm really bummed. I don't think she could have beat Trump but I don't think any Democrat left in the race is going to beat Trump so I wish I could have watched her try. There are legitimate criticisms of her history of native appropriation, but some of the most powerful people in the country are terrified of her, and that's good enough for me.
posted by muddgirl at 7:26 PM on March 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

A somewhat optimistic take from 538: That said, her campaign mattered in a way that a lot of other failed 2020 candidacies didn’t. ... In other words, no matter whether the nomination goes to Sanders or Biden, many of Warren’s ideas may end up “winning,” even if she couldn’t.
posted by en forme de poire at 7:27 PM on March 5, 2020 [22 favorites]

.
posted by potrzebie at 7:29 PM on March 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

I'm glad she isn't rushing to endorse anyone.

My main takeaway from the last four years is that anyone who wants my support for anything damn well has to earn it. No more being guilted into propping up and platforming some dude because "he's the one who can make it happen," especially when that assessment is based on privilege and "potential" rather than any kind of proven track record.

I hope Warren is thinking the same way. She still has power and I hope she wields it wisely.
posted by rpfields at 7:39 PM on March 5, 2020 [23 favorites]

Senate Majority Leader Elizabeth Warren has a nice ring to it. Maybe we can make that happen instead.
posted by cheshyre at 7:42 PM on March 5, 2020 [62 favorites]

I completely opposed Warren's run. She is smart, she is capable, and she is a strong voice in the Senate. She is, without question, the best candidate for president, but she will serve this country best as the President's Hand. And if, as I hope, the Democrats take the Senate, she will be the Lion.
posted by SPrintF at 7:44 PM on March 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

🕯️
posted by clavdivs at 7:45 PM on March 5, 2020 [8 favorites]

I saw a very nice tweet about how we will always be able to remember Bloomberg as a bank that she publicly owned.
posted by Going To Maine at 7:52 PM on March 5, 2020 [119 favorites]

My theory: Warren waits to endorse until Monday, March 9th, exactly one day prior to the next big primaries. She then endorses Bernie at a critical media moment, giving him extra momentum.

I doubt she'll endorse Biden, at any rate. If she were going to, she'd have done it by now. I think she'll either sit the rest of the race out and endorse the winner, or else she'll negotiate something from Sanders and then endorse him. I hope it's the latter, personally, because while she's hardly in a "kingmaker" position in terms of delegates her endorsement could help sway some folks who feel a little iffy about Sanders.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:52 PM on March 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

wow
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 7:57 PM on March 5, 2020

She was the best presidential candidate of my lifetime. (I'm 46.) A brilliant, fearless, determined, thoughtful, empathetic woman who knows how to pull the levers of power.
posted by Mavri at 7:57 PM on March 5, 2020 [28 favorites]

Couple of comments deleted. It would be great if this thread about Warren dropping out didn't turn into a thread about Sanders or the implication (that I think one comment was making) that Warren supporters are anti-semitic.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 7:59 PM on March 5, 2020 [33 favorites]

This was so disappointing. She was absolutely the best candidate (as others here have said). I had a hard time getting out of bed yesterday. Funny thing though, I thought my vote was more pragmatic, I'm not voting because I want a woman in the job or because I like her (both of which are true) but because she's got plans for everything. Who knew at this stage that I actually had my heart in it.
posted by evilDoug at 8:01 PM on March 5, 2020 [14 favorites]

So now it's just a question of which oldest whitest mannest man we put up in screaming matches against Trump for the next however many months, the guy who thinks economic equality solves racism, or the guy who thinks racism is already solved because some of his best Presidents are black.

As a person of color who grew up poor, let me be the first to tell you that while economic equality does not solve racism, it certainly takes much of the bite out of it.

Universal healthcare and education programs disproportionately benefit people of color because of how intergenerational economic inequality goes hand in hand with intergenerational white supremacy.

I'm happy to support the candidate who fights for that, regardless of the liberal symbolism of that president's identity. You can't pay hospital bills or student loans with liberal symbolism.
posted by Ouverture at 8:02 PM on March 5, 2020 [104 favorites]

Lot of people saying that she needs to be in a less flashy role, the strong woman behind the good man who takes all of the credit and exploits her labor. Lots of women get denied promotions for the same reason: they are great workhorses, they're needed where they are, they're so capable in the background doing yeoman's work. What a lot of rubbish.
posted by k8lin at 8:02 PM on March 5, 2020 [190 favorites]

I voted for her, knowing it was already over.

Me too, and I don't regret that vote at all. She was the best by a mile -- maybe not the best candidate (obviously, as she is dropping out), but far and away the best potential president.

At this point I will support whomever wins the primary; I really hope that both Biden and Sanders keep it civil and move towards unity posthaste.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:02 PM on March 5, 2020 [16 favorites]

I doubt she endorses anyone until the primaries draw to a close. If Bernie or Biden pulls ahead and wraps up the nomination, then her endorsement will be inconsequential. If neither candidate pulls in a majority of delegates, then her endorsement will matter a lot.

Endorsing Bernie right now doesn't gain her anything policy-wise and if Bernie flames out, she'll only have earned the enmity of the "anyone but Bernie" crowd. Endorsing Biden now opens her up to "sell-out" accusations from the left flank and doesn't make tactically sense because she wouldn't be able to extract maximum policy concessions from Biden.

I'll pour a little out for her campaign. She had my vote in Iowa because I have never, ever seen a candidate who exuded smarts, savvy and attention to the details like she did.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 8:07 PM on March 5, 2020 [6 favorites]

Warren pretended to be First Nations.
posted by Yowser at 8:08 PM on March 5, 2020 [20 favorites]

I also voted for her because her policy proposals made everyone else's look like crayon scrawl on butcher paper.

Why does anyone need the presidency to pass policies like Medicare for All? Or Free College Educations? If anything, you have even less power to pursue that agenda from the White House. The only thing I recall from her campaign that really leaned on the power of the presidency was a promise to direct the justice department to break up big tech. Which didn't exactly endear her to anyone here.
posted by pwnguin at 8:13 PM on March 5, 2020

Warren was told a family legend that she believed- foolishly perhaps. That’s not pretending- and it’s gross to put that in this thread.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 8:15 PM on March 5, 2020 [149 favorites]

My parents told me my ancestry. Her parents told her their ancestry.
posted by NotLost at 8:21 PM on March 5, 2020 [21 favorites]

My greatest misgivings about Warren as a candidate were that she really shines as a gadfly in the Senate, and I think we need her talents there.

One archetype of a Senator is, like, Harry Reid, but she's definitely another one in my mind.
posted by atoxyl at 8:21 PM on March 5, 2020

One of the things that sucks about living in PA is that by the time our primaries come around there's not much left to vote for except one or the other of the two remaining contenders. I would have loved to have voted for Warren. Now it is down to two dudes that don't excite me at all for various reasons. I'll vote blue no matter who, but not because I love the candidate.
posted by grumpybear69 at 8:23 PM on March 5, 2020 [8 favorites]

Which didn't exactly endear her to anyone here.

It absolutely endeared me to her. Amongst everything else, I felt it was incredibly perceptive and just plain smart.

Warren got my vote and financial support that my family could offer. I believed in her. And I cried at her thank you/signoff message. She’s a person who I want as a leader in government: smart, thoughtful, caring, and ready to start. I’ll hold my nose and vote for Joe for obvious reasons, should it come to that, but Elizabeth Warren deserved better because we all deserve better.

LFG.
posted by hijinx at 8:25 PM on March 5, 2020 [28 favorites]

For all her plans and being the best potential president ever, Warren faced some significant headwinds. She consistently polled worse than Biden and Sanders in head-to-head polls against Trump. Despite high profile endorsements, she struggled to get the support of voters of color (and struggled to retain her PoC staff in Nevada).

And then there is the DNA test, which is still immensely embarrassing and disgraceful to me, especially considering it was a result of her falling for Trump's trolling of all things. It was a depressing unforced error for someone who is clearly so smart in so many domains.
posted by Ouverture at 8:27 PM on March 5, 2020 [16 favorites]

My state didn’t have its primary yet so I didn’t even get to vote for her. I’m devastated. I don’t want Bernie or Biden and will have to vote for whichever one makes it.

She’s so rational and intelligent and normal.
posted by affectionateborg at 8:28 PM on March 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

Definitely my favorite politician of the past decade and more.

Right there with ya. I am not American but I live in the shadow. Four years ago I took a day out of my vacation in NYC to phone bank for Hillary. If things had done better this time around, I would go specifically to volunteer for the Warren campaign.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:33 PM on March 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

The potential upside I see is that she might be Pelosi's successor. And we need a someone capable. Although I would have been fine with Kamala doing that, with a President Warren.

I know this is a super-hot take, but: I'm a mostly unremarkable white dude, and I really wanted to see a woman at the top of the ticket this year. I can't imagine how women feel.
posted by snuffleupagus at 8:35 PM on March 5, 2020 [9 favorites]

I mistakenly thought my state's primary was later and that I would be back there in time but last week I found out it was like happening! now! Deeply sorry, Senator. I was so looking forward to voting for you.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 8:37 PM on March 5, 2020

Warren is amazing. Very, very disappointed about this.

Bernie has no chance in hell. Biden has a shot, but I have zero enthusiasm for him.

Thanks for doing your best, Ms. Warren.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:37 PM on March 5, 2020 [11 favorites]

I love Warren, I would have been very, very happy for her to be POTUS, but folks please stop minimizing racism. She didn't just believe a family legend, she decided last year to get a DNA test - something tribes have repeatedly said makes a mockery, since tribal membership is not about DNA - and trumpeted the results. It's not cool to do that, and it's not cool to say that it's cool.
posted by splitpeasoup at 8:57 PM on March 5, 2020 [28 favorites]

told a family legend that she believed- foolishly perhaps.

I really don't understand how this is possible. Warren is very well-educated, and has been politically active on the more progressive side of politics for many years.

I honestly find it incomprehensible that someone with that experience would not be aware of colonisation, of America's history as stolen land built on genocide, of the ways in which settlers have continued to try and eradicate the rightful owners of their land. Why they wouldn't be wary, and have thought long and hard about how are personally involved in that ongoing process of colonisation.

I'm not trying to call Warren a liar. But it seems like foolishly is something of an understatement to me. Are people not having these conversations regularly? Do people on the left in Oklahoma or Massachusets not talk about the fact that they are active footsoldiers of colony? How deep does this problem run in the US left?

You don't open a political meeting here without detailing whose land you're on, and making a point that decolonisation can't be a mere buzzword, all political action and speech should recognise that or those political acts will be worthless. I'm not joking. We take it a lot more seriously than any Catholic I know has ever taken saying grace before eating. If someone went against that line, or failed to do so repeatedly, it would be cause for immediate intervention, if not a grievance/misconduct process.
posted by Acid Communist at 9:04 PM on March 5, 2020 [16 favorites]

Sorry American friends. *howls briefly into the void* Ok, let's not lose hope.
posted by Coaticass at 9:05 PM on March 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

I really wanted to see a woman at the top of the ticket this year. I can't imagine how women feel.

Unsurprised.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:06 PM on March 5, 2020 [72 favorites]

You know speaking as an adoptee- in order for me to know my genetic makeup eventually I’m
gonna have to spring for one. (which has been a suspicion from doctors and family members alike- I have certain markers) will that mean I’m racist for having gotten one? Her major mistake was in publicizing the damn thing and I agree that was dumb as hell. But she honestly believed a family legend- which wasn’t that she was a tribal member- but that an ancestor had been indigenous. And if I recall the test did prove that. (For all that DNA can prove anything- race is a construct and ancestry DNA tests are seriously flawed).
She made a mistake- and now she’s not going to be president.
Why return to this well?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:06 PM on March 5, 2020 [47 favorites]

.
posted by webmutant at 9:08 PM on March 5, 2020

I really wanted to see a woman at the top of the ticket this year. I can't imagine how women feel.

what planet do you live on?
posted by katra at 9:10 PM on March 5, 2020 [5 favorites]

Warren is very well-educated, and has been politically active on the more progressive side of politics for many years.

It's something she was told about her family as a child, not some bad idea she latched onto in college.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:11 PM on March 5, 2020 [13 favorites]

She didn't just believe a family legend, she decided last year to get a DNA test - something tribes have repeatedly said makes a mockery, since tribal membership is not about DNA - and trumpeted the results. It's not cool to do that, and it's not cool to say that it's cool.

A lot of Americans have been told they're "part Indian" as part of family lore. People aren't seeking tribal membership but they are curious to see if there is any truth to family rumors. Morgan Freeman on Who Do You Think You Are? expected to find Native DNA. (He did not.) So, I don't think it's at all unusual for people to look to DNA or answers.

That said, I think Warren's DNA testing was misguided. Still I voted for her on Tuesday.
posted by shoesietart at 9:12 PM on March 5, 2020 [24 favorites]

I honestly find it incomprehensible that someone with that experience would not be aware of colonisation

Well I’m sorry that the US education system is lacking- in CA as a child this was something I learned well- Considering Warren’s age the nuance on this topic was probably not something she learned young in New England. It would be nice if we were all as educated as you Australians.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:12 PM on March 5, 2020 [16 favorites]

I'm returning to this well because this is absolutely integral to actually achieving good things in politics. Only bad things will grow from colony.

Maybe now that Warren's not in a primary, we can think about this not as a Warren smear but a huge missing stair in the platform of pretty much everyone.

Everyone keeps saying she was told it as a child? Yes, and then at some point she went on through life and has done an awful lot of things. Has she had no friend to put her square on this issue this whole time? That's why I'm asking. Is this really not something that is part of the political agenda in most places Warren would have been active?
posted by Acid Communist at 9:15 PM on March 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

Why they wouldn't be wary, and have thought long and hard about how are personally involved in that ongoing process of colonisation.

Surely that would have been a bag of mixed feelings for her, being both a coloniser and a colonisee? Most Americans believe what their family tells them about their origins, as would I suspect most people worldwide. It's the very unusual sort of person that thinks "nah, Mom and Dad are wrong, I'm probably from Mars!"
posted by axiom at 9:15 PM on March 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

Is this really not something that is part of the political agenda in most places Warren would have been active?

Yeah! It’s not! It should be! But it’s often not! and that you don’t know that means maybe you should learn more about how abyssal American politics are before you comment self-righteously in American politics threads.
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 9:18 PM on March 5, 2020 [56 favorites]

Also if it makes you feel any better Homo neanderthalensis, by my memory no school I went to in or out of Australia had a decent program on colonisation. A couple of history textbook references to infected blankets, basically.

Which is why this is something the left has to be incredibly pro-active in educating ourselves and each-other in.
posted by Acid Communist at 9:20 PM on March 5, 2020

Been saying this for months now — Biden/Warren is the smart ticket. Honestly, I don’t see us losing with that ticket. Warren knows it, which is why she’s holding off on endorsing. I know a lot of folks don’t exactly love Biden, but I personally am pretty stoked for VP Warren!
posted by panama joe at 9:21 PM on March 5, 2020 [8 favorites]

Is this really not something that is part of the political agenda in most places Warren would have been active?

It's not part of the political agenda right fucking now. How did things wind up at Standing Rock?

It had legs because Trump called her Pocohontas, which was rather more reprehensible from any sane cultural perspective, but got lots of clicks and ratings.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:22 PM on March 5, 2020 [20 favorites]

I think VP is the worst place for Warren. VP has no real authority.
posted by NotLost at 9:22 PM on March 5, 2020 [24 favorites]

Warren is much more valuable in the Senate. Or, maybe, on the Court.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:23 PM on March 5, 2020 [13 favorites]

Acid Communist if you want to have a discussion about common American knowledge about colonialism, go ahead and make a separate thread for it. This thread is specifically about Warren dropping out today.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:24 PM on March 5, 2020 [46 favorites]

I think VP is the worst place for Warren. VP has no real authority.

Na, the VP gets to vote when the senate ties. So like, one time out of a million. Which sure seems less than the 1 times out of 1 Senator Warren would have by declining.
posted by pwnguin at 9:27 PM on March 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

she really shines as a gadfly in the Senate, and I think we need her talents there

I don't necessarily disagree with you, I just wish we had a country where women could go as far as their dreams and ambition can take them, not just where the rest of us decide we need them to be.
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 9:36 PM on March 5, 2020 [31 favorites]

Yes. She's best either staying in the Senate, or in the Cabinet. Imagine her at Treasury!
posted by Chrysostom at 9:37 PM on March 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

I am so heartbroken. She would have made such a brilliant president. We had such a great, diverse field, and now (as almost always) it all seems to come back to older white men.

I'd like to see her as Senate Majority Leader, honestly. If I were Biden, I'd probably be focusing pretty hard on Duckworth, Klobuchar, or Abrams as potential running mates.
posted by dancing_angel at 9:38 PM on March 5, 2020 [11 favorites]

Hm, the person right at the start of the thread saying put Bernie and Warren in the cabinet or something... well, that would deprive us of two democrat senators which... seems kind of important to solidify given that the senate appears able to just stop government and appoint judges.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 9:43 PM on March 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

Rep. James Clyburn, so instrumental in Biden's SC win, says that "Joe Biden should pick a woman as his running mate should he win the Democratic nomination. [...] Clyburn added that he also wanted the Democratic nominee for vice president to be a person of color, and that he [Clyburn] already had a candidate in mind for the bottom half of a Biden ticket." (Yahoo News, “Skullduggery” podcast interview, March 5, 2020). (Less inspiring: Clyburn feels Biden fared poorly during early campaigning because Biden, "a victim of the #MeToo movement,” had become "constrained." Clyburn maintains Biden is “just a feeler, toucher kind of guy," and the congressman "felt very strongly that [Biden] needed to be himself, he needed to loosen up.”)
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:57 PM on March 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

gadfly? gadfly?

noun

a fly that bites livestock, especially a horsefly, warble fly, or botfly.

an annoying person, especially one who provokes others into action by criticism.

"always a gadfly, he attacked intellectual orthodoxies"

I'm so tired of all the sideways words that boil down to "annoying" when we describe women, even if we think we're being positive.

Elizabeth Warren is human, brilliant, amazing, determined, generous. And while she has flaws as every candidate does, she was brought down by misogyny more than any actual shortcoming of her own.

I really hope I live to see the day when America overcomes our hatred of women, or better yet, leaves it behind us altogether.

posted by bilabial at 9:58 PM on March 5, 2020 [81 favorites]

And not only was she not annoying, she didn't provoke change by criticizing. She provoked change by having a plan and forming an entire federal agency, one with teeth.

She was not annoying damn it. She was effective and she is hated for it. People were not annoyed, they were made to pay for their crimes and a few may have even been deterred from committing more crimes.

Annoying. Pah.
posted by bilabial at 10:00 PM on March 5, 2020 [56 favorites]

Media Matters head Angelo Carusone tweets about Warren refusing to do a Fox town hall.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 10:06 PM on March 5, 2020 [33 favorites]

If the Dems win the WH back and she asks for any particular job in the administration, give it to her. I think she stays in the Senate, which is a great place for her and I’d love to see her as Majority Leader. But there’s a part of me that wants to see her working to make her plan of rooting out everything Trump has done in the executive branch, and for Trump to know that she’s the one who is dismantling his legacy.

But... dammit. She was my choice from the moment she announced. I would much prefer her to Bernie. But we can’t have nice things. I could easily see President Warren declaring a national emergency on climate change since apparently a president can declare an emergency to unilaterally push policies.
posted by azpenguin at 10:08 PM on March 5, 2020 [15 favorites]

She took down Bloomberg in as little as half a minute, give or take. I can only imagine what would have happened if she were given four years.

That said, the best way to help her continue to be effective is to create an environment where she will be in a majority of legislators to effect the change she knows we need, which we know we need.

I hope that we take what time we need to grieve, and grieve hard, and then we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and help her continue to be successful by voting for whichever candidates will defeat Trump and retake the Senate. She put in the work for us, and we owe her that much little extra effort.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:10 PM on March 5, 2020 [14 favorites]

I would've voted for.
posted by philip-random at 10:19 PM on March 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

A woman's place is in which House?
posted by flabdablet at 10:32 PM on March 5, 2020

Somewhere tonight, Hermione Granger is shedding a tear...and is very, very sad.
posted by goalyeehah at 10:34 PM on March 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

I'm hoping she'll make for a ferocious AG who puts the fear of hellfire into corporations.

Wish we could clone her and make her a SCOTUS judge, 3/5 of the SEC commissioners and keep her in the Senate.
posted by BrotherCaine at 11:03 PM on March 5, 2020 [8 favorites]

Lee Sova Claypool: "Silver lining on today is that I can finally tweet this truly epic shot of Warren staff reacting to Jacob Wohl claiming our boss was having a BDSM affair with a young marine. #GoCougars"
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:08 PM on March 5, 2020 [44 favorites]

I think VP is the worst place for Warren. VP has no real authority.

Perhaps. But in terms of winning the election, I think Biden/Warren would be pretty hard to beat.
posted by panama joe at 11:20 PM on March 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

I do believe that misogyny was a -- maybe the -- big thing standing in Warren's way, but I have to remember that Hillary won the popular vote in 2016 and she was an objectively worse candidate. There's another element at play that the misogyny thing is in danger of obscuring and that's the interests of Capital. Both parties are owned by business (and they'd have been happy to have either Trump or Clinton) but in this election there were two candidates who put their project in danger, Sanders and Warren.

Warren has merely had the carpet pulled out from under her first. Sanders is next. This isn't really a loss for Warren or a win for Biden, it's a loss for America and a win for Capital. I'm a Sanders supporter (and a Canadian, so it makes not a lick of difference) but Sanders and Warren both represent the only meaningful counter to the forces of corruption in America.

Canada has it's problems, of course, but I feel a sense of tragedy every time you guys down South step up to the plate and whack yourselves in the head with the bat. I'd love it if you could light the way for real, just once.
posted by klanawa at 11:28 PM on March 5, 2020 [37 favorites]

Sejal Singh: "Every Professor at Harvard Law has a portrait in the halls — and @ewarren was one of the first women. Today, students started spontaneously posting #ThankYouWarren notes around it. "

I think VP is the worst place for Warren. VP has no real authority.

Formally, yes. But then again, Dick Cheney. If one of the B-boys wants to be a figurehead while Warren fixes shit for real that wouldn't be ideal but it would be better than nothing.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 11:32 PM on March 5, 2020 [26 favorites]

I am not sure where people think Chuck Schumer would ever give up being the majority leader of the Senate. What I found telling was that Warren came in third in her home state and in her native state. The people that know her best voted for her two opponents. Also, I will be surprised if she endorses Bernie before/until he becomes the nominee. She was peeved big time when Bernie called her a liar at the debate.

I think choice is essential in politics. To this outsider, it appears as if the old white male establishment of the democratic party conspired against Bernie and Warren was intended collateral damage.
posted by AugustWest at 11:35 PM on March 5, 2020

I think VP is the worst place for Warren. VP has no real authority.

Biden has stated he's only in it for one term
posted by philip-random at 11:35 PM on March 5, 2020

Biden has said many things.
posted by sjswitzer at 11:48 PM on March 5, 2020 [7 favorites]

Probably worth noting that whoever the nominee is could promote unity by including her and Bernie somewhere in the government.

"whoever"?
posted by fairmettle at 11:52 PM on March 5, 2020 [4 favorites]

To be honest, I was never all that enamoured by Warren like so many other people were and on the whole I think people overestimated her because they wanted to have that awesome female candidate in a way Clinton never quite managed. She did best when she was still trying to be the wonkier Bernie Saunders, but she tacked to the right too quickly, was no longer a threat to the Dem establishment and the media lost interest because she became 'boring'.

That she faked being Native American and allegedly used it for her material advantage at Harvard, that she was a Republican true believer before she became a Democrat, all that made me at least wary of her.

To blame her loss on misogyny is too simplistic; comforting in the same way as blaming Trump's election on the Russians is. It means you don't have to look deeper into why somebody who seemed the perfect candidate only a month or two ago unravelled so quickly. Maybe it was just bad luck, maybe it was that she tacked too centrist for leftwing Dems and too left for centrists/return to normalcy voters.

But she took out Bloomberg, she did better than the great bland hope Mayo Pete ever did, neither Klobuchar nor Harris could hold a candle to her, came third in the most competitive Democratic nomination race I've ever seen, so she didn't do badly.

Ultimately though, it seems fewer people wanted to see a first female president than they either wanted a candidate who promised real change or one that promised a return to the halcyon days of the Obama presidency.

She would've made a better candidate than Biden, a worse president than Bernie.

So it goes.
posted by MartinWisse at 11:57 PM on March 5, 2020 [28 favorites]

Every successful politician I've met has been really good with people. I didn't get that from Warren as much as some of the other unsuccessful candidates, but then her campaign started releasing the stories about people lining up to get a photo with her, so maybe it was just bad reporting or my own prejudice. She was a much better candidate than Biden or Sanders, and I hope she has a lot of influence in the next administration.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:13 AM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

Joe in AU, the same was true of Clinton.... media bias on what was reported how
posted by kokaku at 12:24 AM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

Laura McGann, Vox, Elizabeth Warren’s political legacy should include destroying Mike Bloomberg and Chris Matthews.
posted by nangar at 12:48 AM on March 6, 2020 [27 favorites]

The Vox piece that tried to explain her lack of appeal to non college voters felt a bit odd to me. It points out that her elite meritocratic resume distances her from voters without questioning at all what felt to me like an underlying assumption that an elite meritocratic resume makes someone a better candidate.

Warren was my preferred candidate and it wasn't a particularly close call because of many of the qualities being lauded in that piece and elsewhere about her intelligence and deep knowledge of the financial and political systems, among many other things. That said, I think there should be some real consideration given the results, less because of Warren herself, but because of the class she does represent as almost an ideal example.

She is virtually the epitome of a candidate for a liberal leaning college educated white might hope for to run for election. Her knowledge is professorial in the best way as she is able to explain her plans, the process for enacting them, and the reasons why they are well suited to work on the systemic problems she is focused on. There's little doubt about her abilities or efforts in this area, but she still couldn't convince enough people to vote for her. While there's absolutely no doubt about misogyny playing a role in this, one only need scan almost any site her there is discussion about her to see examples of this, I think it does go beyond that to something more and can be seen as a kind of indictment of college educated white ideals and the place they hold as values.

It'd be easy to write this off as anti-intellectualism, as the US has a long and deep history of that and the election of Trump provides evidence that its still prevalent, but that can't account for all of it as the rejection of Warren by people of color suggests there is something deeper going on. While I have no doubt at all that the policies Warren was committed to would help everyone regardless of race and that Warren herself would work against racism when she saw it, the undeniable problem remains that waiting until white college educated people see it, hasn't been even remotely adequate in addressing the issue. The distance between the high regard college educated whites hold for intelligence and knowledge hasn't proven to translate to the real world all that well. The same feelings of distrust seem to run deep in other parts of the left as well, a suspicion of certain kinds of knowledge and education.

This isn't a Warren thing but one that needs to be dwelled on and dealt with by all those who share that class as it has so often failed to provide the kinds of solutions it promises and is often blind to their own prejudices for the celebration of education, this, I think, is as much the lesson of the DNA test fiasco as anything, getting caught up in proofs without questioning the use of knowledge that led to the problem. Even if nothing else, there can be real resentment against knowledge wielded as if for its own sake. A hyperbolic example of this can be seen in reactions to the Mensa thread here, but it is something that some feel frequently when faced with "explainers" of most sorts, as keeps coming up in threads on feminism, racism, and other areas. (And, yes, I see the sad irony in my long winded thoughts on all of this too.)
posted by gusottertrout at 12:55 AM on March 6, 2020 [25 favorites]

I am sad about Elizabeth Warren's campaign ending for many reasons but perhaps the most trivial and yet most deeply cherished was that I so badly wanted to see her make Trump cry on camera in a debate or perhaps more likely break down into barely-coherent, the-mask-is-off, misogynist rantings. But Warren would have been in a position to push his buttons like nobody else in the race ever could and at the same time I think she'd be able to weather whatever he tried to throw at her.

Back before her campaign fizzled it seemed the biggest obstacle to achieving this was that they would be so obviously mismatched in knowledge, temperament, and self-control that I am pretty sure Trump would never have consented to debate her but now I guess we'll never know.
posted by Nerd of the North at 1:06 AM on March 6, 2020 [33 favorites]

The Democratic Party is old white guys. While it’s miles above the Republican Party considering ethical behavior, it seems corrupt as hell. Warren is a unicorn. Bloomberg, too. Bernie and Biden aren’t going to make a difference, and so it goes.
posted by waving at 1:10 AM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

I think it's unfortunate that neither Biden nor Sanders have decided to just straight up plagiarize her plans, because they were solid.

And once again in this dumpster fire timeline, the best possible outcome is one where a man steal’s a woman’s ideas and takes all the credit
posted by schadenfrau at 1:15 AM on March 6, 2020 [71 favorites]

I have been imagining what it would have been like had Sanders put his ego aside, dropped out after his heart attack, and directed all the people he has mobilized over the last few years to support Warren. But of course not (see Ego, above). It's infuriating. Yes, he should have sacrificed his ambition to support the better candidate, just as Warren is being asked to support an inferior candidate now. I really hope she refuses to endorse either of them; Biden's terrible and Sanders is unelectable.

Why would he drop out to support someone who was polling way below him? That's a definition of "inferior candidate" which is new to me.

Note that I don't think she should have dropped out to endorse him either, they're both serious candidates who believed they would be the best nominee and the best president.
posted by atrazine at 1:39 AM on March 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

I admire Warren's late in life shift towards a progressive agenda. But I've been a Bernie fan for 30 years. No doubt that any sort of back room deal making that reshaped the landscape over the weekend was shot through with overt and latent sexism. But let's be clear: every policy position that is or was important to Warren over the last ten years is something Bernie has been stumping for decades.
posted by 99_ at 1:56 AM on March 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

I'm in the UK so I've only had the broad strokes of what the candidates are all about but what are the odds Warren would endorse Biden or Sanders? Will more Warren supporters switch to Biden or Sanders (or Trump)? From what I've seen she seems a little closer to Bernie policy-wise but I know it's not all about policy.
posted by Chaffinch at 1:58 AM on March 6, 2020

I just realized that I can't afford to read American threads on sexism. The gap is far too vast to cross and just depresses me for no valid reason. Interestingly, Sanna Marin's government is twice as popular as the much older men before her female majority administration took over.
posted by Mrs Potato at 3:16 AM on March 6, 2020 [8 favorites]

Chaffinch, Warren and Sanders are really close in terms of policy goals, and they've been close allies in the Senate. There's been polling suggesting a majority of her supporters would opt for Sanders as a second choice, but not all of them. I think it's very unlikely that she'd endorse Biden in the primaries. She might endorse Sanders, or she might hold off till the primary process is over and there's nominee.
posted by nangar at 3:19 AM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

I’m quite pleased that I had the opportunity to cast a vote for her, and I hope to have another such opportunity soon. I like pretty much everything about her, from her policy positions to her personality. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about a candidate.
posted by kevinbelt at 3:22 AM on March 6, 2020 [10 favorites]

I'm not ready to take the Warren sticker off the back of my car and and chances are that I won't have a choice by the time the PA primary rolls around so I'm not even going to choose between one of the two ancient white guys until I have to. Bah.
posted by octothorpe at 3:26 AM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

I wanna write her a thank you letter on behalf of myself and my parents. Is this a thing that can still be done?

I would bet money that if you addressed an envelope to "Elizabeth Warren, Cambridge, MA," she would get it.

the nuance on this topic was probably not something she learned young in New England.

You're right, she was not young in New England.

That she faked being Native American and allegedly used it for her material advantage at Harvard ...

She did no such thing. She checked a box on a profile form she received after she'd already been hired. This "material advantage" claim is straight-up Fox News bullshit.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:02 AM on March 6, 2020 [91 favorites]

Bernie has no chance in hell. Biden has a shot

Nobody knows that unless they have good head-to-head polling in each of the 50 states.

The Democratic Party is ... miles above the Republican Party considering ethical behavior, it seems corrupt as hell.

Does anyone have evidence that there's anything more "corrupt" going on here than different people thinking different candidates would make the nominee for president?

I love Warren hard, I campaigned and voted for her, but I can't see how news of her suspending her campaign constitutes evidence of corruption. It's evidence that more people voted for other candidates.

Hell, when we had a woman at the top of the ticket back in 2016, people were falling all over themselves to cry corruption then, in spite of the basic bedrock fact that Clinton got more real live primary votes than Sanders did.

Maybe there's evidence *somewhere* that people are selling influence for personal gain rather for *things they actually believe in*, but it looks to me like too many people are using "corrupt" as shorthand for "outcomes I think I don't like driven by people who had different judgments than I did."

And that doesn't help hold real corruption accountable.
posted by wildblueyonder at 4:13 AM on March 6, 2020 [26 favorites]

Does anyone have evidence that there's anything more "corrupt" going on here than different people thinking different candidates would make the nominee for president?

I think the trend of “every voter is a pundit” affects this—every story of a losing campaign is simple and complicated at the same time. It’s complicated because you can analyze to the death all the different trends or bad luck breaks or polls or what not that may or may not have swayed voters. And it sucks that sexism and misogyny is one of those factors, a huge one. (Money too—although in this election it’s fascinating because some of the most progressive campaigns were the best funded while the likely winner was going around on a shoestring, barely even able to advertise.)

But it’s also simple because: you lose when you don’t convince enough people in enough states to vote for you, regardless of why they didn’t.

I don’t mean this to shut down discussion of sexism because I think it’s obvious here (and less talked about but still present with Klobuchar as well). But ultimately there can only be one winner.
posted by sallybrown at 4:41 AM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

Warren would probably still have gotten a raw deal under ranked choice (IRV) voting because they eliminate candidates starting from the bottom, based on how many first choice votes they get. In contrast, in an approval voting system (select one or more candidates) I think she might have actually been the nominee.

Yeah, I realized after I posted that I was letting my feels get in the way - you're right, the outcome of IRV would not have been so clear as I said. Still, if we had IRV, no one would have already dropped out, and I'm pretty sure that without any candidates having the chance to endorse anyone else, Warren would have picked up a lot of second-choice ranks from folks who put Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Harris first, and I'm further thinking if that had been enough to give her the edge on either Sanders or Biden, that's where the "in a walk" comes in; I have a much easier time imagining someone in either camp putting her second than I do someone ranking Biden/Sanders their top two in either order. But then again, if everyone had stayed in, who knows? Any of the other earlier candidates could have similarly bubbled up to contest the now front-runners.

As a person of color who grew up poor, let me be the first to tell you that while economic equality does not solve racism, it certainly takes much of the bite out of it.

A great point, and thank you.
posted by solotoro at 4:46 AM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

I was happy to vote for her, and I'm sad that she's out.
posted by bunderful at 4:59 AM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

Warren is continuing to snipe at Bernie after dropping out. Disappointing, but consistent with her attitude towards his campaign (both in 2016 and 2020). I'm not sure how she ever convinced so many people into believing she was a genuine supporter of progressive politics given her history (Drucilla Cornell calls her the most "relentless, ruthless nihilist" she's ever met) and, let's say, strained relationship with the truth. The first time I ever took notice of her was her fleeing from questions about Israel's ongoing invasion of Gaza (which she later defended). Now she's wondering why her vote for Iran sanctions is crippling their coronavirus response. How people have ignored these details and built her up into a mythical hero of the progressive left is beyond me.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 5:15 AM on March 6, 2020 [19 favorites]

. America's future

Odd how no one ever asked the ideologically similar male candidate who entered the race later to endorse her and drop out instead of staying in as a spoiler...
posted by Flannery Culp at 5:18 AM on March 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

that she was a Republican true believer before she became a Democrat, all that made me at least wary of her.

Oooh, I hate this anti-Warren talking point so much. Don't we want people to move left? How do you build a movement if a former Republican who created an entire federal agency to protect consumers from powerful corporations is someone to be wary of? The left should be trying to make more of her.

Change is hard. It's hard to change the beliefs you grew up with. She grew up in Oklahoma. I grew up in a county that went 70% for Trump. Conservatism is baked deep into every part of your life. You're steeped in it every day. (Our sports teams didn't have practice after school on Wednesdays because the Southern Baptists had church.) The fact that she so has thoroughly and thoughtfully rejected that is one of the things I admire most about her.
posted by Mavri at 5:21 AM on March 6, 2020 [137 favorites]

Her exit is due to misogyny and the boredom of competence.

And how. The political press basically ignored her, partially because sexism and partially because for the lazy political press, her competently run campaign appearances were boooooooring and didn't produce anything newwwwwwwsworthy, and analyzing her policy prescriptions was harrrrd. So much more easy and fun to cover Biden's latest gaffe! Feh.

Warren's biggest splash in recent months was when she pantsed Michael Bloomberg on the debate stage. She is largely responsible for throwing cold water on his presidential ambitions, and Biden and Sanders owe her big for clearing the field for them.
posted by Gelatin at 5:23 AM on March 6, 2020 [34 favorites]

Personally, I really, really liked Warren a lot, but I think whoever was running her campaign miscalculated badly. Not just on the MFA thing, but also the total 180° on accepting SuperPAC money, and yes, the often very heated criticism of the one candidate closest to her policy-wise. I do think these things alienated a lot of progressives, and wherever Warren was politically, her campaign could have been run much, much better.

All this said, it's been depressing as hell to see Warren supporters on my timeline seriously talking about voting for Biden just to spite Sanders. Are we trying to advance policy, or is this some kind of personality contest? And why throw your support behind a guy as misogynist as Biden; the man who attacked Anita Hill and has said as recently as months ago that he's OK with the right's "states rights" policy on abortion?

I mean at this point my cynical self is convinced Biden will end up getting the nomination, but I sincerely hope that, just once, voters can put policy first. Tired of these "seems like someone I could have a beer with" standards.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:24 AM on March 6, 2020 [17 favorites]

I get why people focus on Warren supporters (because they care enough to have supported at least one candidate), but there is a comparatively HUGE pool of eligible voters who will stay at home and do nothing. Warren and her supporters get blamed for fragmenting the vote, but why not focus on why Bernie and Biden are failing to turn out the non-voters?
posted by sallybrown at 5:31 AM on March 6, 2020 [19 favorites]

Warren got her political start fighting against Bidens bad bankruptcy policies. If she has principles she'll never agree to an endorsement or a joint ticket (anyway Biden will likely pick klobuchar).

I really believe this is the moment when we find out whether Warren is for real. Was she running on ideas and principles or was this about her own desire for power. Certainly as the campaign went on and she continued to blunder (wavering on m4a, trying to boost her campaign with a risible claim about Sanders private remarks, going all in on superpacs when she ran out money) I started to wonder more and more what was really going on here. It seemed like another politico unable to resist the gigantic pull of vanity.

Endorsing Biden would be a complete betrayal of all the things she claims to be fighting for (and no endorsement is basically an endorsement of Biden at this point). It's at this point that we'll see what she's really made of
posted by dis_integration at 5:32 AM on March 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

I don't understand the rush to install her as VP or AG or anything that's not Senate leadership. She's been fantastic in her current role, and Massachusetts has (and will apparently continue to have... ugh) a Republican governor who gets to appoint her replacement if she vacates her seat. Last time we got a Senate appointee from Massachusetts, it was Scott Brown, for just long enough to gut the ACA. Next time around... actually, Scott Brown would probably pack up his carpetbag and pickup truck and move back to Massachusetts just for the chance at another 18 month unelected stint where he could continue to fulfill his lifelong dream of having the camera trained on him while being the dumbest guy in the room.

Yes, dumber than Rand Paul. Yes, dumber then then-contemporary Senator Ted Stevens.
posted by Mayor West at 5:32 AM on March 6, 2020 [9 favorites]

I am bemused by non-Native people taking offense on behalf of Native people over Warren’s deeply problematic but acknowledged and sincerely apologized for history of asserting Indigenous ancestry. I do know quite a few Native colleagues — scholars and activists and PHDs mostly — who are really bothered by it and see it as disqualifying, and I hear and respect that given their particular focus on the issues involved. But I know many more Native people less engaged in debates about politics and identity in academia especially — who view her as the ONE candidate running who even gives a *flying fuck* about Native American issues and communities. She is the only one with a detailed agenda for federal relations with Native nations, the only one who has spent significant time campaigning in Indian country, and she would wipe the floor with her knowledge of issues affecting Native communities in a debate with both of her elderly white male opponents. That is, if a televised debate ever once mentioned Native America as even existing, which I can’t recall EVER happening but finally would with the issue broached via “Pochahontas” bullshit — Warren’s foolishness would be converted into a learning experience for the whole country. So it’s just as compelling to me that this critique cuts off the hope of a candidate like that being president over a learning experience that helped make her woke on the issues here. I see social media reductionism as the enemy of politically smart strategy across the board — oh this person did this therefore I couldn’t possibly support them ever even if their opponent is a Nazi, hashtag outrage! — and as playing right into the hands of Brad Parscale and Vladimir Putin.

What has Bernie or Biden done for Native people? Name the Native people among their close advisers and associates. Ask them to discuss Indigenous sovereignty issues in a debate sometime.

I’m not over grieving for Warren’s candidacy yet. I hope she doesn’t endorse anyone. I want her to keep being a third voice.
posted by spitbull at 5:37 AM on March 6, 2020 [115 favorites]

I really believe this is the moment when we find out whether Warren is for real. Was she running on ideas and principles or was this about her own desire for power.

Oh yes, you’ve caught her! Dropping out of college to have kids, scraping together her degree and a law degree while raising them, and then spending decades as a law professor...her plot to gain power almost paid off!

Whether she is “for real” all comes down to how she impacts or doesn’t a man people like. This is sexist garbage.
posted by sallybrown at 5:39 AM on March 6, 2020 [110 favorites]

I could be mistaken, but Warren's campaign messaging has consistently been about big structural change... while keeping capitalism intact. Warren's position is that of reform, i.e. the use of money as power in American politics, corruption, lobbying, etc.

To note the above mention of college educated white liberals, Warren's politics kind works for that socioeconomic class. Leftists, on the other hand, have a fundamental beef with capitalism. Regardless of who is right or what alliances are possible, it's important to recognize this philosophical divide as a basic source of conflict between two political camps.
posted by polymodus at 5:39 AM on March 6, 2020 [8 favorites]

But let's be clear: every policy position that is or was important to Warren over the last ten years is something Bernie has been stumping for decades.

Bernie has an excellent, consistent record on some key issues but he hasn't been at the front of the pack on some things Warren really pushed, like breaking up big tech, addressing black maternal mortality, and protecting the rights of people with disabilities. She has a huge range of policy interests and issues. She's much more than a recent Bernie copycat.
posted by Emmy Rae at 5:43 AM on March 6, 2020 [83 favorites]

Warren is continuing to snipe at Bernie after dropping out. Disappointing, but consistent with her attitude towards his campaign (both in 2016 and 2020).

I'm sorry, was she supposed to celebrate the people sending her snake emojis? And you're linking to an article calling her a liar, implicitly assuming Sanders was telling the truth--do you have any evidence for that? You do realize Sanders himself a day or two ago condemned the attacks against her, right?
posted by Anonymous at 5:45 AM on March 6, 2020

Whether she is “for real” all comes down to how she impacts or doesn’t a man people like. This is sexist garbage.

Wild take really. Once you're in the game the rules of the game apply. This isn't the private life of a law professor, it's the public actions of a rich and powerful person whose decision at this point could be make or break not just for a campaign, but for the future of a country and, with the climate crisis looming, the future of the world. It's with that seriousness that I approach this present moment (and why I'm actually texting, calling and hopefully canvassing this time). Whether she is for real truly does come down to what she does now because there is incredible power in her hands and the stakes were never higher.
posted by dis_integration at 5:47 AM on March 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

The only thing I recall from her campaign that really leaned on the power of the presidency was a promise to direct the justice department to break up big tech. Which didn't exactly endear her to anyone here.

Endear? Shit, I did a fist pump when I read about her intentions to break up Silicon Valley. We're a country that broke up Standard Oil and ATT but have allowed Facebook, Google and others way more power over our lives than those old companies.
posted by octothorpe at 5:53 AM on March 6, 2020 [46 favorites]

But let's be clear: every policy position that is or was important to Warren over the last ten years is something Bernie has been stumping for decades.

Gun control was the reason why I went for Warren over Bernie (and also the reasoning behind why Warren's views have changed and Bernie's have remained as they are), and I get extremely resentful about people telling me that gun control is not important to me, that really the reason why I supported Warren was actually about white feminism and my wish to protect my current wealth (which? no.). Bernie has been great at unwavering on the points that he's been on the right side of history about, but he's also not great at shifting on the points where he could stand to grow. I still support him and will volunteer for him over Biden, and I'm going to volunteer for whoever the democratic nominee is. But it's okay to admit that your candidate may have some flaws.

I personally feel like stories about her pivoting to the center were overblown - her messaging changed to appeal to the party base, but the policies remained generally the same.
posted by dinty_moore at 6:09 AM on March 6, 2020 [43 favorites]

Anyone on this thread (or anywhere else) who is pointing to the mistakes Warren or Clinton made in their campaigns, or the defects Warren or Clinton have in their personalities, or even the corrupt or racist or downright "wrong" actions either of them took as the reason why they lost*? needs to take many, many, many steps back.

More.

And a few more. Don't stop now.

Keep going until you fall backwards off the sky-high cliff made entirely of all the inadequacies that make up your favorite - and successful! - male candidate. The cliff you didn't even notice you were standing on, because nobody talks about it.

Like, seriously, we have elected Trump for president and you want to tell me that a woman's shortcomings as a candidate are the reason why she failed?

* You're welcome to use those reasons as the reason why*you* don't like this candidate -- and I will roll my eyes at you -- but don't claim it's the reason they lost.
posted by MiraK at 6:20 AM on March 6, 2020 [115 favorites]

Whether she is for real truly does come down to what she does now

And she knows better than you do what actions now best support the policy goals she has. Let me repeat that again: she knows better than you do what actions now best support the policy goals she has.
posted by sallybrown at 6:24 AM on March 6, 2020 [47 favorites]

Just another voice hoping she'll be a really great long term Senator with several stints as Speaker. It's where the good works start, good laws make for great presidents, there is just too much emphasis on that position, it should be more of an administrator not the defacto king of the world.

VP is not a good place for here, it's not where the core things get done, AG or another interior cabinet post she'd be truly great for one administration then back to lecturing (don't know enough to think about State) as a long term US Senator she could push things the right way for decades.
posted by sammyo at 6:30 AM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

She was the candidate, by far, who most scared the people in power. And the people in power erased her, and the people in power won. Bloomberg gets the last laugh. Heartbreaking.
posted by Gadarene at 6:35 AM on March 6, 2020 [24 favorites]

And in a saner world, Democrats understood that the most important number in this campaign was that a majority of polled Republicans -- Republicans! -- supported Warren's wealth tax proposal. (And a vast majority of voters overall.)

That is how we bridge the gap. That is how we win. That is how we make the world a better place. But the pundit class is equally comfortable no matter the administration, when it comes to that, and so it was never a focus of the narrative.

If people who purport to represent the Democrats in the media really cared about winning the next election, they'd have been shouting that from the rooftops.
posted by Gadarene at 6:39 AM on March 6, 2020 [12 favorites]

Because pardon my fucking French, but who gives a shit about whether someone was a registered Republican thirty years ago or checked a box on a form before that? Our country is in peril. The house is on fire, and every level but the topmost is burning. We are in crisis. And the structure of wealth, the way the system works institutionally to benefit those who have the means to capture and corrupt it to the detriment of the nation and the perpetuation of racial and gender disparities, is the fundamental problem.

She was quite patently the person who understood that best and had the ability to get things done. If these elections were actually about identifying and solving problems, she would be the nominee by acclamation. But she threatens the existing power structures and she's a woman. It's disgusting and unforgivable.
posted by Gadarene at 6:48 AM on March 6, 2020 [61 favorites]

I just can't with the "Bernie said it first" crowd. I mean, yeah, he did, but Warren was able to clearly articulate the how and has the wherewithal to make it happen. It is a great shame that she is no longer a candidate.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:49 AM on March 6, 2020 [40 favorites]

Sanders was the spoiler. Warren the genuine deal.

(I don't really believe this, but I can't abide all the Warren spoiler crap.)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 6:55 AM on March 6, 2020 [19 favorites]

Democrats: We couldn't get whiter, we couldn't get guy-er, but at least we can do older! See, better then ever!
posted by Bovine Love at 7:08 AM on March 6, 2020 [10 favorites]

"Gadfly" has a long history of use in politics to describe someone who relentlessly pushes ideas that make the establishment leaders uncomfortable and refuses to be silent about them even when it would seem to be politically expedient to do so. Generally people use it admiringly. If you choose to interpret that as calling her "annoying"... Well, I can understand that nerves are raw. I've stayed out of most of the recent political threads because the infighting has been obscene, particularly that directed towards Warren, so I'm sure there's a lot of context for negative reads of any comment about Warren that I'm missing.

For what it's worth, my preferred candidate was Harris, and I'm still disappointed her campaign didn't last longer. I also don't remember hers receiving this kind of eulogy thread as Warren's has. I think there's a lot of reasons for that but maybe it's good to reflect on them.
posted by biogeo at 7:09 AM on March 6, 2020 [9 favorites]

Sanders was the spoiler.

Precisely. He was already too old, and now his life expectancy after that heart attack is ~3 years. He should have dropped out and thrown his support behind her months ago, but no, he was ~polling better~ so whelp. Even in the best case scenario, he's forcing us (not him! us!) to shoulder the 50% risk that our vote will become meaningless within the first half of his first term. Can you imagine a female candidate with an ego that destructive? She would have been eviscerated.
posted by MiraK at 7:10 AM on March 6, 2020 [45 favorites]

jokeefe:

I have been imagining what it would have been like had Sanders put his ego aside, dropped out after his heart attack, and directed all the people he has mobilized over the last few years to support Warren. But of course not (see Ego, above). It's infuriating. Yes, he should have sacrificed his ambition to support the better candidate, just as Warren is being asked to support an inferior candidate now.

atrazine:
Why would he drop out to support someone who was polling way below him? That's a definition of "inferior candidate" which is new to me.

I could be wrong, atrazine, but I'm fairly sure that at the time of his heart attack, they were polling reasonably even; she may even have been ahead.

But regardless, the calculus would be "hmm, maybe someone who is not whistling past the actuarial graveyard and with whom I agree on virtually everything should be given the chance over the next four to eight years to implement the structural changes I find so desperately important!"

I don't begrudge him for not dropping out (okay, I do, but it's understandable), but there is absolutely a case that he advances his policy goals and life mission more effectively by doing so.

This was months before any primary, remember.
posted by Gadarene at 7:13 AM on March 6, 2020 [19 favorites]

For those health/actuarial reasons only I'd love to see an [old white guy]/Warren ticket. Otherwise, VP isn't a real job anyway. Harris for AG, Warren as either boss of the Senate or SecTreas, and while we're at it, The Rock or Lin-Manuel Miranda for SecState, as long as a solid diplomatic corps is backing him up - either has the personableness and intelligence to make other countries like us again.
posted by Flannery Culp at 7:17 AM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

...who gives a shit about whether someone was a registered Republican thirty years ago or checked a box on a form before that?

Nobody cared that Bernie honeymooned in the Soviet Union, except maybe the old KGB which Putin helped run and who no doubt also tracked him (in between his duties as a black marketer kingpin who co-inherited the entire state infrastructure after late communism collapsed).

...(anyway Biden will likely pick klobuchar)

Biden/Clinton would be storybook, and perhaps prevent the promised impeachment planned by Republicans. No matter who gets picked, we're always on the verge of a right-wing coup without the house majority.
posted by Brian B. at 7:22 AM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

@GoAngelo: 1/ I run Media Matters (a media watchdog organization). I want to say something about @ewarren’s departure from the race. Horserace, polls, nomination aspect aside aside, we will all feel the effects of Warren’s absence from the race, whether you realize it or not. Here’s why...
posted by Going To Maine at 7:23 AM on March 6, 2020 [11 favorites]

Massachusetts has (and will apparently continue to have... ugh) a Republican governor who gets to appoint her replacement if she vacates her seat. Last time we got a Senate appointee from Massachusetts, it was Scott Brown, for just long enough to gut the ACA.

Massachusetts resident here: Sorry, but no, not quite. The way it currently works in Massachusetts is that the governor would appoint a replacement only until a special election is called. So after John Kerry became secretary of state in 2013, Gov. Deval Patrick appointed Mo Cowan as interim senator - a post he held for just five months.

Scott Brown wasn't appointed. He won a special election to fill Ted Kennedy's seat after Kennedy's death in 2009 because the Democratic candidate ran an absolutely horrible campaign. If Massachusetts replaced deceased/resigned senators like other states, Brown never would have made it to Washington, since Patrick, a Democrat, was in office at the time. After two years, Brown lost his bid for a full six-year term to a woman who persisted.
posted by adamg at 7:25 AM on March 6, 2020 [23 favorites]

@GoAngelo: 1/ I run Media Matters (a media watchdog organization). I want to say something about @ewarren’s departure from the race. Horserace, polls, nomination aspect aside aside, we will all feel the effects of Warren’s absence from the race, whether you realize it or not. Here’s why...

This is an excellent thread, but why do I read the comments... I never read the comments. So depressed right now.
posted by Gadarene at 7:33 AM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

Biden will pick O'Rourke. Someone young to shave off some of his fogeyness. Texas, eyeing a big prize. Someone who is mostly moderate.

(I think O'Rourke's move to the middle was strategic for Texas Senate. Or rather, I think it was a non-strategic strategy.)
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 7:34 AM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

up until the Clinton administration claiming native American ancestry while identifying as white was considered an accolade by many residents of western states whose families had been there since native americans were forced into reservations.
posted by brujita at 7:37 AM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

Biden will pick O'Rourke. Someone young to shave off some of his fogeyness. Texas, eyeing a big prize. Someone who is mostly moderate.

My long-shot pick is Rep. Veronica Escobar, who replaced Beto in Congress.
posted by sallybrown at 7:39 AM on March 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

I get what everybody's saying about veep being powerless, but the thing is, both Sanders and Biden are worryingly ancient, whereas she presents as barely out of her forties, so if she were veep, there's a not-bad chance she'd soon be potus, so I'm hoping. I wish I could've voted for her. I really loved her.
posted by Don Pepino at 7:39 AM on March 6, 2020 [11 favorites]

she knows better than you do what actions now best support the policy goals she has.

Absolutely! Senator Warren should be the one to decide where she is in the next (knock wood!) administration. She knows best where she can do the best good. I think she would be fabulous in the cabinet, but if she thinks she'd be better in the Senate or on the bench, then so be it!

The person who I really hope gets appointed to the Supreme Court is Mr. Barack Obama.

For Biden's running mate, I think the best candidate by far is Stacey Abrams. She's a wonderful politician, a Southerner, a woman of color (to "balance the ticket," as Jim Clyburn advises), and would not be leaving a Senate seat or gubernatorial seat empty by becoming VP. And four years as VP would place her in a perfect position to run for president in 2024. I would be ecstatic if she were on the nominee's ticket, and I think both she and Biden actually agree with that! So my fingers are crossed.

I'm very sorry to see Warren leave the race, but she's raised her profile and refined her plans and hopefully this is a step to greater power within the party and within the coming (knock wood!) administration, even if she's not the one leading the administration. What really breaks my heart is that if Warren were a man and had run the same campaign over the same period of time, I'm certain that she'd have been the nominee. Just puts the misogyny in stark contrast. But in a field where all the candidates who are people of color have been pretty systematically eliminated from the contest already...I dunno, it's all so disappointing. But we have to soldier on and live in the world we've got.
posted by rue72 at 7:42 AM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

What brought down Bloomberg’s? Elizabeth Warren at the debates ...and an army of Bloomberg hires actively working to sabotage the campaign.
posted by The Whelk at 7:44 AM on March 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

I think the best bet for a Biden VP would be Michigan Guv Gretchen Whitman. Geographically, it makes sense (Beto is not enough to win Texas) and despite her prosecutor past, on social issues and health care she seems to be rather progressive.
posted by Ber at 7:48 AM on March 6, 2020

Yeah, I was thinking Whitmer would be a likely VP pull as well, but my reasoning is somewhat cynical and based on what I figure would poll well or fill in geographically for Biden.
posted by LionIndex at 7:54 AM on March 6, 2020

I have a lot of feelings about this as someone who’s on Leftbook. I think Warren was absolutely the solid choice and it’s 100% sexism which makes people view her as not “exciting” which somehow is a thing that matters I guess. And I also think the abuse she was getting for not dropping out and clearing Sander’s way was incredibly, incredibly gross. People claimed her not dropping out was all a plot, and I’m not seeing a lot of apologies for those statements now that she did. Now it’s just like “how dare she not endorse Bernie”.

I hope everyone votes for Warren in my state primary even if she is out, because I am just so tired of this.
posted by corb at 8:01 AM on March 6, 2020 [23 favorites]

Beto would be a disaster — one heartbeat away from the presidency of an elderly Biden you have to stand up to presidential level scrutiny.

There’s a reason he was so early to drop out.
posted by spitbull at 8:01 AM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

With great respect, can we please stop speculating generally about Biden VP choices in a thread about Elizabeth Warren?
posted by Gadarene at 8:06 AM on March 6, 2020 [46 favorites]

"Geographically, it makes sense (Beto is not enough to win Texas)"

Is this the standard now, though? Does anyone think that Castro could win TX or Abrams could win GA?
posted by Selena777 at 8:06 AM on March 6, 2020

Yeah Warren would've been the best President.

Also..No one over 60 should be allowed to run for President. It's insane that we have two people in their late 70s as finalists, one of which doesn't seem mentally fit for the job anymore.
posted by Liquidwolf at 8:07 AM on March 6, 2020 [11 favorites]

Is this the standard now, though? Does anyone think that Castro could win TX or Abrams could win GA?

Castro was actually a much more exciting Senate candidate for 2018 than Beto initially was, and many people (including me) were disappointed when he announced that he would not run in late 2016/early 2017. I was pretty frustrated that he didn't pick up a run at Senate then or when Beto announced that he would not run against Cornyn. Generally, I am really angry at both of them for spurning the Senate seat--where either of them would do so, so much good--for a run at the Presidency in a crowded field without really great chances. Now neither of them are serving, again, and Cornyn will be running against a candidate without either's star power or campaign momentum, where he will probably sail to victory without a strong contest.

It is honestly pretty hard to overstate the name recognition of the Castros among progressive Texans. Joaquin is well placed where he is, but Julian could be doing so much for Texan politics that he seems to have sacrificed in favor of another attempt at a high federal cabinet position or VP, assuming that Dems take the Presidency--and that is the charitable interpretation. Beto I'm pretty sure just got a swelled head, tripped, and squandered almost all the goodwill he built up in 2016-2018.

Goddammit, Texas.
posted by sciatrix at 8:23 AM on March 6, 2020 [15 favorites]

But let's be clear: every policy position that is or was important to Warren over the last ten years is something Bernie has been stumping for decades.

Well, sort of but not really. They were both outstanding candidates in terms of their qualifications to run the kind of presidency that they wanted to run and were promoting to their voters. It's just that they have different theoretical approaches to policy positions (even when the actual "positions" are similar) which make their sets of policy positions and personal characteristics different in some key ways.

Warren's political position requires her to have detailed plans for all kinds of significant reforms. That's because she's running from the position of substantially re-structuring capitalism to save it from its own excesses. If you're going to do that, you need to be clear on all the re-structuring you're going to do.

Sanders, coming from a socialist position, naturally has less detailed plans because his position is more revolutionary. He doesn't need extensive costing of plans because he doesn't have an element of support who worry that he will raise taxes substantially to pay for it.

It's obvious that he will raise taxes on the wealthy substantially and that is what his base wants. Warren was also proposing tax increases for the wealthiest but because she is fundamentally a reformist she has a narrower window in which to operate.

This is also why her qualifications, experience and intelligence are bigger selling points for her than they would be for Sanders. If you're leading (you think) a movement of the American working class that will sweep you and a whole class of likeminded legislators into power, then your personal abilities to work within an existing system are less relevant. FDR wasn't personally a wonk either.

On the other hand, if you're Warren and you're running on a big structural reforms to American capitalism platform, you need to be a hyper-competent technocrat to get those changes through.

The common socialist point of view that "identity politics" don't matter as the wealth/income redistribution will fix everything and only class matters can come across as pretty tone deaf. First because to many people, the idea that *this one weird trick* aka socialism will also solve racism/sexism/ablism etc. doesn't sound plausible - and indeed those things all existed in both the Soviet Union and in social democratic Scandi countries so it seem empirically weak. Second because the failure mode of "socialism is going to solve racism" does nothing for them. For example, many people would rather have reparations now (under a system that looks basically the same, maybe with some tweaks) rather than a hypothetical future in which wealth and income inequalities are so substantially reduced that they won't be relevant. Hard to blame anyone for that!

Anyone on this thread (or anywhere else) who is pointing to the mistakes Warren or Clinton made in their campaigns, or the defects Warren or Clinton have in their personalities, or even the corrupt or racist or downright "wrong" actions either of them took as the reason why they lost*? needs to take many, many, many steps back.

Exactly. The mirror image of the argument that candidate X should have won because they were qualified is that they lost because of a particular position or manoeuvre. Obviously people lose elections or selections because they do not get enough votes. Unless you have compelling evidence that one of these things actually drove substantial movement in voting, they are reasons why one might not *want* a particular candidate to win, not reasons why they didn't win.

People are not elected because they are well qualified, have sterling characters, or have "good policies". They are elected because they win the election. See Trump, Donny.
posted by atrazine at 8:26 AM on March 6, 2020 [40 favorites]

Yeah Warren would've been the best President.

Also..No one over 60 should be allowed to run for President. It's insane that we have two people in their late 70s as finalists, one of which doesn't seem mentally fit for the job anymore.

Warren will be 71 years-old this June.
posted by Brian B. at 8:27 AM on March 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

Lili Loofbourow, Slate: The Most Diverse Field in History Has Come Down to This

It is jaw-dropping that not one but two leftist candidates made it to this point in the primaries. But maybe we assimilate progress too quickly, because having marveled at the diversity of that slate of candidates, I find it no less jaw-dropping that a primary process with that initial makeup is likely to yield Joe Biden as the person most likely to be the Democratic nominee. [...]

It’s true that this may not matter: Trump speaks this way too, only worse, and Biden has at least spent a career adapting the public to his “gaffes.” Trump’s bad temper is worse than Biden’s, and he certainly knows less. Trump is creepier than Biden; on that front, there’s no contest.

But what an unappealing contest it would be. [...]

The Democratic primary showcased the party’s diversity and strength and made a lot of plans for a better world thinkable in a party that wouldn’t, in former times, have embraced them. But on Tuesday, perhaps considering that 44 out of the last 45 presidents have been white men of a very particular type, many American voters reverted to what they clearly consider the safest bet. It says something about what we consider safe that a majority of voters seem to have decided that the best way to fight an incompetent old white man was to present him with another incompetent white man and let them shout it out.

posted by tonycpsu at 8:28 AM on March 6, 2020 [8 favorites]

This is also why her qualifications, experience and intelligence are bigger selling points for her than they would be for Sanders.

Can we just all collectively re-read this and process the idea that qualifications, experience, and intelligence apparently don't matter to Sanders's candidacy or his potential to be a great president? But these very qualities are totally inadequate to help Warren succeed?

The rationalizations are endless, aren't they. Of he's a socialist and he's running as an outsider to the system (which he has been part of for forty years, but pay not attention). Therefore his intelligence or his experience or his qualifications are immaterial!

(I know atrazine didn't make this argument, but it is an accurate summary of the argument the candidates themselves and certainly their supporters are making.)
posted by MiraK at 8:32 AM on March 6, 2020 [19 favorites]

flagged as truly fantastic, atrazine.
posted by Gadarene at 8:39 AM on March 6, 2020

I donated a small amount of money to her campaign. If there's an upside to this it's that the constant stream of texts and emails begging for more money have tapered off.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 8:41 AM on March 6, 2020

Warren's whole ideology and theory of change is based on a highly educated and professionalized technocracy taking down corruption and inequality (like the CFPB). Sanders's ideology is based on mass organizing around worker and community solidarity. For a technocrat like Warren, it makes sense that her intelligence/qualifications are selling points.

How many advanced degrees does Dolores Huerta have or Eugene Debs had?

If misogyny is 100% why Warren failed to gain traction in this primary and she also failed to secure support from people of color, does it mean people of color are inherently misogynistic? Or can people disagree on ideology and theories of change?
posted by Ouverture at 8:42 AM on March 6, 2020 [14 favorites]

What Planet Do You Live On

I'm going with a lot of internal misogyny, from all corners, myself.
posted by tiny frying pan at 8:46 AM on March 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

Am I weird for thinking that change doesn't have to happen in just one way? The successes of one path do not preclude successes with another path.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 8:46 AM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

Warren's whole ideology and theory of change is based on a highly educated and professionalized technocracy taking down corruption and inequality (like the CFPB). Sanders's ideology is based on mass organizing around worker and community solidarity.

It's telling that you don't have a parenthetical example of major accomplishment like CFPB for Sanders, but it's so easy to find several for Warren who spent her life translating her ideology into real work done. In the end, that's the proof of the pudding, and it's 100% misogyny that the candidate without a record of real work is in the race and the candidate with the record of real work is out.
posted by MiraK at 8:47 AM on March 6, 2020 [42 favorites]

It's telling that you don't have a parenthetical example of major accomplishment like CFPB for Sanders, but it's so easy to find several for Warren who spent her life translating her ideology into real work done. In the end, that's the proof of the pudding, and it's 100% misogyny that the candidate without a record of real work is in the race and the candidate with the record of real work is out.

I'm glad you mentioned this because it helped me realize just how left the party has moved thanks to Sanders and how I had momentarily taken that for granted. Truly, that leftward shift is an incredible accomplishment for a leftist in America and it makes me so happy and inspired to support him.
posted by Ouverture at 8:51 AM on March 6, 2020 [17 favorites]

Am I weird for thinking that change doesn't have to happen in just one way? The successes of one path do not preclude successes with another path.

You are not weird (or alone) in your thinking.

In addition to what you said, I think that change doesn't have to happen all at once either. Though sometimes change is an all-or-nothing affair.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:53 AM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

I donated a small amount of money to her campaign. If there's an upside to this it's that the constant stream of texts and emails begging for more money have tapered off.

Reply to any campaign text with 'stop' and you automatically get taken off the list. It's that easy and works for any legitimate campaign.
posted by dinty_moore at 8:53 AM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

She was great. So energetic, a true happy warrior. And so good on details. I think as president she would have been able to open combat on a dozen fronts and succeed on some of them.

That last debate, where while sinking in the polls she mauled Bloomberg: No real political advantage; Bloomberg voters wouldn't go to her. But I think mostly it was that she thought Bloomberg would be a horrible president. What a way to bow out.

The GoAngelo twitter thread Going to Maine posted above captures the same instinct, skipping Fox News because it was better for the country to explain why Fox News is bad than to get a little free press.
posted by mark k at 8:53 AM on March 6, 2020 [23 favorites]

Sanders never sat well with me because of, what has always seemed to me, his unwillingness to accept that race and sex in America are issues that go beyond class and wealth. I’ve never bought Sanders as someone who really thinks all that deeply about race and the wealth gap that racist policies have created. I don’t believe that, if socialism, then racial harmony.

Warren seemed to take discussions of race and sex to heart, and to really believe they were important in and of themselves, not as a by product that would be swept away.

And yes, she did need to show her work and create detailed plans because of she didn’t, she’d have been ridiculed for not having thought things through, or for not being serious enough, or any of the other mouth noises people made that really just boil down to “I don’t believe a woman can do this job.” Of course, by creating and being willing to discuss her plans at any moment she was asked, she got labeled a wonk, or too much of a policy geek to really be relatable. She was damned either way, and we’re all the poorer for it.

Sanders, being Sanders, never has to explain how he’ll do these thing he promises. He’s free to be irritable, to be angry and dismissive, because it’s cute, or badass, or any other noises people make to say “I don’t care if it’s a double standard, he’s a guy, and guys are guys” and deep down, I’m stunningly exhausted at the thought that what we’ve got left is a primary choice between two flawed old men leading to a presidential campaign between one of these flawed old men and the personification of mediocrity finding success because white and male.

This is the world we live in. I don’t want it anymore. I want to be in a world where, post Super Tuesday, we have a dynamic race with Warren, Castro, Harris, and Booker are still viable candidates pushing each other to be the best possible versions of what America needs them to be.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:58 AM on March 6, 2020 [77 favorites]

Am I weird for thinking that change doesn't have to happen in just one way? The successes of one path do not preclude successes with another path.

Change requires lots of different solutions, but there is still a core vision or principle behind that change. I like this Debs's quote a lot:

I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out.

For me, I lost my faith in both technocrats and the power of symbolic diversity as a result of the Obama years. Warren is the finest technocrat out there, but it's been a long time since I wanted that in political leadership.
posted by Ouverture at 9:00 AM on March 6, 2020 [13 favorites]

> He’s free to be irritable, to be angry and dismissive, because it’s cute, or badass

I think of his "Discussion over! Discusison over!" at one of the recent debates. There's no way Warren could've done that, or Harris, or Castro.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:07 AM on March 6, 2020 [21 favorites]

America’s crisis of trust and the one candidate who gets it, David Roberts, Vox - "Rebuilding social and political trust requires procedural reforms that don’t excite voters."

Warren’s appeal to a certain sort of politically engaged Democrat is that she combines bold progressive goals with extensive experience navigating US institutions and detailed plans for bureaucratic reform. It’s the best of both worlds, ambitious and pragmatic.

But there may not be all that many Democratic primary voters who want those two things together. It may be that the Democrats who want ambition don’t want pragmatism and the ones who claim to want pragmatism don’t want ambition.

That dilemma was illustrated perfectly by the episode that is said to have knocked Warren out of her early frontrunner status. Pressured to explain how she would pass Medicare-for-all, her campaign developed a phased plan that would create a public option through budget reconciliation, reform the filibuster, and bring a more comprehensive, fully paid-for bill to Congress later in her first term.

For her efforts, she took fire from both sides. It turns out most of the primary voters who want Medicare-for-all want it immediately and view any concessions to political reality as ideological betrayal. And it turns out most of the Very Serious People in DC who claim to want pragmatism (for Warren to “show her work”) really just want austerity, to be told that we can’t have nice things, a message that US elites have come to see as synonymous with realism.

It’s difficult to see the path forward for Warren. She will never out-ambition Sanders. Wilkinson thinks that she ought to marry her procedural reformism to a more putatively moderate substantive agenda to try to capture the role as the safe alternative to Sanders. But one class of voters that does see the potential of Warren’s agenda is the financial and tech elite who are its target. In many ways, they see Warren as a greater threat than Sanders, as she is laser-focused on the systems that undergird their privilege. It is doubtful that the money brokers of the party would embrace her even if she crafted a more moderate message.

And let’s not forget, unlike bright young white men like Pete, women don’t get second chances. They are not forgiven if they change their minds or adjust their messages. They are cast as “inauthentic,” deceitful schemers. It remains an easy stereotype to attach to women, as the ludicrous “Pocahontas” episode illustrated. (There is, unsurprisingly, misogyny infused throughout the media’s treatment of Warren.)

posted by the man of twists and turns at 9:19 AM on March 6, 2020 [54 favorites]

The common socialist point of view that "identity politics" don't matter as the wealth/income redistribution will fix everything...

...to many people, the idea that *this one weird trick* aka socialism will also solve racism/sexism/ablism etc. doesn't sound plausible

Huh? I don't know a single solitary socialist who says fighting bigotry doesn't matter, or that socialist economics would 'solve' bigotry.

The socialist hypothesis: bigotry flourishes especially in conditions of inequality and desperation, and it is systematically permitted and promoted by the elites who benefit from that inequality (cf. Trump). Hence, attack the inequality, reduce the desperation, and you will reduce bigotry as well. Conversely, if you don't attack those conditions, the elites will continue to exploit and foster bigotry, because it serves their ends.

Will that 'solve' bigotry, in the sense of totally eradicating it? No. Again, nobody said it would. But would it go a long way toward reducing it? Yes. And part of how we get there is by building solidarity across racial lines – for socialists, these things go together.

The alternative to this approach is... what, exactly? Forego economics and focus purely on culture, condemning bigotry while leaving an awful economic system firmly entrenched (cf. Obama)? How has that been working out?
posted by Beardman at 9:31 AM on March 6, 2020 [19 favorites]

I am sorry I voted for Bernie in the Cal primary. I did this instead of voting for Warren, pragmatic but cowardly act, I won't vote for him again. Colbert said it well, "This is why America can't have nice things." I can't believe I didn't vote for her. The Guardian has consistently posted nice photos of her, not the hatchet job they did on Hillary, and consequently that last election.
posted by Oyéah at 9:40 AM on March 6, 2020 [7 favorites]

That Roberts article is really, really, REALLY good.
posted by Gadarene at 9:41 AM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

unwillingness to accept that race and sex in America are issues
Yes! And even though Biden is a tragic dinosaur that says witheringly embarrassing things on camera every time he gets the opportunity, he also will go on camera every time he gets the opportunity to publicly accept that race and sex in America are issues.

Sanders's continuing not to do that is starting to seem like a deliberate, Trumpian attempt to appeal to his whiteguy bros. If it's not that, then it's arguably worse: he is incapable of adapting to on-the-ground realities.

He had trouble in 2015/16 because he over and over did things that alienated people of color. I waited in vain for him to do anydamnthing at all about that. I voted for him in the primary, because I desperately wanted the socialist to win, but he had successfully alienated POC democratic voters and thus he lost the primary.

This year, I'm standing in the kitchen tolerating NPR while washing dishes and I learn that the Edmund Pettus Bridge ceremony is happening and they start listing candidates who showed up and I listen to the whole list and then I just have to throw down the coffee cup I'm working on in order to throw up my hands. Warren and Klobuchar both thought it was important to show up, but not Bernie. Why? It's not difficult. So why? Why would you not show up and walk across the bridge? Do you just not want to win? Do you just think that eventually the voters you turned off last time by behaving precisely this way will somehow osmose True Socialist Values and forget about racism and the same exact thing that happened last time will magically not happen this time?

Seriously, maybe I'll sit out the fucking primary: I honestly do not GAF which one of them gets it.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:43 AM on March 6, 2020 [31 favorites]

I'd like to note that my comment way back isn't intended to ignore or downplay Warren's problematic traits. None of the candidates are pure -- that's not the point. The point is to throw a grenade into the status quo and have a plan to put the pieces back together in a better way.

Revolutionary? No, but the only information we have about what a candidate will do is what they tell us, and only two have told us that they'll do anything of real transformative substance.
posted by klanawa at 9:49 AM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

If she wants to be a progressive champion, she has a perfect opportunity to support the movement that's trying to get Americans health care, enact a Green New Deal, enact free college, etc. But she's not doing that; she's taking potshots at that movement.

Warren is trying to get all those things, so what movement are you referring to, exactly? Because you don't have to support Bernie to try to get Americans health care, enact a Green New Deal, enact free college, etc. There are a lot of activists and organizers who aren't on the Bernie train, but I guess we can just ignore their antics because they don't support "the" movement?
posted by Mavri at 9:53 AM on March 6, 2020 [17 favorites]

I'm pretty done with the variations of "no it's your candidate's supporters who are bad" on endless loop and I need folks to cut it out. It's political season and there's plenty of shit behavior by people to go chasing down, but doing it again and again is exhausting and brings zero light to the site, and using that as a proxy for arguing with other mefites is tiring as hell. If you have something substantial and constructive to add to the discussion, great, do it. If you are reflexively jockeying for position on a many-months-long intramural argument, cut it out or you will get a day off for starters.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:53 AM on March 6, 2020 [18 favorites]

That dilemma was illustrated perfectly by the episode that is said to have knocked Warren out of her early frontrunner status. Pressured to explain how she would pass Medicare-for-all, her campaign developed a phased plan that would create a public option through budget reconciliation, reform the filibuster, and bring a more comprehensive, fully paid-for bill to Congress later in her first term.

For her efforts, she took fire from both sides. It turns out most of the primary voters who want Medicare-for-all want it immediately and view any concessions to political reality as ideological betrayal. And it turns out most of the Very Serious People in DC who claim to want pragmatism (for Warren to “show her work”) really just want austerity, to be told that we can’t have nice things, a message that US elites have come to see as synonymous with realism.

This is what makes me so tired about the 'Warren backed away from Medicare for All' arguments - she came up with a multi-step plan that took into account the opposition that she would face (which I appreciate after Obama was stymied by republican obstruction to the ACA), but would get to medicare for all in a few years. Some opponents thought that any delay in medicare for all would kill the possibility of getting medicare for all, which I personally don't agree with but makes sense. But that argument was flattened down/twisted into 'not giving us Medicare for all' period - from people who should know better! - and then repeated as a simple truth.
posted by dinty_moore at 10:19 AM on March 6, 2020 [44 favorites]

There's hardly much more to say in this thread but I've long maintained that there's zero relationship between the skills needed to get elected and the skills needed to govern effectively. Although Warren ran a fine campaign and was able to do them both better than anyone IMO.

On the plus side she's got two more election cycles before she gets to Bernie. & Joe's age, so hey, there's time.
posted by GuyZero at 10:23 AM on March 6, 2020 [9 favorites]

I strongly believe that Warren would'e been one of this countries greatest presidents. Although some people think that's a low bar.

But nope. Can't happen. This country will twist itself into infinite cognitive and rhetorical gymnastics to avoid electing a smart woman as president. Well. Thank goodness she's still in the senate.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 10:26 AM on March 6, 2020 [24 favorites]

This is what makes me so tired about the 'Warren backed away from Medicare for All' arguments - she came up with a multi-step plan that took into account the opposition that she would face (which I appreciate after Obama was stymied by republican obstruction to the ACA), but would get to medicare for all in a few years. Some opponents thought that any delay in medicare for all would kill the possibility of getting medicare for all, which I personally don't agree with but makes sense. But that argument was flattened down/twisted into 'not giving us Medicare for all' period - from people who should know better! - and then repeated as a simple truth.

I feel like a lot of people no longer believe that baby steps towards the solutions we want are going to work, particularly after Trump basically wiped out huge chunks of what Obama accomplished while in office. That's why going from "Medicare for All" to "a step towards M4A" was seen as such a disappointing switch.

Further, any sort of actual medicare for all is going to require a groundswell of public demonstration and phone calls and support. Obama didn't just water down healthcare for republicans, he had to please his own shitty middle-of-the-road democrats too. I don't think you can develop that public support for half-step programs.
posted by graventy at 10:37 AM on March 6, 2020 [11 favorites]

Just another voice hoping she'll be a really great long term Senator with several stints as Speaker.

She'd be Majority Leader in the Senate - Speaker is for the House of Representatives.

And I would prefer President, but will settle for her being President Pro Tem of the Senate from 2021-2025 (which is the Vice President).
posted by lon_star at 10:40 AM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm happy I voted Warren, and didn't decide to go with any kind of "who can win" calculus. If the primary process means anything at all, it has to be a place where you vote for who you want to be the nominee. As it turned out, Biden won NC by a crushing margin, 19%, which is almost twice as large as the size of the NC Warren vote: so my decision seems to have had no cost to Sanders. But this was a difficult decision for me; I thought for a long time about if it was more important to try to slow down an Inevitable Nominee narrative than to vote for someone who pretty clearly was in third place.
posted by thelonius at 10:42 AM on March 6, 2020 [14 favorites]

Why don't people seem to care about the gender disparity in Senate and Congress, and in governorships? Why is this a conversation we seem to have only every four years during the presidentials?

One might argue stacking those seats with women is much more important legislatively, and would also guarantee a pipeline of stellar candidates for the next election.

We can only elect 2.5 presidents a decade, so hopes of electing a person of any given demographic group is slim.

We have significantly higher chances to do so in the legislative branch.
posted by shaademaan at 10:43 AM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

I feel like a lot of people no longer believe that baby steps towards the solutions we want are going to work, particularly after Trump basically wiped out huge chunks of what Obama accomplished while in office. That's why going from "Medicare for All" to "a step towards M4A" was seen as such a disappointing switch.

Thanks for repeating the second sentence of my comment back to me, I guess? Multiple steps in a plan that gets to Medicare for all legislation being passed in three years does not equal 'a step towards M4A', though. You can disagree with whether or not the plan would work, but you can't tell me that the plan was not, in fact, for medicare for all.

Why don't people seem to care about the gender disparity in Senate and Congress, and in governorships? Why is this a conversation we seem to have only every four years during the presidentials?

As a person who regularly still has to deal with Al Franken apologists when Tina Smith is doing a perfectly good job, what in the world makes you think that we don't care about misogyny when dealing with the Senate? I mean, I am personally willing to text you every single time I'm angry about misogyny in public life, but I have to warn you that you'd get them more often than Warren's campaign texts.
posted by dinty_moore at 10:49 AM on March 6, 2020 [35 favorites]

Why don't people seem to care about the gender disparity in Senate and Congress, and in governorships? Why is this a conversation we seem to have only every four years during the presidentials?

What makes you think people don’t care about this? Most of the women I know care about this intensely and work and donate to change it. And not just in government but in other careers as well.

Perhaps you should switch up who you’re having conversations with if it only comes up every four years?
posted by sallybrown at 11:09 AM on March 6, 2020 [25 favorites]

One might argue stacking those seats with women is much more important legislatively, and would also guarantee a pipeline of stellar candidates for the next election.

It is important! So, let’s make it happen. Warren has built up a campaign apparatus. Can we get her people to support senate and house candidates? Take the well trained volunteers and put them on the senate campaigns in their state, or on house campaigns, especially those of women and people of color?

My sadness at Warren’s early exit is at least in part about what will happen to the volunteer energy, since I think some of it is definitely not transferable to Bernie and much won’t translate to Biden either. So, put it towards the Senate! And diversifying the House!
posted by nat at 11:17 AM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

Nobody cared that Bernie honeymooned in the Soviet Union

Jesus, I know this is a Warren thread, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with spending time in the Soviet Union for leisure unless you thought that the USSR was some sort of enemy nation and liking them marked you as a traitor or something. Americans vacationed in Fracoist Spain without getting nearly as much crap as Sanders (because liberals will always side with fascism over socialism, as they say). The USSR was no worse than the USA. Both have incredibly mixed records when it comes to human and civil rights. Both had culture and value. Vacationing in the USSR (especially while visiting Burlington's sister city) is nothing someone should ever have to apologize for, ever.

Being a Republican during the Reagan administration as the AIDS crisis raged is far more of a black mark than visiting the USSR, but I'm a lot more interested in what people do now.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 11:26 AM on March 6, 2020 [22 favorites]

Can we get her people to support senate and house candidates?

I personally know many members of Warren's campaign staff in my state, as well as many of her most-involved volunteers, because we worked together on campaigns in 2018, 2016, 2014, and 2012. (2012 was the first election that I was involved in here. Many of my fellow volunteers have been at it for decades.) You do not need to do a single thing to get us to support senate and house candidates, because we have been doing that work, year in and year out, for a long time and presumably will continue to do it in the future.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 11:33 AM on March 6, 2020 [29 favorites]

You can disagree with whether or not the plan would work, but you can't tell me that the plan was not, in fact, for medicare for all.

By the same token, Kamala Harris's ten-year plan was also a "plan for medicare for all." But since a rollout that would span 2.5 administrations was not seen as very plausible, most of us would hesitate to bother calling it a plan.

Likewise, as you pointed out, the first step in Warren's revised, multi-increment plan for M4A would have encountered massive resistance. So much so that many of us didn't treat it as a serious "plan for M4A" either.

Now, is Bernie's plan for M4A plausible? Maybe it isn't either. But tactically, I agree with him: in this situation, if you don't shoot for the moon, you won't so much as get off the ground.
posted by Beardman at 11:34 AM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

atrazine: "Why would he drop out to support someone who was polling way below him? That's a definition of "inferior candidate" which is new to me."

After Sanders' heart attack on October 4th, his poll numbers slumped while Warren continued her months-long rise until she was neck-and-neck with Biden nationally. She was the clear leader in Iowa, New Hampshire, California. It would have been an opportune moment for Sanders to drop out for a legitimate, face-saving reason without having the inevitable divisive showdown between which one of them would lead the progressive wing. He chose to double down on his campaign, instead (which incidentally lends further credence to the idea that he thought Warren couldn't win). And now, shock of shocks, the further left candidate is struggling to win moderates over a center-left juggernaut.
posted by Rhaomi at 11:37 AM on March 6, 2020 [31 favorites]

Everybody please be nice to another, if just for me. I am feeling bashed-in and crappy and could use much more tenderness than sniping.
posted by lauranesson at 11:48 AM on March 6, 2020 [19 favorites]

Comment and some replies removed. If you're at the point of just generically fighting with MetaFilter-as-a-whole for having the wrong opinion you have gotten too deep into the idea of what this place is for and need to step back from political discussion and recalibrate.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:04 PM on March 6, 2020 [14 favorites]

Proposal for a rule of thumb: anyone who wants to say "Why don't people..." should stop and google until they can be certain that people, in fact, do not! And then change their question to, "How can I help the people who..."
posted by MiraK at 12:04 PM on March 6, 2020 [23 favorites]

I have no idea why Warren is waiting to announce her endorsement. It’s literally her choice, and I have no problem with her taking her time, or not doing it all. Hell, maybe she’s waiting to hear back from Biden or Sanders about what she would require (in terms of a pledge to do X, Y, and Z, or to add something to their platform) in exchange for that endorsement, and will endorse the one that agrees to what she wants. Maybe she’s using the last little bit of power she has to affect the change she wanted to put into the world, and to me, that’s a sign that she *gets* the concept of politics as an art of compromise and engagement.

Or maybe she’s rightfully still pissed at the guy who told her he didn’t think a woman could win, and that somehow, when that got out (and I don’t give one single solitary fuck about how it got out, thank you), she was the one who ended up getting hurt by it the most. Maybe she isn’t crazy about putting her support behind the guy who said and did nothing while his followers essentially turned her name into a snake emoji? Or maybe she doesn’t want to support the guy who’s incipient dementia and deeply inappropriate/sketchy inability to respect the personal space of women. Maybe she’s waiting to get someone to admit that women matter, have agency, and aren’t mere props to politely announce which man they would choose to lead them while they retire to the kitchen? Whatever her reasoning is, it’s her choice, and I’m not shocked that people resent a female candidate for exercising her choice, because that’s where we are these days, but damn if that’s not an ugly look coming from people talking about the Democratic Party.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:07 PM on March 6, 2020 [42 favorites]

Reply to any campaign text with 'stop' and you automatically get taken off the list. It's that easy and works for any legitimate campaign.

True, but then I feel like a jerk.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 12:08 PM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

I'm saddened by this, but i'm hopeful that Warren will return to her previous climate positions, against oil export, if she returns to the Senate. Replacing the Oil Export ban would lower US Carbon emissions by tens of millions of tons Co2e/yr, and so save many black towns on the Gulf Coast, which have been targeted for extermination from the buildout, and Warren was for it before she ran.
posted by eustatic at 12:12 PM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

True, but then I feel like a jerk.

As a person who has done text campaigns before, I absolve you of all possible jerkitude for unsubscribing. Asking to unsubscribe in a way other than 'stop' or 'unsubscribe' or being rude or cursing at the person requires the person texting back on the other side to unsubscribe you. Typing 'stop' auto-unsubscribes and the person texting you just sees a notification and goes back to the 200 other texts they sent out.
posted by dinty_moore at 12:14 PM on March 6, 2020 [9 favorites]

The USSR was no worse than the USA.

I doubt it, since one of them let you come and go at will, but I hope that if your candidate really believes this he would say so and not try to confuse Soviet communism with capitalist Denmark. It's likely the real reason most people don't trust him, and the fact that anti-capitalism does not mean or imply communism anymore than anti-Catholicism means or implies Protestantism.
posted by Brian B. at 12:16 PM on March 6, 2020 [13 favorites]

internet fraud detective squad, I agree with you. I honestly doubt she’s willing to damage the country’s best chance to stop Trump for personal reasons, and I do truly believe that she’s waiting for really good reasons. That said, I think it’s important to realize that endorsing either remaining candidate is expecting a woman to do something that might well be personally unpleasant or distasteful because a man requires her to do it.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:17 PM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

A good reason would be waiting to see how the nomination shakes out, because that person may very well ask her to be VP.
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:20 PM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

Sorry, did I miss something? Who was asked to lower any standards for any woman?
posted by MiraK at 12:21 PM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

Perfectly comfortable with Warren not endorsing a candidate. I look forward to voting for the Democratic candidate in November, but am real happy my primary ended while the field was wider.
posted by mersen at 12:23 PM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

Something I’ve struggled with how to say has been in my head for a while now, and maybe this isn’t the time or the place, but, as I mentioned in the other thread, it really does feel like the goalpost for the first women to be president get moved back every time. People who said, I don’t like Clinton, but I’d vote for Warren, well, they didn’t, but now it’s “I’m not crazy about Warren, but I’d vote for AOC” and when that comes time, there’ll be some reason not to vote for AOC, or whatever candidate, until the end of time.

I fully believe that the first woman president will be a republican, so utterly and totally conservative that it would make someone like, say, Gingrich or McConnell say “woah, isn’t that a bit much?” Totally anti-choice, pro gun, a woman’s place is in the home, but I talked and prayed with my husband and he said it was okay type shit. And, when convenient, she’ll claim that attacks on her or her campaign are a sign of her opponent’s terribly sexist behavior, all the while working to undermine equal rights, fair pay, and anything else that has even been enacted to deal with the country’s history of sexism. It will be the most cynical act of politics ever, the party of wealthy, conservative white men putting forth a candidate that will claim that voting against her would be a confirmation that all of the left’s talk is really just virtue signaling (gah, I hate that phrase), and that “the democrats are the real sexists. I hope to god I’m wrong, but honestly, it feels like I’m wrong only when I believe that something good will happen these days.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:27 PM on March 6, 2020 [41 favorites]

I voted for her, and I'm sad to see her out of the race. And, boy, do I wish the Berners would give it a rest before demanding an endorsement. Now that she's out, I've heard and read way more press about her and her ideas and plans than during the campaign. The lazy reporting of her chances pisses me off.
posted by theora55 at 12:32 PM on March 6, 2020 [20 favorites]

I would be pretty surprised if Bernie turns out to be the nom. Re: Biden: It's going to take me a little while to gear up any enthusiasm, but by June I'm sure I will. If I have trouble supporting Biden, I'll think of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who has stayed on the Supreme Court and not missed any votes for the last 4 years despite everything. If she can do that, I can support Joe.
posted by theora55 at 12:34 PM on March 6, 2020 [26 favorites]

but I talked and prayed with my husband
The nominee will be a respectable widowed woman; the memory of her Republican standard-bearer husband will be a source of strength in these troubled times. (à la Cindy McCain)
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:41 PM on March 6, 2020 [6 favorites]

It will be the most cynical act of politics ever, the party of wealthy, conservative white men putting forth a candidate that will claim that voting against her would be a confirmation that all of the left’s talk is really just virtue signaling (gah, I hate that phrase), and that “the democrats are the real sexists. I hope to god I’m wrong, but honestly, it feels like I’m wrong only when I believe that something good will happen these days.

I think Sarah Palin came kind of close to this exact thing - or, at least, they tried to peel off feminists who were bitter about the Obama/Clinton primary fight. Luckily, she was

(1) Manifestly unqualified
(2) Running as a Republican after 8 years of Republican kakistocracy, and after financial deregulation had led to a massive financial crisis

(You know, I'm still bitter about leftists who in 2016 AND 2020 criticized the spectre of white liberal #girlboss feminists who don't care about rapacious oil companies and insurance companies as long as the board rooms have women in them... but if we were that awful, we would have voted for McCain/Palin, surely?)
posted by Jeanne at 12:42 PM on March 6, 2020 [4 favorites]

Oh I'll totally support whoever wins the nomination in the general election, too, Theora, but like Don Pepino, I'm sitting out the primary (my state votes ... later). There's not very much to choose between Biden, who can't string coherent sentences together and just appointed a fucking hindu nationalist i.e. muslim-genocide-supporting maniac as his head of Muslim outreach but who has actually gotten meaningful and good legislation passed during his time in office, and Bernie, whose life expectancy is 3 years and is running on credentials of pure hot air, though it's, like, a good hot air, a little blast of earth-wind on a cold moonscape.

Maybe I'll write in the name of all my favorite female candidates throughout history, or perhaps the last 20 years.
posted by MiraK at 12:44 PM on March 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

The USSR was no worse than the USA.

Masha Gessen at The New Yorker, “What Bernie Sanders Should Have Said About Socialism and Totalitarianism in Cuba”:

In making this choice, Sanders acted in a way that has long been characteristic of some members of the American left, who gloss over the crimes of totalitarian regimes as though they were footnotes to a greater story, or jokes. This tendency is typified by one of New York’s literary dive bars, KGB Bar, where I have missed many a friend’s book launch or reading because, as I always have to explain, I can no more see myself spending time there than I can see myself drinking at a bar named for, say, the S.S. (“It’s in no way pro-Soviet,” a friend recently assured me. Imagine explaining away a Nazi name that way.)

posted by Going To Maine at 12:46 PM on March 6, 2020 [28 favorites]

What I find really gross about the Native American brouhaha -- and, admittedly, what I found disappointing about how she handled it -- is that the story was relevant to her family because people had been ostracized and persecuted on the basis of that purported ancestry.

Far from something she made up to give herself an advantage, it's something that others made up in order to attack her family.

I feel like there could have been a great pivot in there -- "I may not know what it's like to be Native American, but I do know what it's like to be treated as though I were, and no DNA test would ever make that kind of racism less hurtful, or undermine my dedication to putting a stop to it in all forms."
posted by bjrubble at 12:50 PM on March 6, 2020

Students are leaving personal thank-you notes next to Elizabeth Warren's photo at Harvard Law (Alisha Ebrahimji, CNN)

See also #ThankYouWarren on Twitter.
posted by ZeusHumms at 12:53 PM on March 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

I may not know what it's like to be Native American, but I do know what it's like to be treated as though I were

no, i'm sorry, please understand that this would have been an appalling statement for her to make.
posted by poffin boffin at 12:57 PM on March 6, 2020 [39 favorites]

This is still about Warren, right? Not about Bernie and the USSR, right?

Warren's been my Senator for a while, and this is what I think of her: She's the first Senator I've felt was entirely on my side, which is to say she tries to make life better for everyone. I think a lot of people here are used to talking about *normal* politicians, who have closet skeletons, and hidden agendas, and are attention-seekers and can often be bought. Warren has never shown me any sign that any of that is true of her. I'm not going to say what she should do in this moment, because she's a lot smarter than I am, and understands the situation a lot better than I do, and because I trust her to continue trying to make things better for everybody.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:00 PM on March 6, 2020 [36 favorites]

I'm sitting out the primary

Whatever you do, don't sit out the primary! There are very likely other issues on the ballot that concern you, most likely local or state-wide issues. Depending on where you are, there may even be sneaky ballot initiatives that need to be voted down. Or perfectly good initiatives that you would want to support.

You can leave things blank on the ballot if you don't have a definitive preference, but don't let other people make decisions for you about local issues. Judges, school board members, and local bond measures matter.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:03 PM on March 6, 2020 [14 favorites]

I'm a new American as of last December. My first vote ever in this country was for a woman to be president, and I'll continue to do so on the D or left of D side. And when my 7-yo daughter votes to see it happen on her first vote when she's 20, we'll hopefully welcome the US's second female president.
posted by grimley at 1:03 PM on March 6, 2020 [18 favorites]

I initially thought it would be pretty canny for Biden to pick Warren as VP -- it might not get the hard core Bernie-bros on board, but it might do a lot to patch up some of the rift between the wings of the party.

But the very thing that would excite me about this probably means it would never happen -- if the "Senator from MBNA" picked Warren as VP I'd take it as a signal of a meaningful political shift, a sign that Biden was ready to start taking on the financial industry rather than servicing it -- and this whole primary season has just reinforced to me how far the Democratic Party is from this.
posted by bjrubble at 1:09 PM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

Why is it important for Warren to publicly and directly retract her family story of having Cherokee heritage?

Because its rooted in White Supremacy.

The ancestors Warren claims were Cherokee are not only well documented White ppl, they participated in the dispossession and genocide of Cherokee ppl.

Imagine a public leader claiming their family survived genocide, when they actually perpetuated it. Thats what Warren did.

In 1836, Warren’s white g-g-g-grandfather William Marsh, enlisted himself in a TN militia to fight in the “Cherokee War,” an occupation of Cherokee land in the lead-up to the Trail of Tears.

Decades later, his grandson John Crawford moved his family to Indian Territory & w/ no record of a permit was almost certainly illegal squatting.

The Crawfords were just some of the tens of thousands of white squatters who by the late 1800s outnumber Cherokees on our own land.
...
But when John Crawford's granddaughter Pauline Reed raised her child Elizabeth Warren she told a very different story. Not a story of stealing Cherokee land, but a story of being Cherokee.

Like many other white families in Oklahoma, Warren’s ancestors replaced the truth of their complicity in Cherokee dispossession with a tale of being Cherokee.

If that’s not wrong, if that’s not racist, I don’t know what is.

In her response letter yesterday, Warren called her family story "important context". She remains unwilling to let it go.

She's holding onto a story that not only has zero basis in reality, but is based White supremacy and Indigenous erasure.

With extensive sourcing of publicly-available information, courtesy of Polly's Granddaughter, on the decades of outright deception involved.
posted by kafziel at 1:18 PM on March 6, 2020 [25 favorites]

I'm a Bernie Sanders support and I don't think she should be expected to endorse him, or anyone. I don't think candidates who drop out should. I don't remember ever caring about this. People have the information they need about Biden and Sanders and can act accordingly.

One thing I wonder about with people who draw distinctions between running (not governing) on a very detailed plan vs very big ideas: do you think that plans in any way shift preconceived bias or undecided voters? The polling data I saw shows roughly 60-70% favorably opinion of M4A. If you present people who currently are uninsured or show preference for M4A three option/candidates:

A. M4A as soon as possible, no specifics
B. Some M4A in a couple years, with a reasonably workable plan in some detail.
C. Bulletproof, detailed plan for full implementation of M4A in ten years, all the charts you need.

If you can't buy insulin today, what does it matter about the specifics of the latter two, especially when you can expect the exact same level of resistance from Mitch McConnell on all three? Why even bother with the latter two?
posted by 99_ at 1:20 PM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

No, no, you're right: of course I won't sit out the damn primary, especially considering all the downballot stuff I'd miss out on, but I might actually not vote for Bernie this time because that Selma idiocy infuriates me.

HELLO DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES FOR PRESIDENT. THE SOUTH EXISTS AND DECIDES ELECTIONS. YOU CANNOT WIN IF YOU ABANDON THE SOUTH.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:20 PM on March 6, 2020 [13 favorites]

I may not know what it's like to be Native American, but I do know what it's like to be treated as though I were

no, i'm sorry, please understand that this would have been an appalling statement for her to make.

You missed my first draft where I made an analogy about someone whose family was sent to the concentration camps but turned out to not have any Jewish ancestry.

It's definitely a much more treacherous argument to make than it first sounded in my head, but this notion that if the racists are factually mistaken then it's somehow less vile or hurtful seems insane and totally orthogonal to how racism actually works.
posted by bjrubble at 1:20 PM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

*points to the sign on the wall that says "the analogy you are considering involving highly charged concepts or events is basically always a bad idea"*
posted by cortex (staff) at 1:29 PM on March 6, 2020 [45 favorites]

this notion that if the racists are factually mistaken then it's somehow less vile or hurtful seems insane and totally orthogonal to how racism actually works.

you are horrifically, gravely mistaken if you think there is any world in which i am saying that racism isn't so if the racists were actually wrong. the fact that this is your first and apparently only assumption is further evidence to me that you literally have no understanding of why your comment was offensive in the first place.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:30 PM on March 6, 2020 [6 favorites]

One thing I wonder about with people who draw distinctions between running (not governing) on a very detailed plan vs very big ideas: do you think that plans in any way shift preconceived bias or undecided voters? The polling data I saw shows roughly 60-70% favorably opinion of M4A.

I mean, Elizabeth Warren's entire brand is about being prepared and having the answer - that's, in theory, what made her appealing. Which means that she expected to have a highly detailed plan that was at least somewhat realistic. She was getting requests of how she was going to make Medicare for All happen, she delivered that plan, and then she was accused of walking back her promises, when really, it's about what she said it would be all along.

'Well, obviously she should have just made big empty promises' would be a different tactic, and one that's won elections before, but I have a hard time imagining that it would have gone better for her.
posted by dinty_moore at 1:38 PM on March 6, 2020 [8 favorites]

I see equal merit of Biden picking a younger VP and a POC, but.... it would be a pretty smart strategy too to offer it to Warren, during the primaries, and publicly spin it as "she fought the good fight, I'll listen to her on progressive agendas, and she's a more than worthy backup if any health problems happen."
posted by nakedmolerats at 1:38 PM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

"she fought the good fight, I'll listen to her on progressive agendas, and she's a more than worthy backup if any health problems happen."

That Biden has spent his entire political career consistently working to undermine the good fight will not be addressed.
posted by Reyturner at 1:44 PM on March 6, 2020 [9 favorites]

If you can't buy insulin today, what does it matter about the specifics of the latter two, especially when you can expect the exact same level of resistance from Mitch McConnell on all three? Why even bother with the latter two?

Because Mitch McConnell is temporary whereas diabetes is permanent and the latter two might actually enable you to one day buy insulin, should democracy be restored in the land? Whereas the first is less likely to enable you to one day buy insulin?

So... Hmmm... So, she will still be on the ballot. If a bunch of people lodge protest votes for her even though it's hopeless, would whoever wins possibly look at that when picking a veep...?

I really wanted to vote for her; I don't care much for Bernie anymore; I've loathed Biden since he rolled belly up and yapped for the republicans and made sure we got saddled with Clarence Thomas for the rest of time.
posted by Don Pepino at 1:54 PM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

I don't think that it would benefit Biden very much to offer the VP spot to Warren, and it definitely wouldn't benefit her to take it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:59 PM on March 6, 2020 [6 favorites]

Honestly, while writing that out I was thinking about to my sister-in-law complaining that Warren 'raised her hand too much' during the debates, which then made me flash back to being criticized for lowering my hand with too much attitude in high school. There might be a reason why some of us are taking this kinda hard.
posted by dinty_moore at 2:06 PM on March 6, 2020 [36 favorites]

A post-mortem from Politico.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 2:20 PM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

I volunteered for Warren these past six weeks. It was my first real involvement in a political campaign. I was shocked at how much organization and enthusiasm there was. The campaign was also relentlessly positive - all the messaging from the top was that when you're talking to voters, don't tear anyone down. Talk about why you support Warren without bashing anyone else in the field. However, it also struck me how much all the Warren supporters I met were so much like myself - that Yglesias piece on the Warren bubble that was linked earlier really hit home.

It's slightly devastating how we knocked on so many doors, talked to so many people, and it just... didn't... matter. I've heard that canvassing, talking to voters 1:1 is the most effective thing you can do for your candidate, but that just didn't seem to be the case this time. It makes me worried for November. What can those of us who are willing to show up and do what we can to defeat trump actually do that's going to be effective?

In any case, her goodbye speech is a lesson in how to exit a race with grace and thank the people who gave themselves to your campaign while keeping them in the fight. Whatever you think of Warren, I recommend listening to or reading it.
posted by heathkit at 2:54 PM on March 6, 2020 [39 favorites]

A post-mortem from Politico

“Blood and teeth” refers to a famous Warren quote from the legislative fight over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which transformed Warren from a respected Harvard academic into a national progressive star. “My first choice is a strong consumer agency,” Warren said then. “My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.”

TIL Warren's argument for the creation of the CFPB was basically "socialism* or barbarism".

*this is, of course, relies on the common misconception that socialism is "when the government does things", but still...
posted by Reyturner at 2:56 PM on March 6, 2020 [10 favorites]

I read “blood and teeth” as a variant of “we left it all on the field,” in other words, if there’s no agency, there’s proof we gave everything we had to fight to try and get one.
posted by sallybrown at 3:05 PM on March 6, 2020 [12 favorites]

"Protest votes" have never, ever, ever had any real-world value whatsoever. It's that kind of thinking that got us four years of Trump in the first place.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:35 PM on March 6, 2020 [5 favorites]

From the email announcement yesterday:
"Some of you may remember that long before I got into electoral politics, I was asked if I would accept a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that was weak and toothless. And I replied that my first choice was a consumer agency that could get real stuff done, and my second choice was no agency and lots of blood and teeth left on the floor. In this campaign, we have been willing to fight, and, when necessary, we left plenty of blood and teeth on the floor. I can think of one billionaire who has been denied the chance to buy this election."

Incidentally:
Buttigieg, five minutes into speech: "So tonight I am making the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the Presidency. "
Klobuchar, four and a half minutes into speech: "...that is why today I am ending my campaign and endorsing Joe Biden for president."
Warren, third sentence of speech: "I want all of you to hear it first, and I want you to hear it straight from me: today, I’m suspending our campaign for president."
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:42 PM on March 6, 2020 [22 favorites]

The elocution "suspend my campaign" has to do with the legalities of dissolving the campaign organization/finances and does not signal any intent to jump back in if the opportunity arises.
posted by sjswitzer at 3:50 PM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

I think the focus was on "my campaign" vs "our campaign." At least that's how I read it.
posted by brook horse at 3:54 PM on March 6, 2020 [6 favorites]

the man of twists and turns: Why Elizabeth Warren is losing even as white professionals love her

Warren stands head and shoulders above her colleagues in Congress in part because her achievements are impressive but also, in large part, because these are not achievements that are normally rewarded in the political process.

One reason for that is the overall level of educational attainment in the United States is simply lower than many college graduates seem to realize.

I initially found this idea convincing, but then as I was drifting out of a half-nap it occurred to me to check whether working-class voters were rejecting Warren in favour of less-educated representatives, as Yglesias seems to be suggesting. I found this:

The House of Representatives has long maintained a very high proportion of college graduates for decades with a minimum of 94 percent of members earning a bachelor’s degree during the period. But the chamber has decidedly increased its share of lawmakers who have earned postgraduate degrees, including law, medical, and master’s degrees. In the 90th Congress, less than 60 percent of representatives had completed postgraduate education.

The 116th Congress will boast the most educated Congress in history with 72 percent of the House having earned a graduate degree.

72 percent of Congress has a graduate degree. To me that doesn't say that Warren voters are living in a bubble where they support highly-educated candidates and nobody else does. I don't know what actually explains everything that happened, but I'm thinking this explanation isn't the answer.
posted by clawsoon at 3:55 PM on March 6, 2020 [8 favorites]

hmmm... maybe it says that a different standard was applied to a woman than every other man (like when Warren was reported on the framing was almost always policy wonk rather than inspiring leader)
posted by kokaku at 4:29 PM on March 6, 2020 [9 favorites]

"Protest votes" have never, ever, ever had any real-world value whatsoever. It's that kind of thinking that got us four years of Trump in the first place.

In the general election, yes, and believe me that I have learned that lesson, having voted Nader in 2000 in the general in Florida, but this is the primary, where it is safe and even advisable to vote for the person you actually want and people in this very thread have expressed their sorrow that they didn't.

Sanders lost the Florida Democratic primary in 2016 when people thought Trump was a hilarious joke; he's extremely unlikely to win it in 2020 when people are so terrified of Trump that they'll vote for a man who rhapsodizes about his own leg hair and can't distinguish between his wife and his sister. Anyway, it doesn't matter to me which of the two fogies wins the Florida primary. What I want to know is, will anybody take notice if a bunch of people vote for Warren because it doesn't matter to them, either? Would anybody's campaign manager look at that and go "hmmm?"
posted by Don Pepino at 4:39 PM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

The USSR was no worse than the USA.

An estimated 18,000,000 people went through the Gulag. At least 1,600,000 died. I'm gonna go with worse.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:42 PM on March 6, 2020 [19 favorites]

An estimated 18,000,000 people went through the Gulag. At least 1,600,000 died.

As of 2010, over 19 million living Americans had been through the US penal system.

The USSR existed for 70 years. I don't know how many Americans have died in prison or at the hands of law enforcement since 1950, but I wouldn't put money on it being less than 1.6 million.
posted by Rust Moranis at 4:52 PM on March 6, 2020 [17 favorites]

Warren is great and remains so. She should have been the nominee.

Only Bernie and Warren are authentically on the side of the little guy. Every other candidate was closely connected to corporate America. I hope Warren will endorse Bernie for that reason alone.
posted by chaz at 5:03 PM on March 6, 2020 [6 favorites]

The 17th Congress was selected for investigations because it was known as "the Congress of Victors" in the country of "victorious socialism" and therefore the enormous number of "enemies" among the participants demanded explanation. This commission presented evidence that during 1937–1938 (the peak of the period known as the Great Purge) over one and a half million individuals were arrested for "anti-Soviet activities", of whom over 680,500 were executed.

680,500 people executed in a couple of years is part of the reason the Gulag didn't have as large a population as the American prison-industrial complex. There are only a handful of people and systems whose evil compares to the Soviet Union under Stalin. I respectfully suggest that this is a pointless derail.
posted by clawsoon at 5:05 PM on March 6, 2020 [14 favorites]

> it just... didn't... matter.

When some woman is considering running for president maybe they'll see how many votes for Warren came from the area you canvassed and be encouraged.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:07 PM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

She was my top choice, though I thought from the beginning that her attempt would fail. She'd have been great.

I'm not sure if she'd be a great VP pick or would be better staying in the Senate where she can do some real good (and where the Republican that the twits in Massachusetts elected can't replace her with a Republican further cementing Republican control of the Senate).
posted by sotonohito at 5:08 PM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

Enough with the USSR/USA derail.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 5:14 PM on March 6, 2020 [8 favorites]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/06/opinion/elizabeth-warren-women-president.html
posted by chaz at 5:25 PM on March 6, 2020 [1 favorite]

Incidentally:
Buttigieg, five minutes into speech: "So tonight I am making the difficult decision to suspend my campaign for the Presidency. "
Klobuchar, four and a half minutes into speech: "...that is why today I am ending my campaign and endorsing Joe Biden for president."
Warren, third sentence of speech: "I want all of you to hear it first, and I want you to hear it straight from me: today, I’m suspending our campaign for president."

I think the focus was on "my campaign" vs "our campaign." At least that's how I read it.

Sure, but also: she did it in the third sentence, as opposed to standing up there and nattering on for five flipping minutes. Because that's who Elizabeth Warren is. She doesn't leave the people depending on her sitting there wondering when she's going to get to the damn point, she gets to the damn point right up front.

I'm so angry that I didn't get the chance to vote for her.
posted by palomar at 5:58 PM on March 6, 2020 [33 favorites]

Here's why they "suspend" their campaigns.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 6:12 PM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

If that Politico article is correct, and who knows, because Politico, what doomed her campaign is the same sort of short-sighted (too much focus on early white states, bad messaging, bad data, waffling direction) traditional campaigning that has doomed so many presidential bids. That's a stark contrast from the image of competence the campaign projected.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 6:55 PM on March 6, 2020 [2 favorites]

what doomed her campaign is the same sort of short-sighted (too much focus on early white states, bad messaging, bad data, waffling direction) traditional campaigning that has doomed so many presidential bids

Unless you're arguing that winners are those who run perfect campaigns, this is not the reason why her campaign was doomed. Clearly the men who win run ridiculously bad campaigns, often, but they still win. Men win and (because?) they are forgiven their campaign mistakes.

Statements like these are basically victim blaming. She shouldn't have done [insert perfectly normal act worded to sound bad]! She was asking for it!
posted by MiraK at 7:46 PM on March 6, 2020 [26 favorites]

Every campaign can have a nasty post-mortem written about it. It's just that one of the campaigns ends up winning.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:16 PM on March 6, 2020 [12 favorites]

We can go round and round about what did her campaign in, but it just speaks to the point that it is really really hard to win an election, particularly for the presidency. No one will run a perfect race. Even the winners make blunders. She was basically erased from the media discussion after NH, except for her taking a blowtorch to Bloomberg, and that in itself took a lot of air out of an already uphill fight. Had Bernie not been in the race, I wonder if things would have been different. But I'll agree with what was said upthread - she's the best president the US never had.
posted by azpenguin at 10:19 PM on March 6, 2020 [3 favorites]

> Warren's whole ideology and theory of change is based on a highly educated and professionalized technocracy taking down corruption and inequality (like the CFPB). Sanders's ideology is based on mass organizing around worker and community solidarity.

> Warren's political position requires her to have detailed plans for all kinds of significant reforms... if you're Warren and you're running on a big structural reforms to American capitalism platform, you need to be a hyper-competent technocrat to get those changes through.

WarrenVision! "Warren offered a third way between free-market libertarianism and pure redistribution. But it was not the 'third way' of technocratic tweaks and dinky little tax incentives. It was an INDUSTRIALIST third way. A plan to boost PRODUCTION even while redistributing wealth."

also btw...
-Explaining Warren
-Building a Better Warrenism
-Elizabeth Warren's necessary contradictions
-Socialists Will Never Understand Elizabeth Warren
-Elizabeth Warren is Law and Economics, but with the valences reversed (State Capacity Libertarianism)*

Liz and Bernie :P

---
*"But this ideal world also stipulates that things like piracy don't exist, or that companies never take advantage of one another or try to drive their competitors out of big business."
posted by kliuless at 11:32 PM on March 6, 2020 [12 favorites]

Socialists Will Never Understand Elizabeth Warren

This was a fascinating piece. Thanks for posting. Having seen the degradation of social democracies across the world and their (often not so) slow march toward fascism, I am deeply unconvinced that all capitalism and the free market need are a ton of very smart reforms by very smart people, but hell, I'd still prefer it to whatever Biden is serving up.

Considering Warren's biggest base of support is relatively comfortable and well-educated white Americans, it makes sense why her pro-market-with-reforms ideology is so appealing to her supporters. Stuck in the liminal space between precarity and privilege, it's understandable why her supporters would want to restrain the worst excesses of late stage capitalism while not creating too much disruption to the parts of the status quo they enjoy. And as the piece mentions, it's literally a dead-end ideology:

If Warren wins, she will not only disappoint socialists. Her proposals may end up being too radical for Congress, but not nearly radical enough to tackle challenges such as climate change, which will require a rapid and dramatic transformation of the global economy if catastrophe is to be averted.

posted by Ouverture at 1:00 AM on March 7, 2020 [6 favorites]

Well the article proves whoever's point it was above. Warren is the supreme technocrat, in context of the point. And if the argument is that Warren wants to turn the clock back to New Deal—which Chomsky has similarly noted that Sanders was doing… Leftists take zero issue with that at all. New Deal is great.

For its editorial biases, the Bloomberg article contains a beautiful description of Warren's vision which is a four-part technocratic system, linked end to end from domestic input to international output. But it fails to recognize—as many did—that the New Deal is unpopular not because of the left but because of centrists. I can't speak to the export component of the argument, but workers being on boards, and getting better housing policy, and FANG being regulated—it's everyone to the right of Warren that aren't on board these things.
posted by polymodus at 1:03 AM on March 7, 2020 [3 favorites]

Thread of Warren supporters who now endorse Bernie
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:50 AM on March 7, 2020 [2 favorites]

Sexism sank Elizabeth Warren
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 4:49 AM on March 7, 2020 [8 favorites]

"Did political missteps or misogyny sink [Warren's] campaign? It’s a false choice." (Kate Mann, WaPo)

With her presidential bid now over, there will be much debate about whether Warren’s political misfortunes are attributable to sexism or, rather, her campaign’s missteps. But this is a false contrast. Warren fell prey to the widespread — and yes, misogynistic — sense that, unlike their male rivals, women are not entitled to make mistakes

posted by MiraK at 4:54 AM on March 7, 2020 [10 favorites]

What I want to know is, will anybody take notice if a bunch of people vote for Warren because it doesn't matter to them, either? Would anybody's campaign manager look at that and go "hmmm?"

And the answer to both questions is "no."
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:46 AM on March 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

A longer interview with Drucilla Cornell focusing on Warren's time at University of Pennsylvania
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 7:22 AM on March 7, 2020

I'm not sure why we are supposed to take Drucilla Cornell as a special expert on Warren?
posted by Anonymous at 8:04 AM on March 7, 2020

Devorah Blachor has published a sequel to her last essay at McSweeney’s: ”I Don’t Hate Women Candidates — I Just Hated Hillary Clinton And Now Believe That Elizabeth Warren Is Responsible For The Collapse Of The Republic”
posted by Going To Maine at 8:16 AM on March 7, 2020 [17 favorites]

Considering Warren's biggest base of support is relatively comfortable and well-educated white Americans, it makes sense why her pro-market-with-reforms ideology is so appealing to her supporters. Stuck in the liminal space between precarity and privilege, it's understandable why her supporters would want to restrain the worst excesses of late stage capitalism while not creating too much disruption to the parts of the status quo they enjoy.

I would like to suggest, as kindly as possible, that it is in Sanders' supporters best interests to listen and believe other democratic voters (and non-voters) when they explain why they're voting or not voting in a particular way. I am not suggesting that this is a leftist-only problem, but I've been told the reasons why I really was supporting Warren, and had my opinions and arguments dismissed as distractions. I've seen this happen with Sanders supporters rationalizing Biden's popularity with Black voters as them being duped, somehow, or them not paying enough attention - ignoring what Black voters themselves are saying about their reasons (this also happened with Clinton in 2016). It feels a lot like getting negged through white guilt - ignoring that the progressive Black and Latinx writers and thinkers that I follow seemed equally split between Sanders and Warren (if not slightly towards Warren). And it's frustrating, as someone who has Sanders as a clear second choice.
posted by dinty_moore at 8:21 AM on March 7, 2020 [49 favorites]

I feel like some of these post-mortems gloss over why Warren—and Bernie to a lesser extent—struggled with black voters.
posted by girlmightlive at 8:23 AM on March 7, 2020 [5 favorites]

I would like to suggest, as kindly as possible, that it is in Sanders' supporters best interests to listen and believe other democratic voters (and non-voters) when they explain why they're voting or not voting in a particular way. I am not suggesting that this is a leftist-only problem, but I've been told the reasons why I really was supporting Warren, and had my opinions and arguments dismissed as distractions. I've seen this happen with Sanders supporters rationalizing Biden's popularity with Black voters as them being duped, somehow, or them not paying enough attention - ignoring what Black voters themselves are saying about their reasons (this also happened with Clinton in 2016). It feels a lot like getting negged through white guilt - ignoring that the progressive Black and Latinx writers and thinkers that I follow seemed equally split between Sanders and Warren (if not slightly towards Warren). And it's frustrating, as someone who has Sanders as a clear second choice.

I apologize if my post came across as describing why you or any specific individual votes in a particular way. I'm grappling with the posted article and also curious about the material dynamics for this segment because it's not the group I'm from or in (and it's a segment that seems to make up a large part of Metafilter itself).
posted by Ouverture at 8:43 AM on March 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

It is definitely coming off that way to me, yes, and that was also a major factor in my drift away from primary discussions in 2016. I completely understand and hear disagreeing with other candidates' supporters in terms of priorities or beliefs, but that needs to be paired with listening to why other people disagree and thinking about that.

I cannot favorite dinty_moore's comment enough, especially at a moment in which Warren has just left the race, and especially when Warren's supporters are likely to by and large pivot to supporting Bernie Sanders instead (as I certainly am). It is really, really stupid tactics to cheer when someone else is grieving, and it is stupid tactics to tell someone who is already inclined to shift their position to support you now that they should have already been supporting you all along if they really cared about progressivism and America.

It is really embittering, and it is embittering at a moment when we will desperately need solidarity going forward. It is furthermore embittering and painful in a way that directly echoes a huge amount of grief over Clinton's loss in 2016, which hits trauma for many women who saw the sexism with which Clinton was treated both on the left and on the right--and I am saying this as someone who was initially way more in Camp Bernie than I am in now, and who thought Warren was the best candidate to heal some of those old, resentful wounds.
posted by sciatrix at 9:13 AM on March 7, 2020 [54 favorites]

I remember seeing a Twitter thread by one of the chapo dudes back before NH pitching to Warren voters by saying he would recant everything he’d said about them if they’d flip to Bernie and man I just couldn’t. It’s one thing to make a plea for tactics, it’s another to do it as this weird “I’ll stop being mean” blackmail.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:27 AM on March 7, 2020 [20 favorites]

And the answer to both questions is "no."
That would definitely be helpful to know. Unfortunately, there's no cite or argument from you that would assist me in knowing it. Here's an update: boyfriend is voting Yang.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:37 AM on March 7, 2020

as this weird “I’ll stop being mean” blackmail.

"if you just do what I want I'll stop abusing you" is not really anything that people should have to accept, ever
posted by schadenfrau at 9:39 AM on March 7, 2020 [22 favorites]

it's also, you know, a lie. it's always, always a lie.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:40 AM on March 7, 2020 [38 favorites]

girlmightlive: "I feel like some of these post-mortems gloss over why Warren—and Bernie to a lesser extent—struggled with black voters."

The What's Next Podcast on Slate this week had an interview with Errin Haines that I found illuminating:

S1: Yeah, it was striking, though, to read your reporting because it was so many of these women saying, you know, this person like Joe Biden may not be my personal favorite or like it feels like settling, but it just sounds like so many of these women sort of when it came down to it, they just pulled that lever for, you know, the person they thought I guess would be the most electable. I don’t know if you would say it that way.

S2: I think that’s definitely part of it. Look. Black women and I’ve said this a lot and some people kind of see this as a pejorative term. But I absolutely don’t need to call black women or black voters pragmatic. What I mean when I say that is that they are strategic. Right. And I mean, the stakes as they see them in this election are that their priority is to defeat President Donald Trump, who they see as somebody who is racist and enacting racist policies and doing them and their community harm. And what we know about black women is that when they vote, they don’t just vote for themselves. They don’t just vote for their immediate family. They vote for their community. They vote for the race. They vote for the country.

S4: This pragmatism, it isn’t just the voters who seem to be feeling it. You can see it in the way other politicians talk about the vice president, like here’s South Carolina’s Jim Clyburn talking about his decision to endorse Biden. He’s saying, I trust this guy.

S9: I know you. We know Joe. But most importantly, Jill knows us. That’s right. Tested.

Haines previously wrote an article in December on the same subject and sort of predicted Super Tuesday: "I know Joe’s heart’: Why black voters are backing Joe Biden":

Biden has credited his early years in Delaware politics as formative, particularly the community known as “The Bucket,” the largely African American, downtrodden northeast Wilmington neighborhood that was home to housing projects, crime, drugs and violence. He returned to the area as a young lawyer during the 1968 Wilmington riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. He represented the community of New Castle as a county councilman, supporting public housing and opposing highway projects he saw as potentially harmful to black neighborhoods.

After his election to the U.S. Senate in 1972, Biden remained a fixture in the black community, a regular at the annual NAACP dinner and a commencement speaker at historically black Delaware State University. He talked to everyone, including the wait staff, according to people who knew him at the time. Most important, he listened, recalled Delaware State’s provost and incoming president, Tony Allen, who served as Biden’s speechwriter and special assistant when Biden was in the Senate.

posted by octothorpe at 9:41 AM on March 7, 2020 [15 favorites]

Re: Biden's ties to the African-American community. In June 2015, Biden visited South Carolina's Emanuel AME Church, where nine people had been murdered by a white supremacist. Beau Biden had died the month before. "Biden’s appearance caught members by surprise, and church leaders asked him to speak." (Biden, suffering in his own grief, visits church where nine people were killed, Washington Post, June 28, 2015) He arrived with Hunter Biden and Hunter's then-wife Kathleen; these are quotes from the Washington Post's article, looped together:

“My family and I wanted to show our solidarity,” Biden said during five minutes of remarks. Standing next to one of the church’s pastors, he said: “But to be selfish about it, reverend, the reason we came was to draw some strength from all of you, to draw some strength from the church.” He spoke about his anguish since the death of his son Beau from brain cancer last month. Biden said he wished there was something he could say to ease the pain of the families of the nine victims.

“But I know from experience, and I was reminded of it again 29 days ago, that no words can mend a broken heart. No music can fill the gaping void,” Biden said. “At least in my experience, only faith, only faith, and sometimes — as all the preachers in here know — sometimes even faith leaves you, just for a second, sometimes you doubt." He talked about how he prays the rosary and wears rosary beads around his wrist to help him through such moments.

“There’s a famous expression that says, ‘Faith sees best in the dark,’ ” Biden said. “And for the nine families, this is a very dark, dark time.” [...] “I pray that the families will find refuge in the shadow of His wings,” Biden said, his voice halting. “And I pray that the love that all of you have shown to them, and to people around the country and to me, will help mend the broken hearts of their families and mine. May God love you all, thank you.” As he closed he read from Psalms 36:5-7.

---
Biden was in Charleston for the funeral of Rev. Clementa Pinckney, which was held in an arena; he "knew Emanuel AME from previous visits" (in the article, Mayor Riley shows Biden the photo of Biden & Pinckney that the latter displayed in his church office). The WaPo article has a photo of Biden and family clasping hands with the congregation and singing the hymn "We Shall Overcome." People vote strategically, pragmatically, out of familiarity -- I think that in the South Carolina primary specifically, choosing Biden has a genuine, resonant, emotional underpinning, too.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:42 AM on March 7, 2020 [30 favorites]

Michael Harriot (the root) also had a good twitter thread about Southern Black voters and the establishment.
posted by dinty_moore at 11:17 AM on March 7, 2020 [15 favorites]

One comment deleted; contrary to the accusation there was no edit in the earlier comment, so let's avoid a baseless scrap over that accusation.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 12:12 PM on March 7, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm sad to see Warren go because she seemed to be the only candidate (and, if she'd got the nod, the first presidential candidate in years maybe ever) who had Billionaires shitting themselves. Bill fucking Gates spoke out that he might be forced to scrape by on a mere 10 billion of net worth if Warren had her way. I don't ever remember him speaking out against a presidential candidate before (might have happened, but it couldn't have been as high profile as his concerns about Warren). I believe that the reason Bloomberg blew half a billion dollars on his campaign was Warren. The 1% was worried she'd effect their net worth in a way no one else would and that is the sort of defining trait the US needs in a president. They don't seem to be, for whatever reason, worried about Sanders in the same way and of course Biden is pretty much on their team.

Hopefully Warren gets the chance at Majority leader. She'd be awesome there, much more so than any cabinet post IMO as The Turtle has demonstrated.

Considering the actuarial likelihood of the VP rising to President is probably higher than at any other time at least since WWII (on both sides lest we forget that Trump would be in his late 70s in his second term and he's not overly healthy) she'd probably make a great VP too but that is the sort of bet I hate taking either side of.
posted by Mitheral at 8:08 PM on March 7, 2020 [16 favorites]

It’s one thing to make a plea for tactics, it’s another to do it as this weird “I’ll stop being mean” blackmail.

Chapo is a comedy show. Not even a reliably good one, but it's something to put on while I'm doing the dishes or cleaning my floors. How long it stays on depends on the episode.

Sometimes they're funny, sometimes they're revolting, sometimes they're just really boring. I don't even care enough to work out which hosts it is I like/dislike.

The idea that I would vote the way they tell me to is funnier than a good 80% of their material.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:38 PM on March 7, 2020 [3 favorites]

Warren on SNL last night joking about her endorsement decision
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 12:33 AM on March 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Joe Biden is America's designated mourner.
posted by flabdablet at 6:27 AM on March 8, 2020

For that to happen, you'd have to think there were Warren supporters who care about the candidate's gender and absolutely nothing else.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:08 AM on March 8, 2020 [46 favorites]

Noisy Pink Bubbles: "Warren on SNL last night joking about her endorsement decision"

Here's the full cold open, for anybody who wants to see more than an 8-second Twitter clip full of replies shitting on her for not endorsing yet and/or existing.
posted by Rhaomi at 7:30 AM on March 8, 2020 [32 favorites]

In a January poll, 90% of Warren supporters said they'd vote for the eventual D nominee, and 10% said it depends on who it is. That was the highest number for any candidate polled.
posted by box at 8:01 AM on March 8, 2020 [22 favorites]

Chapo is a comedy show

we have seen, over and over again, that "it's just a joke" is never just a joke, especially when it's bigoted, targeted harassment

and even if we haven't, these people have actual sway on the left. That's why Sanders, David Sirota, and Briahna Joy Gray have all been on the podcast.

I am getting so tired of having to explain the same things over and over again just because people on the left think things don't apply to them because they're the "good" guys
posted by schadenfrau at 8:05 AM on March 8, 2020 [59 favorites]

I'm curious how many Warren backers would switch sides, PUMA-style, if Trump were to dump Pence as a running mate and select a woman (perhaps Ivanka). I can't imagine there'd be many but there would certainly be some.

For that to happen, you'd have to think there were Warren supporters who care about the candidate's gender and absolutely nothing else.

Ironically, there is zero evidence that anyone feels that way about female candidates, but there is ample evidence that some people vote only for men and think women aren't "electable".
posted by hydropsyche at 8:13 AM on March 8, 2020 [32 favorites]

I love Elizabeth Warren even more after that SNL bit. The bless-your-heart "Maybe I'll just pull a New York Times and endorse them both" was mwah!
posted by kirkaracha at 10:46 AM on March 8, 2020 [10 favorites]

Rhaomi: "Here's the full cold open , for anybody who wants to see more than an 8-second Twitter clip full of replies shitting on her for not endorsing yet and/or existing."

"I'm not dead, I'm just in the Senate" FTW
posted by chavenet at 11:28 AM on March 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

Hello! This is not the new megathread. We do not have megathreads (I'm told). If you are not having a conversation with the people in this thread, please just move along.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:46 AM on March 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

I would like to suggest, as kindly as possible, that it is in Sanders' supporters best interests to listen and believe other democratic voters (and non-voters) when they explain why they're voting or not voting in a particular way.

Strong agree! It's important for folks to have their grievances heard, and they should be able to mourn their loss. But I would also ask that Warren supporters try to keep in mind that, while they certainly exist, not every Sanders supporter is a loud, smug, Bernie-or-nothing jerk.

I was leaning Sanders but I am incredibly bummed to see Warren out of the race, so it has been pretty dissonant to see Twitter explode with a bunch of comments decrying anyone and everyone who's in favor of Sanders as the scum of the earth.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 11:47 AM on March 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

Twitter is such a weird set of enclaves, I see all Bernie Sanders supporters spreading that weird meme about "I supported universal healthcare, then you were mean so I'm voting Trump" than I do anyone actually saying anything anti-Bernie or anti-his supporters. Was this a chapo trap house thing? I try to avoid this kind of spectator sport politics but it's infected my feed recently.
posted by muddgirl at 12:06 PM on March 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

yeah, and then further idiots are countering that with "well if biden wins the nom then i won't vote AT ALL" and i'm just sO tired of the human race. what a mistake it was to leave the seas. when can i return.
posted by poffin boffin at 1:11 PM on March 8, 2020 [17 favorites]

I find Warren's joking on SNL pretty unpalatable. She's a senator with an immense amount of political power, and she's uniquely positioned where her actions on endorsement could have a significant effect on this primary. For people who need Medicare for All in order to be able to pay for the insulin they need to live, her endorsement could literally be a matter of life and death.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 1:16 PM on March 8, 2020 [9 favorites]

Consider the possibility that Warren is keeping her powder dry.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:21 PM on March 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

"I'm doing just fine," Warren said. "My friends and family have been so supportive. They've been calling nonstop, asking, 'Are you OK?' 'What do you need?' 'Were you electable?'"
posted by JackFlash at 1:21 PM on March 8, 2020 [14 favorites]

Something to keep in mind - from another twitter thread talking about why the harassment matters (it's not about taking your ball and going home) that even if the overall percentage of Sanders supporters that are harassing folks is the same number percentage as Biden's supporters, Sanders has a lot more supporters on twitter than Biden. So how it feels towards those who are being harassed is different.

No, it's not all Sanders supporters, or the majority of them. But the harassment is happening, it's definitely racist and gendered (because of course it is, it's online harassment!), and it can be nearly invisible if you're in a slightly different corner of the internet. People are not responsible for other supporter's actions, but a) believe it is happening, b) don't belittle people who are speaking up about harassment, don't post that it's was just a joke or that they're just whiners/it doesn't matter; and c) if you see it happen, get them to cut it out (hopefully where the person being harassed doesn't have to see it)
posted by dinty_moore at 1:35 PM on March 8, 2020 [14 favorites]

Hi. We don't tell people to STFU here. Find more complex nuanced ways to state your case.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:54 PM on March 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

There are a ton of scolds online who have been tone-policing Sanders supporters to the effect of "If you keep being mean to me then I'm going to vote Biden". It's never a good-faith argument, but it is out there and it's pretty frustrating. If that's all it takes for someone to switch their support away from the only progressive candidate left in the race, then their commitment to progressive politics wasn't so strong after all.

A vote's a vote and support is support, whether it's cast for your candidate out of commitment to progressive politics, or cast out of belief that the coalition they're leading is something they can identify with.

Being mean rarely helps bring people into coalitions.

*I* will (usually) stare down the fallacy of composition that badly behaving supporters might tempt me towards, and throw my support behind a candidate based off of calculated closeness to my values & policy preferences, weighted by the coalition of support I can see building behind them (and that weight matters if getting elected matters, even if it isn't the only thing that matters).

But the temptation is real, and there's a world full of people who are less disciplined about their approach, and even though I'm aware of it I am hardly fully immune.

"Stop being mean" can be way of saying that there's behavior interfering with people's ability to identify what they're seeing in a coalition of supporters.

Like many things, I'm sure it's possible to deploy that in bad faith as well as good. But I don't think it's safe to assume there isn't a real and important principle in play here.
posted by wildblueyonder at 1:55 PM on March 8, 2020 [5 favorites]

Some Warren supporters are also wondering whether the belligerence and acrimony are indicative of what a Sanders administration would be like. Would his staff be equally unwelcoming to anyone who disagreed with his policies or decisions, even by just a few degrees?

I will probably vote for Sanders, but even so these are real questions that give me pause. It has nothing to do with petty emotional blackmail.
posted by Superplin at 2:11 PM on March 8, 2020 [16 favorites]

Agreed that the Sanders supporters continuing to attack Warren should stop to evaluate the costs and benefits of doing so. But I think it might be over; the progressive dream is likely dead this cycle. I really do hope I'm wrong, but I've met more former Warren supporters in person who are now either leaning Biden or simply giving up on the primaries outright for some reason, which could indicate many Sanders-leaning ex-supporters don't feel strongly enough or comfortable mentioning so, though online it's a bit different.

In any case, whichever half of Warren's support is going to Sanders after her dropping out, the still extant desire for many Sanders supporters to be proven right about the indefensibility of her perceived flaws (DNA, M4A, etc.), plus the desire for many progressives to express outrage at any attempt at the 'tone policing' of their peers, added to the plaintive cries of the same contingent at Warren's SNL appearance or those who express approval thereof, demonstrate an inability or willingness to understand the 'chilling effect' these have on the recruitment of more voters to their side.

Those supporters still seem to fail to understand the reasons people may have for choosing a candidate are countless, and for many may include seeing which teammates they'd like to have and are likely to get along with. Many people don't want to be on a team with the 'dirtbag left'.

I think it's likely that they realize this too late for Sanders to recruit enough support to win the nomination. I just hope that they'll realize what's at stake before it becomes a problem in the general election.
posted by donttouchmymustache at 2:29 PM on March 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

He's attacked his fellow candidates way less often than anyone else, is how it seems to me.

Again, I wonder how much of this is due to the way social media fractures our experiences. I have seen a lot of anti-Warren pro-Bernie ads in my feed, probably targeted based on my demographics and who I follow on social media.
posted by muddgirl at 3:00 PM on March 8, 2020 [9 favorites]

All that aside, Bernie and his campaign have not been particularly rude at all in this primary as far as I can tell.

That seems more or less true to me, which is kinda the problem. Sanders message is one of inclusivity, health care for all, university for all, a better life for everyone, but the way the message is heard through some of his most vocal supporters, is one of mockery and scorn for others who fail to see the wisdom of Sanders campaign. That is a message of exclusivity, of we know what's right, our moral values are strong, and those who oppose them are weak and misguided, or worse. Sanders message isn't translating through those supporters and is being heard as something closer to the opposite.

That manner of engagement works for Trump, who is not at all about inclusivity, which makes the want to battle it on its own terms of engagement understandable to some degree, especially when confronting Trumpian ignorance head to head when it actually might have some effect, but it doesn't carry over to those who are interested in a more welcoming approach to the campaign. It isn't coming from Sanders himself exactly, but it is getting attached to his candidacy and creating an uneasy dichotomy of reaction to him in response. Whether or not that is deserved doesn't really matter when the stakes are getting people to come out and vote. The perception of it matters in getting results.
posted by gusottertrout at 3:00 PM on March 8, 2020 [12 favorites]

In short when Bernie supporters call Warren a Republican because her M4A plan takes 3 years (which I saw every day on Twitter), they are calling me a republican. It doesn't turn me off because it's "mean", it turns me off because they are saying I have no place in their vision of the Democratic party.
posted by muddgirl at 3:02 PM on March 8, 2020 [34 favorites]

Let's be clear about one thing: Bernie's supporters are younger, poorer, and less white than Warren's supporters were. This is a group that is far more online than other candidates' supporters, and a group that has a huge number of legitimate reasons to be angry. Plenty of them see this primary as a matter of life and death. I do.

The harassment and just aggressive smugness and bullshit I've seen online (including Facebook from people I vaguely know) has been all from white dudes. Just because Bernie's supporters are "younger, poorer and less white" on average does not mean he has no white male supporters. He has lots and plenty are condescending assholes.

I find this kind of speaking on behalf of all POC really unpleasant and exhausting. I am not white, not male, not old and have a lot to be angry about too but the people I've seen online who appear to be angriest (and many of them aggressively denying that sexism had anything to do with the end of Elizabeth Warren's campaign) seem to be the ones with the least to lose from a demographic perspective--middle class white dudes with university educations. It's not primarily women of color posting shitty, condescending, aggressive nonsense and arguing with anyone who claims that sexism is A Thing and Elizabeth Warren was treated very differently from a male candidate. It's the usual suspects for Internet harassment.
posted by armadillo1224 at 3:24 PM on March 8, 2020 [36 favorites]

People are going to be rude, especially in circumstances like this. Most of the time these folks are punching up, not down. Who are we to tell them they need to ask for change politely?

What about when they're punching allies and potential allies? Elizabeth Warren is not even running for president anymore and people are going after AOC for liking her SNL video. Is flogging Warren more important at this point than trying to bring her supporters into the fold? What's the goal here?

My only organizing experience is union organizing. I cannot imagine trying to mount a successful contract campaign using these kinds of tactics against my co-workers. It would alienate potential allies and damage the union.

This guy says it better (Twitter thread): "As an activist known for being strategically *uncivil* (mocking CEOs, shaming DHS Sec Nielsen out of a restaurant), I want to clarify something: the pushback against online abuse/harassment from a segment of Bernie supporters is not about civility. It is about tactics.

The point is not "Don't be mean to me, or I'll oppose Medicare for All!" It's "If this is how you recruit for and represent our movement, we'll never win Medicare for All." It's a serious concern, often coming from activists who do the hard work of organizing every day."
posted by Mavri at 3:24 PM on March 8, 2020 [26 favorites]

I pointed out in February of LAST YEAR that it seemed like Sanders and his supporters hadn't fixed a lot of the issues that made his previous run fail, vis a vis attempting to build a progressive coalition by browbeating anyone who brought up any problems with Sanders' messaging or his policies.

I'll vote for him on Tuesday because I can't vote for Warren, but I also think he's got very little chance of getting the nomination because his tactics and management of a certain vocal segment of his supporters was bad. That's certainly not the only reason (the media seems quite happy to tiptoe right up to the line of calling him a goddamn Red or somesuch), but I think it's a bigger one than a lot of people want to admit.
posted by axiom at 3:33 PM on March 8, 2020 [10 favorites]

As a practical matter, it looks like (sigh...) it's going to be Biden. And that raises two questions: Who's going to support him against Trump? And what influence can we have on the platform?

That's where we are now. People have fought the good fight and now it's time to consolidate and get your issues into the platform.

I'm not super happy about that either, but it is what it is.
posted by sjswitzer at 3:37 PM on March 8, 2020 [1 favorite]

Party platform doesn't mean a whole lot. Nobody reads it beyond the day it is released.

What is important is Biden's selection of VP. Biden says he's only in for one term, although I wouldn't be surprised if he changes his mind, depending on how his first term goes. But assuming he is a one-term president, the VP is generally the default front-runner for his replacement in the next election. So, the VP has a strong likelihood of being the nominee for 2024. Yes, this didn't happen in 2016, mainly because Biden bowed out after the death of his son.
posted by JackFlash at 3:50 PM on March 8, 2020

Who are we to tell them they need to ask for change politely?

Bernie Sanders scolds crowd for cheering Koch's death (CNN, Aug. 25, 2019)
Sanders apologizes to Biden for supporter’s op-ed alleging corruption (Washington Post, January 21, 2020)
Sanders Calls Out Supporters for Online Attacks, Says "Harassment of All Forms in Unacceptable" (Newsweek, February 14, 2020)

The person being supported is telling his supporters that their actions are hurting the campaign.

And Warren (the subject of this thread) is not obligated to endorse anyone, ever. (Moreover, it isn't true that her endorsement "could literally be a matter of life and death;" Warren supporters are more likely to vote for the Democratic nominee than anyone else's.) Here's a picture of her dog Bailey, for people otherwise unable to find a single thing to like about the senator from Massachusetts.
posted by Iris Gambol at 3:56 PM on March 8, 2020 [23 favorites]

The Boston Globe has a big (paywalled?) postmortem, based on interviews with Warren that could only be published after her campaign ended, whether in victory or defeat: “Prayers In Vegas, Slumped Shoulders In N.H. — inside the final days of Warren’s campaign”
posted by Going To Maine at 3:57 PM on March 8, 2020

Saying Sanders' supporters are younger, poorer, and less white than Warren's isn't attempting to speak for anyone. It's just sharing fairly accurate data.

There's a different data set about Twitter activity, which is a subset of his overall support, and it likely isn't consistent with the other.
posted by 99_ at 4:06 PM on March 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

Plenty of them see this primary as a matter of life and death. I do. The results from this primary could mean the difference between a broken healthcare system and a humane one, and the difference between climate apocalypse and survival.

My health has depended on the progress the ACA represents (and my access has teetered on some of its shortcomings), and I know other people I care about who have depended on it more heavily. I'm one of the people who have very personal and high stakes tied up with healthcare. A planet with a functioning ecology that supports life and even a society is something I feel the stakes of too.

Every potential Democratic nominee wants universal coverage. Every one. We can argue about the effectiveness of different forms or timelines because there are arguments that those differences matter. But it's also best to keep in mind those are *policy* differences, not value differences: we don't have any potential nominees who fundamentally do not care about making policy that gives people access to needed medical care.

Also Bernie or Biden will be far from the only practical constraint on what happens. There's the Senate to contend with. As well as the fact that some problems aren't unsolved solely because of corruption or apathy among power. That can serve as a reason to *support* Sanders over Biden -- when you're facing constraints, you may as well have someone with well-demonstrated motivation to take them on, and for that reason alone I could hope Sanders wins. But it is also a reason to look more kindly on people who one might be tempted to see as too pragmatic.

Who are we to tell them they need to ask for change politely?

I'm telling no one how they need to ask for change. People are free to be angry or repeat "DNC" in proximity to "corrupt" or talk about Warren as a snake as often as they like.

I *am* speaking about the dynamics of what's likely to come out of that and asking people it fits their goals.

Righteous anger alone doesn't make effective action.

All that said, I am glad people are deeply invested in Sanders, and I hope even those who see his victory as important do so in a context where they recognize the fundamental work that needs to be done, taking cues from Sanders himself: building coalitions that will win the next general election. And think about what does/doesn't help that goal. Lots of good people are already doing that, and I hope more join.
posted by wildblueyonder at 4:22 PM on March 8, 2020 [13 favorites]

On view selection source:

h1 class="posttitle">Elizabeth Warren exits the US Presidental race

I know this is a big ask, but can we maybe keep this thread about Elizabeth Warren?
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 4:28 PM on March 8, 2020 [8 favorites]

Elizabeth Warren’s Women Stare Into a 2020 Void (The New Republic, March 6, 2020) If you’ve never had a waterfall of Warren supporters pour into your DMs, let me tell you, it’s a singular joy.
posted by Iris Gambol at 4:29 PM on March 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

Every potential Democratic nominee wants universal coverage. Every one.

This sort of framing is unfortunately not that helpful. Many Republicans likely agree with 'universal coverage' - the issue is funding, and that is a policy and values questions, and only Sanders or Warren support any sort of policy that comes even remotely close to providing coverage that meaningfully improves the lives of those most desperately in need.

Even GHWB loved to brag about how we had the 'best healthcare delivery system in the world' - he just avoided talking about who could actually get it delivered.
posted by 99_ at 4:29 PM on March 8, 2020 [6 favorites]

IMHO Warren would make an interesting pick as Chief of Staff... they have a lot of power and ability to get things done. Her tactical and organizational skills, not to mention her leadership abilities, would make her effective in that role.
posted by carmicha at 5:17 PM on March 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

I will vote blue, no matter who. Obviously getting rid of Trump is the most important thing, but coattails to flip the Senate are the next most important aspect of this election. And, truth be told, I really don't want to be yelled at and have a finger shaken at me for four years.
posted by carmicha at 5:23 PM on March 8, 2020 [4 favorites]

Two takes from The New Yorker: “Elizabeth Warren’s American Leadership” by Benjamin Wallace-Wells and “The Rage And Sorrow Of The Elizabeth Warren Supporter” by Lizzie Widdicombe.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:48 PM on March 8, 2020 [2 favorites]

Every potential Democratic nominee wants universal coverage. Every one.

Similarly, each of them has a "plan" for student debt.

Biden's is up to a $50K rebate for five years public service ($10k/year) -- if you can find a suitable position -- or bankruptcy. Gee whiz, thanks Joe.

With Warren out, Sanders is the candidate offering actual debt relief. In addition to making the loans dischargable in the future.

If Biden gets the nod, the extra Bloomberg/Huntsman/etc voters he picks up won't keep the same shit from happening in Ann Arbor and East Lansing as did last time around.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:19 PM on March 8, 2020 [3 favorites]

The signs arrived last night. I put them up today.
posted by RakDaddy at 7:51 PM on March 8, 2020 [32 favorites]

Megan Garber in The Atlantic: “Sexism is Other People”
posted by Going To Maine at 1:00 AM on March 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

God I hope I'm wrong but this thought has just sprung into my head so I thought I'd write it down:

Many think pieces in 8 months when trump gets re-elected will be about what happened to the blue wave of 2018 and the women who rode it into office, and the end of Warren's presidential run due to the 'anticipatory sexism' and establishment-ness of the dems will be the reason why.
posted by axiom at 1:43 AM on March 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Kerry Howley in Politico: “The Enthralling Brutality Of Elizabeth Warren”
posted by Going To Maine at 2:04 AM on March 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Suggesting that it is counter-productive to call someone a lying snake and that a person who opposes you wants people to die is not "tone policing".
posted by Anonymous at 4:00 AM on March 9, 2020

Many Republicans likely agree with 'universal coverage'

For white people. They are interested in universal coverage for white people. When you start drilling down into who should get "universal coverage" the differences start becoming more clear. Let's be real, there is racism in the Democratic Party. But no candidate is making "the brown people are taking your stuff" a plank of their platform and insinuating that's the case is disingenuous.
posted by Anonymous at 4:05 AM on March 9, 2020

Also betting Republicans would find a way to exclude LGBTQ from their plans because spite is like air to them.
posted by kokaku at 4:51 AM on March 9, 2020

This Warren supporter is not making any decisions right now. I'm in PA and we don't vote until the end of April so there's a good possibility that I won't get any choice at all since the race will already be decided. In that case I might just write her name in.
posted by octothorpe at 5:34 AM on March 9, 2020 [7 favorites]

Most of the Warren supporters I know have already moved to Bernie without anyone badgering them. An endorsement would be good to prevent Joe Biden from taking the presidency, but Warren has made her intentions clear that she's going to wait (if she ends up endorsing anyone).

We are quickly heading towards the line when a centrist Democratic with mediocre policies beyond "stopping Trump" will become the standard-bearer for the social liberal side of the country. When Joe Biden becomes president, will these same people protesting Trump gather to protest Joe Biden as the camps become "more humane" but remain open? Will they protest Joe Biden as he does the bare minimum for healthcare as millions go without? Will they protest Joe Biden as he maintains a horrifically violent imperialist foreign policy but doesn't tweet so he does not offend upper-class sensibilities? I fear that in our desire to consolidate behind a broken set of policies, we'll be compromising our ability to stand against neoliberalism and all the rapacity and poverty that comes with it.

Everyone is concerned about civility, but what about justice? I hope that all the forces on the left can unite to stop Joe "I'll consider a Republican for a running mate" Biden, and I hope that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and millions of each of their followers will unite to prevent the betrayal of the broken-hearted of the world.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 5:35 AM on March 9, 2020 [11 favorites]

Let's be clear about one thing: Bernie's supporters are younger, poorer, and less white than Warren's supporters were. This is a group that is far more online than other candidates' supporters, and a group that has a huge number of legitimate reasons to be angry. Plenty of them see this primary as a matter of life and death. I do. The results from this primary could mean the difference between a broken healthcare system and a humane one, and the difference between climate apocalypse and survival. People are going to be rude, especially in circumstances like this. Most of the time these folks are punching up, not down. Who are we to tell them they need to ask for change politely?

I find this take completely mystifying. What you're saying here is that the stakes are very high, and therefore we have to excuse Sanders supporters for being terrible at politics. But I think that when the stakes are high, that means that you have to be even better at politics. It isn't an excuse to drive away potential allies, because when you lose and fail, it won't matter that you had an excuse. And Sanders is trying to do something incredibly difficult. He says he's going to create a non-violent revolution that will topple deeply entrenched interests, and he'll do that by creating a broad-based popular movement that is so strong that the entire weight of organized capital will not be enough to combat it. Do you have any idea how hard that is? Do you have any idea how little room there is for error? Bernie people seem to think they're going to win because they're right and because they really, really want it, and that is not the way the world works. And that kind of pie-in-the-sky optimism, combined with complete tactical stupidity, is part of the reason that I could never support Bernie. He's promising people the world, but he doesn't have the smarts or the discipline to achieve his goals. That's not a way to win power or make change. One example of that is that Bernie either doesn't realize he needs to rein in his harassing supporters or he is too inept to do it.

Many think pieces in 8 months when trump gets re-elected will be about what happened to the blue wave of 2018 and the women who rode it into office, and the end of Warren's presidential run due to the 'anticipatory sexism' and establishment-ness of the dems will be the reason why.

My sense is that a lot of the women who created the 2018 blue wave are Warren supporters and are taking her loss really hard. But luckily, we're grown-ups, and we'll pull ourselves together and do what needs to be done, because we're not petulant children who take our ball and go home when things don't go our way. You don't need to worry about us. Yesterday I went to a kick-off meeting to organize people for the 2020 election, and it was filled with middle-aged-and-older women. Worry about the emotional toddlers who think it's ok to harass potential supporters on Twitter because they care so much about this election.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:18 AM on March 9, 2020 [44 favorites]

Warren reminds me of Leslie Knope, the tireless organizer from the sitcom Parks & Recreation. A formidable force who Gets Things Done, with a Plan for Everything. I think that for many white women in America it is somewhat of an aspiration to be a Leslie Knope, and I think Warren really resonated with that contingent (without downplaying her appeal among other demographics).

For me personally, the kind of "let's schedule a meeting about it!" energy that Warren exudes gives me an itching rash, and as such I'm not surprised she didn't draw more votes. Warren is a busybodies' busybody. But the truth is that being a tireless busybody is one of few ways for women to get ahead -- it's the dominant role model for powerful women, one of the few avenues that's condoned by culturally pervasive sexism.

I hope to see that change in the years ahead. I hope to see a Leslie Knope type win. But more than that, I hope that alongside the Leslie Knope types we'll also see some other types. Vanessa Williams types. Beyoncé types.
posted by dmh at 6:37 AM on March 9, 2020

Warren is a busybodies' busybody. But the truth is that being a tireless busybody is one of few ways for women to get ahead -- it's the dominant role model for powerful women, one of the few avenues that's condoned by culturally pervasive sexism.

I mean, using the term busybody to describe a sitting Senator who is also one of the world's leading experts on bankruptcy and consumer financial protections is just straight up sexism itself. And thanks for slapping all of her supporters with the same sexist label.
posted by palomar at 6:51 AM on March 9, 2020 [46 favorites]

I mean, using the term busybody to describe a sitting Senator who is also one of the world's leading experts on bankruptcy and consumer financial protections is just straight up sexism itself. And thanks for slapping all of her supporters with the same sexist label.

Apologies. As a non-native speaker of English I was unaware the word is this heavily charged and I retract the characterization.
posted by dmh at 7:06 AM on March 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

Several deleted. This isn't a thread about Chapo Trap House, or actually about Bernie Sanders. This isn't the designated fighting thread. Everybody needs to cool it, and take that stuff elsewhere. We are weighing if we can do politics threads at all because of exactly this problem.
posted by taz (staff) at 7:10 AM on March 9, 2020 [10 favorites]

> I hope that alongside the Leslie Knope types we'll also see some other types. Vanessa Williams types. Beyoncé types.

Kamala Harris types? Stacey Abrams types? Maxine Waters types? Ayanna Pressley types?
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:21 AM on March 9, 2020 [22 favorites]

It really doesn't feel like most Warren stans recognise that there can be ideological differences.

It's never been in question that sexism is relevant, but it seems to be constantly treated as defining, presumably because thats the way most Warren fans relate to her - as someone who has faced the same barriers they have.

I've been taught, from the very beginning of when I first showed up to IRL organising, that liberal feminism, technocratic solutions and elevating white PMC women through existing power structures are not useful, or at very least incredibly fraught pathways to success.

And you just won't convince me through online that the guiding light of my dislike for Warren is purely down to her gender and not our inumerable clear ideological differences, at least not while the organisers around me whose opinions I respect most are against her.

I'm almost certainly harsher in that dislike, it probably pops into my head more often than it would if she was a man and so on.

I think all the comments about Warren being as left as anyone else are rather telling, because they seem to me to show a difference in what we understand to be the left's goals.
If you believe that socialism is when the government does stuff, I can actually understand calling her the most socialist and radical candidate.

If you think it might have something to do with organising workers as a class, as being about the self-emancipation of the precarious by their own hands, then you might feel otherwise.
posted by Acid Communist at 7:32 AM on March 9, 2020 [8 favorites]

Biden's campaign (self branding as Team Normal) reportedly considering Warren as possible Secretary of the Treasury in his administration. They're also considering the CEO of JP Morgan Chase and the CEO of Bank of America for the same position. Also considering Bloomberg as head of World Bank.
posted by Reyturner at 7:37 AM on March 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

> It's never been in question that sexism is relevant, but it seems to be constantly treated as defining, presumably because thats the way most Warren fans relate to her - as someone who has faced the same barriers they have

It was hearing her talk about her plan to reduce gun violence that made me a fan. I don't know anyone who's said "You know what I most relate to about Warren? Her being a woman, like I am."
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:41 AM on March 9, 2020 [24 favorites]

> I don't know anyone who's said "You know what I most relate to about Warren? Her being a woman, like I am."

This is how a lot of men imagine women talking about politics, isn't it. [sigh]
posted by desuetude at 7:46 AM on March 9, 2020 [28 favorites]

Is there not a difference between just "woman" and "same barriers"? I though I've read dozens, if not hundreds of comments on the blue about how familiar people find criticism of Warren. Of how often they've seen those same criticisms levelled at them and theirs.

That she is "unlikable" and "bossy", a "busybody" etc. It's like 5 comments up. If that's not seeing her face the same barriers and relating to that experience, I'm not sure what is.
posted by Acid Communist at 7:50 AM on March 9, 2020

From Reyturner's link a few comments ago, Biden is considering for his cabinet:

Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan): Treasury
Anna Finucane (BofA): Treasury
Mike Bloomberg: World Bank
Deval Patrick (Bain Capital): VP
Tom Nides (Morgan Stanley): Commerce

AKA a list of Warren's major career enemies.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 8:01 AM on March 9, 2020 [13 favorites]

That she is "unlikable" and "bossy", a "busybody" etc. It's like 5 comments up. If that's not seeing her face the same barriers and relating to that experience, I'm not sure what is.

Hi! I'm the person who objected to the label of busybody. Objecting to that label is completely separate from my support of Warren as a candidate, which came about because I really liked that she literally had a plan for everything.

It really sucks that if we object to sexism, people will pretend that experiencing sexism is the only reason we would choose to support a female candidate. Especially disheartening to see that here.
posted by palomar at 8:03 AM on March 9, 2020 [35 favorites]

They're also considering the CEO of JP Morgan Chase and the CEO of Bank of America for the same position. Also considering Bloomberg as head of World Bank.

When you portray yourself as just as far left as the other guy and the terror of billionaires and bankers, and also claim to be a capitalist to your bones and stand and smile and clap when a fascist dictator says we will never have capitalism's alternative, and are in the running for the job of regulating capital alongside Evil Banker #1 and Evil Banker #2.

When you're credited with destroying Bloomberg's candidacy as a threat to the country and then look forward to working alongside him after he's tasked with throttling the global south.
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:06 AM on March 9, 2020 [5 favorites]

> When you portray yourself as just as far left as the other guy and the terror of billionaires and bankers, and also claim to be a capitalist to your bones and stand and smile and clap when a fascist dictator says we will never have its alternative, and are in the running for the job of regulating capital alongside Evil Banker #1 and Evil Banker #2.

This guilt by association is shameful and dishonest. Biden is clearly trolling for support by saying anyone and anyone is in the running for cabinet posts. That his people put out both Warren's name and the names of a bunch of banksters out there says nothing about Warren herself.
posted by tonycpsu at 8:10 AM on March 9, 2020 [22 favorites]

That she is "unlikable" and "bossy", a "busybody" etc. It's like 5 comments up. If that's not seeing her face the same barriers and relating to that experience, I'm not sure what is.

Christ, is that your interpretation of this dialogue? People make criticisms that use pretty sexist tropes and you think that is why people liked her?

People liked her for her many good qualities and positions. They are then responding to the criticism pretty much on its own terms.

It really doesn't feel like most Warren stans recognise that there can be ideological differences.
[. . . .]
I've been taught, from the very beginning of when I first showed up to IRL organising, that liberal feminism, technocratic solutions and elevating white PMC women through existing power structures are not useful, or at very least incredibly fraught pathways to success.

Warren's supporters understand the existence of ideological differences as much as any candidate's.

I find this whole comment weird. Warren wasn't running a "liberal feminist" campaign and while part of her brand was competence this wasn't a technocratic campaign. "Billionaires are out to get you, so we need a wealth tax and medicaire for all" is not primarily technocratic. It was, like Bernie, in policy a campaign of social democracy.
posted by mark k at 8:10 AM on March 9, 2020 [30 favorites]

The idea that his people out both Warren's name and the names of a bunch of banksters out there says nothing about Warren herself.

I see a list of awful people who are supposed to be counter to everything Warren stands for, plus Warren. I don't see the other just-as-left candidate anywhere on that list. If it doesn't say anything about Warren, what does their lumping her in with the ghouls say about the Biden campaign's estimation of her as a threat to its interests?
posted by Rust Moranis at 8:16 AM on March 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

I see a list of awful people who are supposed to be counter to everything Warren stands for, plus Warren. I don't see the other just-as-left candidate anywhere on that list. If it doesn't say anything about Warren, what does their lumping her in with the ghouls say about the Biden campaign's estimation of her as a threat to its interests?

It says that there's no actual plan to put her in the treasury (much less whether she would want that job under that President), but that they might have a chance of getting of getting former Warren voters to vote for Biden by hanging out that possible incentive.
posted by dinty_moore at 8:19 AM on March 9, 2020 [18 favorites]

It's a list that comes from an Axios article, information comes from "top sources", and honestly given the depth and breadth of the list along with all the "likely" and "possibly" it sounds like a lot of spitballing. Maybe we could hold off on condemnation of Warren based on this story?
posted by palomar at 8:23 AM on March 9, 2020 [15 favorites]

For me, it's really more of a condemnation of Biden and a clear marker that he is not going to respect the goals of the Warren campaign one iota. I suspect that even if they offered her a cabinet position she would end up marginalized and face massive resistance to any of her progressive goals.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 8:53 AM on March 9, 2020 [12 favorites]

As far as I can tell, "technocratic" means "aware that there is a real world where people sometimes disagree with you and systems aren't instantly changed by waving a magic socialism wand."
posted by neroli at 9:00 AM on March 9, 2020 [13 favorites]

I for one would be pleased if we didn't condemn anybody right now -- while continuing to fight for our version of what we think is best.
posted by philip-random at 9:04 AM on March 9, 2020 [2 favorites]

Near as I can tell, "real world" means "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism".

Or maybe "a boot stamping on a human face - forever".
posted by Reyturner at 9:05 AM on March 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

It really sucks that if we object to sexism, people will pretend that experiencing sexism is the only reason we would choose to support a female candidate.

It’s just ...more sexism.

The amount of sexism coming from “leftists” in this thread who claim to be all about gender equality is somehow both breathtaking and utterly unsurprising. This is why people don’t find this particular brand of lefty politics credible, and we shouldn’t. People who say one thing and do another aren’t credible.
posted by schadenfrau at 9:05 AM on March 9, 2020 [23 favorites]

Near as I can tell, "real world" means "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism"

This cancellation of the future seems just a tad too slow
posted by Rust Moranis at 9:08 AM on March 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

As far as I can tell, "technocratic" means "aware that there is a real world where people sometimes disagree with you and systems aren't instantly changed by waving a magic socialism wand."

The left critique of "technocracy" is that it's an approach to governance that is largely unresponsive to the will of the people. Technocrats think that government policy should be written by a small coterie of high-minded experts who decide what's best for the public with limited or no reference to what the masses actually desire. It's a point of view that is skeptical of mass movements but completely buys into power hierarchies and the idea of the all-powerful "market". Technocratic policy aims to be invisible, to "nudge" people into correct behavior without them realizing it. It focuses on tepid, ever slower incrementalism that is easily reversed whenever the opposition takes power. It aims to make the world a little better without threatening the money men.

Unfortunately, these experts are usually privileged and blinkered in their outlook, the only way to save the world is to threaten the money men, and real societal change usually comes from the bottom up, not the top down.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:13 AM on March 9, 2020 [9 favorites]

The plan to end capitalism with revolutionary rhetoric and nasty words about neoliberals and technocrats seems to have encountered some practical limitations in the form of "voters". Clearly, the answer is to keep bullying people who dare to say nice things about Elizabeth Warren in a thread about Elizabeth Warren.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:15 AM on March 9, 2020 [45 favorites]

Near as I can tell, "real world" means "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism".

I guess it depends on your imagination, and where it gets its fuel. It's certainly far easier in this culture to find lurid depictions of end times/apocalypse/etc than functional post-capital driven options.

And anyway, I'm not personally looking for the end of capitalism per say, not in the Marxist sense. I just want to see a palpable shift from unlimited belief in the inherent goodness of unregulated free markets to a focus on doing a way better job of taking care of each other with the vast accumulations of wealth that we do collectively have. Call it Socialism if you must but unfortunately, I don't think the electorate is ready for that word yet.

and to be honest, I never did. It always felt like a fundamental strategic fumble for Sanders to call what he was after Socialism ... even if he was only being true to his lifetime's ideals. It bluntly shows a lack of a sense of compromise, which I'm sorry, I keep seeing reflected in the tactics of many of his supporters. You can't always get what you want, as the song says.
posted by philip-random at 9:23 AM on March 9, 2020 [3 favorites]

The advantage of using the word "socialism" is that it puts you in touch with a vast corpus of socialist philosophy and a long historical lineage of struggle for a better world. The theory and history of socialism provides both useful guidance for the radicals of today, a sense of solidarity and morale, and a feeling of knowing oneself as a member of a historical movement.

I tend to think socialism is no longer the kind of boogeyman in the US that it used to be, and I think this is borne out by Sanders' surprising electoral success.
posted by One Second Before Awakening at 9:33 AM on March 9, 2020 [9 favorites]

It's never been in question that sexism is relevant, but it seems to be constantly treated as defining, presumably because thats the way most Warren fans relate to her - as someone who has faced the same barriers they have.

I first became a fan of hers when she founded the CFPB. I primarily relate to her as someone who has seen people's lives destroyed by the US's finance industry.

If the level of vitriol directed at Sanders' closest ally isn't explained by sexism, then what is it? And if it's just, "no really we'd hate a man just as much," then honestly, where do you see your movement going? Who's gonna power your revolution if Warren is unacceptable? It's absurd. It's absurd to talk about a revolution when you can't even win a democratic primary and can't see your closest allies as part of your movement.

Near as I can tell, "real world" means "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism"

Imagining it is great, but you don't seem to have any idea how to make it happen.

When you're credited with destroying Bloomberg's candidacy as a threat to the country and then look forward to working alongside him after he's tasked with throttling the global south.

Whoa, that's huge, where did she say this?
posted by Mavri at 9:41 AM on March 9, 2020 [36 favorites]

I once thought that Elizabeth Warren winning the nomination and the presidency would be the best case for socialism. Here was a social democrat, a liberal winning. And she would humanize capitalism, stomp out corruption, stop the worst excesses of the market.

And it wouldn't work. There would still be mass homeless, still be underpayment of wages, still be billionaires that harvest untold wealth from their workers and call it their own (e.g. Bloomberg). We would see a bright progressive liberal . . . and realize that perhaps liberalism isn't enough. Perhaps the workers don't need a billionaire and can control the factory themselves. Perhaps developers shouldn't control the supply of housing and private control of the land market is innately inhumane.

I thought Elizabeth Warren would once and for all give us the good of socially-conscious capitalism . . . and reveal the bad that is intrinsic to capitalism.

Sadly, we won't get to see that future, and we'll have a doddering neoliberal whose main goal is to beat Trump and return us to normalcy, and people will still hold out hope that if the right regulation were enacted, we'd be able to live in a non-exploitive society.

I'm sure Warren would have been able to get at least some of her platform through, and even in her failures, show us where the system will not allow further reform. For that, I will miss her. At this point, it's either socialism or barbarism. It's the society controlled by the owners or a society controlled by the workers. We could have had an on-ramp for class-consciousness, but it seems that it just wasn't in the cards.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 9:44 AM on March 9, 2020 [9 favorites]

Electing the "right" candidate won't suddenly make the United States a workers' paradise. Maybe don't stop playing the socialism hand yet and work for DSA types downballot? Plenty of opportunities for creating on-ramps there.
posted by Lyme Drop at 11:07 AM on March 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

No candidate can make the US a workers' paradise. The only thing that can make a better world is. We need no heroes, we want no role models, we only want people to see the limits of the system.

I also am extremely active in my local DSA chapter doing work far more important than electoral work (mutual aid, political education, protest and agitation). Ask me about it if you ever want to know more. But that is a tale different from that of Elizabeth Warren.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 11:12 AM on March 9, 2020 [7 favorites]

re: the level of perceived vitriol between Warren and Sanders supporters. We're all still aware that not everyone we encounter online is being honest? That there are a not-insignificant number of paid trolls, bots, and ratfuckers stomping their way through our public online spaces? Yes? Okay, good!

No? Oh dear...
I've been thinking a lot lately about how to illustrate our collective information dilemma (for those of us that spend a good deal of time online, whether Metafilter, Twitter, YouTube or FB or whatever), and many cute metaphors come to mind, but probably the easiest to think about, for MeFites, is just the stark contrast in "quality" between moderated and un-moderated spaces. The general "feelings" you're perceiving from tweets, yt comments, and fb posts may not actually reflect the views of *anybody* IRL, there's absolutely no guarantee that the comments you're reading on other sites aren't bullshit. Or, and here's the tricky part: you're probably reading a mix of real and fake comments. Sigh....
From my own involvement in IRL voter registration, door-knocking, etc., the Warren and/or Bernie supporters have been really nice! Once in a great while I've met someone who was very stubborn: "Only Bernie!" or "Only Warren!" and surprisingly (not-actually-surprising) they will often point to things they've seen online (!) to justify their very certain feelings of being attacked by supporters of the other side.
In summary: fuck you Twitter, fuck you FB, fuck you YouTube! All these online spaces that have decided they don't care if the comments are real as long as they're plentiful and controversial. Eyeballs=revenue!!!!

As an aside, for those looking for some fresh IRL anec-data to chew on: I supported and donated to Bernie in 2016, voted for Clinton in the general election, supported, donated, and canvassed for Warren up until last Thursday, and have since donated to Bernie and am preparing my body and mind for a tough slog ahead. Many of the Warren supporters in my immediate circle have indicated that they are doing some version of the same. My/our 2nd choice has always been Bernie. (speaking only for me and my friends, eh? ymmv)

It's worth remembering that all the polling has just about *any* of the D candidates beating Trump. The polls have been saying that for months and months... and yet our collective mediasphere keeps whispering, "But can they beat Trump?!?" which makes it sound like an open question still. Not very different from the way some version of the question, "But can she get elected? Can she beat a Republican?" was repeatedly whispered about of Warren (a sitting United States Senator who won her seat from a Republican incumbent). Sigh...

And they never much mention 2018. For some reason all the talk about the 2020 election seems to reference what happened in 2016 and chewing over what that could mean for 2020. Well, shit, let's not skip factoring in the enormous victories of 2018!! [just take a second, in between contemplating other horrors, to imagine where we'd be at today if the House of Reps was still being run by Kevin McCarthy... (R CA-23 - please consider donating to his D opponent Kim Mangone!)].

Sorry, this is too long. I should comment a bit more but a lot shorter. =D
posted by ButteryMales at 11:39 AM on March 9, 2020 [9 favorites]

Lord Chancellor, for the record I wasn't questioning your bona fides, but rather trying to point out that a President Sanders would face similar challenges enacting policy as Warren would have faced, and to point those disappointed in 2020 presidential politics to actions they can take to make the change they want to see.
posted by Lyme Drop at 11:42 AM on March 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

I see a list of awful people who are supposed to be counter to everything Warren stands for...

If that's the list with Deval Patrick on it, with him branded "Bain Capital," I'd like to point out that he was a pretty good governor. He didn't pull any of the crap that Mitt Romney (Bain Capital) did, and was better than the current Rino. I was disappointed when Deval decided to be yet another Centrist trying for the Presidency, but if it had somehow come down to a choice between him and Biden, he'd have got my vote.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 12:01 PM on March 9, 2020

but rather trying to point out that a President Sanders would face similar challenges enacting policy as Warren would have faced

This is true; both would be incredibly limited by congress. The biggest difference between Warren and Sanders is really rhetoric and perspective (even as most of their policies are the same).

For Warren, capitalism is broken and needs to be fixed with regulation and expansive government programs to create a better (but still liberal) society where there's a strong safety net.
For Sanders, capitalism is working as it was always intended, and must be dismantled by using regulation and expansive government programs to create a social democracy as an intermediate stage to tackle capitalism directly.

I think Warren's vision is more limited and that it would show the inherent contradictions of capitalism sooner, but both are trying to get to social democracy, and I'm great with that (for now). I think Warren is a capable of administrator and communicator, which are the two best traits for a President to have. I don't think Sanders would be as good at being president, but I think he offered something else: the continuous rhetoric of working class empowerment and centering (a sort of agitator-in-chief), now in the most powerful office in the US. Oh, what I wouldn't have given to have both twenty years younger.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 12:47 PM on March 9, 2020 [7 favorites]

Folks, the mods have already asked us to drop this particular back-and-forth about Bernie here. Can we do that, before more people get temp-banned?
posted by mbrubeck at 1:16 PM on March 9, 2020 [4 favorites]

There's also the difference between being an energized and engaged voter and being a reluctant one - because there's the ripple effect of having someone who is actually excited and hopeful to vote for a candidate in your life, having them volunteer and drive people to the polls. It might be right to be scornful about people not voting against kids in cages, and people might still vote for you candidate because they don't have any choice. But would that person be the most effective volunteer?

Right now I've been focusing on getting my fellow Warren supporters engaged and excited about flipping senate seats - 2018 really did help pave the way to convincing progressives that down ballot voting helps, and Senate Majority Leader Elizabeth Warren does sound pretty awesome. If anyone else is feeling low about how things are turning out, I'd really suggest taking that tack.
posted by dinty_moore at 1:21 PM on March 9, 2020 [8 favorites]

O M G please be quiet about elections from over a decade ago. Temp banning for people who somehow can't help themselves is always an option. Be better. Thank you.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 1:22 PM on March 9, 2020 [11 favorites]

I see a list of awful people who are supposed to be counter to everything Warren stands for...

ABC reporter Johnny Verhovek:

Biden camp’s @AndrewBatesNC responds: “This is like fantasy football for politics, and no one who actually works on this campaign and is engaged in getting Joe Biden elected has the time to play. It is laughable speculation and should only be treated as such.”

I think Warren is a capable of administrator and communicator, which are the two best traits for a President to have.

These last few weeks have done a GREAT job of illustrating the need for a capable administrator/communicator president. Even if a president has all the right policy positions, they also need to be able to plan and execute in emergency situations. The Maddow interview showed us how clearly Warren saw the coronavirus situation, how all the economic dominoes were lined up, and what would be needed to address the situation. Coulda been great, lemma tell ya.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 1:27 PM on March 9, 2020 [19 favorites]

Yeah, it's hard to prove counterfactuals, and I truly believe that the coronavirus outbreak would have been pretty bad no matter what, but I think that with someone like Warren, we would have felt, I dunno, prepared? Like there was a plan to tackle it and there was a way to go forward. To his credit, I think someone like Sanders would have helped get people though by inspiring and increasing resolve, telling us that we were going to get through the tough times.

Two different management styles when a crisis goes down. Either better than what we have right now.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 1:33 PM on March 9, 2020 [13 favorites]

I'm a Canadian whose formative political years were the decade when I lived and studied in U.S. institutions. Warren gets me excited in a way that Bernie doesn't. Even now when I see her on the front page news, or every time when the TV camera cuts to her, I get excited and involuntarily cheer for her. None of the other politicians do this for me.

Thus I feel like an oddity. Because I'm also a leftist, so for intellectual reasons I know that Bernie is the correct choice; my emotions for Bernie are just different. For Elizabeth "I'm a (New Deal) capitalist" Warren, although I haven't fully explored my emotions and I am well aware that some leftists might criticize me for my class privilege for saying this (and I empathize with them because I've heard all the basic pro-left-anti-left arguments before), every time I see Warren being discussed in the media, I keep finding myself thinking and hoping about Warren, and rooting for her, not in terms of her next move—who to endorse, VP ticket, etc.—but rather, her next run for presidency.
posted by polymodus at 3:25 PM on March 9, 2020 [4 favorites]

and I truly believe that the coronavirus outbreak would have been pretty bad no matter what

It's worthwhile to remember that there were about three ongoing epidemics (and possible pandemics) during the Obama presidency.

That administration deferred to the relevant experts and those crisis were handled professionally and without crashing the economy, disseminating nationwide confusion, panic, or a leaving a large body count on US shores. Sure. Lots of that was luck. But not ALL of it.

Because if you also remember THIS insane anti-vax president at THAT time demanded that Obama close all the borders when only one US nurse with Ebola returned from treating people in Africa. And the Far Right media machine demanded the same. They spread nothing but lies. Even after it was known there was an existing Ebola vaccine. Remember that they did their best to sew panic.

And those same piles of shit are charge NOW. So who is in charge does matter.
posted by Everyone Expects The Spanish Influenza at 3:43 PM on March 9, 2020 [22 favorites]

Yeah. Warren Offers Infectious-Disease Plan Amid Coronavirus Outbreak (WBUR.org, January 28, 2020) (Warren's website.)

Warren's merch shop is shuttering, too, fyi. (From an email today: "...before our shop closes, we wanted to give you a chance to commemorate your place in our fight together. Whether it's by wearing your Warren tee, sipping from your Billionaire Tears mug, or dressing a baby up in a Pint-Sized Persister onesie, you can show the world that you're dreaming big and fighting hard. We're so grateful to have you on this team. If you'd like to place an order before the Warren for President Shop closes, click here to get your gear and stay in this fight.") I'd forgotten the billionaire tears business, and that was only last November. I hate this timeline's pace.
posted by Iris Gambol at 5:23 PM on March 9, 2020 [6 favorites]

According to the latest Reuters poll, nearly all of Warren's supporters went to Biden after she dropped out, with none of the remaining ones going to Sanders:

Biden 47 (+7 Since last week)
Sanders 30 (-)
Warren 0 (-9)
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 5:35 PM on March 9, 2020

That's kind of amusing. All that yelling at her for not dropping out before Super Tuesday and it looks like it wouldn't have helped Sanders at all.
posted by octothorpe at 6:18 PM on March 9, 2020 [7 favorites]

> According to the latest Reuters poll, nearly all of Warren's supporters went to Biden after she dropped out, with none of the remaining ones going to Sanders: Biden 47 (+7 Since last week) Sanders 30 (-) Warren 0 (-9)

I don't really get this, or who they're polling, or anything. I text-banked for Warren on Super Tuesday for GOTV campaigns in multiple states and talked to many, many people who were vacillating between Warren and Sanders, Biden, and even Bloomberg.
posted by desuetude at 10:36 PM on March 9, 2020 [1 favorite]

Several deleted and a couple of 24 hour bans for derailing. Why are you starting fights about Biden in here?
posted by taz (staff) at 11:37 PM on March 9, 2020

That's kind of amusing. All that yelling at her for not dropping out before Super Tuesday and it looks like it wouldn't have helped Sanders at all.

I think with Sanders path to the nomination getting harder and harder, everyone is getting behind the presumptive nominee. Had she dropped out before Super Tuesday perhaps the split would have been more even... but then again perhaps not.
posted by PenDevil at 11:41 PM on March 9, 2020

All that yelling at her for not dropping out before Super Tuesday and it looks like it wouldn't have helped Sanders at all.

I think there's two interpretations here. The first is something like yours: that Warren voters have stable preferences (with -- I would add -- the corollary that they never believed all the talk about Sanders/Warren being ideologically close to begin with). I suppose I'm partial to this view.

The second is that something happened in the last week for Warren voters to change their opinions. One version is that they're awed by Biden's victories and defecting to him. Another is that Warren's tacit endorsement of Biden (criticizing Bernie and speaking warmly of Biden post-dropout) was a signal Warren supporters picked up on and adjusted their preferences accordingly.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:42 AM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

There are other options: they were initially fans of Sanders but have cooled on him as his campaign progressed; they prefer Sanders but no longer believe he has a shot at the nomination and prefer to vote for the presumptive nominee; the African American voting pattern on Super Tuesday led them to reconsider their alliances; more that I can’t think of right now.

There’s no reason to believe Warren voters are more monolithic than supporters of any other candidate.
posted by Superplin at 4:04 AM on March 10, 2020 [14 favorites]

Also some voters who were undecided probably went to Biden while some Warren voters went undecided. We're talking about 9% of the vote while 23% of the vote is still unspoken for.
posted by dinty_moore at 4:48 AM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

The Reuters/Ipsos poll linked to above looked at movement in the polls after Super Tuesday, but not specifically at who former Warren supporters are now planning to vote for. The poll numbers presumably include subsets of voters like the following:

Bloomberg > undecided > Biden
Klobuchar > undecided > Biden
Warren > Biden
Warren > Sanders
Warren > undecided
undecided, but not Sanders > Biden
undecided > still undecided
(and others)

There are Warren supporters participating in this thread who are now supporting Sanders, including some who voted for him last Tues. after it looked Warren couldn't make it. I believe them. But the upshot, according to Ipsos, is a gain for Biden, a slight increase in the total percentage of people undecided, and no net gain for Sanders. Earlier polling that asked about people's second choices found a decent chunk of Warren supporters gave Sanders as their second choice.

Since Ipsos does internet panel polls, Reuters could have asked them to put together a panel of people who previously expressed a preference for Warren, but they didn't. It worth noting, too, that people who've already voted and people who switched to Sanders ahead of Super Tuesday, like some people here, aren't included in Ipsos' numbers.
posted by nangar at 5:39 AM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

...or, basically what dinty_moore said much more succinctly.
posted by nangar at 5:43 AM on March 10, 2020

I live smack in the middle of a Warren bubble here in Vermont. The vast majority of my personal contacts voted for her, and yet she didn't even reach the 15% threshold for statewide delegates. Post super Tuesday it seems that most of us are still just mourning, and thankful we don't have to make the choice again now. A few have expressed support for Sanders, but a majority are what I would call 'softly undecided' where they are not ready to express a preference because they don't like Biden, but they know they won't be supporting Sanders and so are remaining 'undecided' until the nomination is sewn up.

I guarantee every one of them will vote blue in November.
posted by meinvt at 6:32 AM on March 10, 2020 [13 favorites]

I would call myself undecided at this point. Living in PA I'm so used to not having a voice in the primary that most years I just don't make a decision at all. In '08 I waited until it was obvious that Obama had the nomination locked before supporting him and the the same in 2016 with Clinton although I tended to lean her way more than towards Sanders. This is the first year since 2006 that I was really enthusiastic about the chance to vote for a candidate in the primary and now am in a state of morning over Warren dropping out. It looks very unlikely that Sanders will be a viable candidate by the end of April so once I again I don't really need to make a decision.
posted by octothorpe at 7:04 AM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm a Warren supporter in Ohio who is still technically undecided now, I guess. On the one hand, the Sanders platform is much more in alignment with my values than any other candidate still in the race. On the other hand, based on how the campaign is running, I don't have a ton of confidence in the ability of a Sanders administration to actually make change happen. Coalition building requires working with people who aren't a perfect ideological match, and... that's not even a strong suit of the campaign.

Regardless of what I decide on this race, I'll turn out in November and vote blue. But until a nominee is chosen, my cash goes to downballot races. If we can't keep the House and regain the Senate, what the fuck does it matter which one of these two crusty old white grandpas is in the WH?
posted by palomar at 7:06 AM on March 10, 2020 [13 favorites]

All that yelling at her for not dropping out before Super Tuesday and it looks like it wouldn't have helped Sanders at all.

Or maybe the yelling turned off a lot of Warren supporters?
posted by xammerboy at 8:44 AM on March 10, 2020 [6 favorites]

Interestingly, every professional Warren organizer that I know has come out for Bernie, while most ordinary Warren supporters I know think both Bernie and Biden are trash and don't really care which of them gets the nomination. It's actually kind of fascinating.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:52 AM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

Elizabeth Warren did better with college-educated white men than with working-class women (Vox)

Not only did Warren fare worse with white working-class women than with white professional women, she fared worse with white working-class women than she did with white professional men. The exit polls do not provide a gender and educational breakdown of nonwhite voters, but you can also see that Warren did better with white male college grads than with the all nonwhites category.

Massachusetts is not only Warren’s home state, but also the US state with the highest share of residents with bachelor’s degrees. In other words, it was the perfect terrain for her political profile. But not only did she finish in third place in Massachusetts, she finished in third place with women in Massachusetts despite her strength with white women who have college degrees. That’s how poorly she did not with men, but with women who are either nonwhite or lack a college degree.

Super interesting demographic data.
posted by Ouverture at 8:54 AM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

What I find interesting is what a moving target words like "working class" and "professional" seem to be for members of the left. When it's convenient, people like Will Menaker, the college-educated son of a New York Times editor and the Executive Editor-in-Chief of Random House (two separate people: his mother was the Times editor and his father the high-powered publishing executive), is a true son of the working-class. Bernie himself has a college degree and has never, as far as I can tell, had a job that would qualify him for union membership, because he has never had a job where he was not the boss. He, too, is a true member of the working class. But the teachers, nurses, administrative assistants, and what have you who I know who support Warren are "professional women" and therefore not working class.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:05 AM on March 10, 2020 [31 favorites]

Elizabeth Warren did better with college-educated white men than with working-class women

The conflation of education level with income level or class helps nobody - think Joe the Plumber, or the sheer about of, to borrow a term, malarkey we have to hear about "working class white voters" who turn out to earn 200,000 a year. It's easy to say 'white working class women skew more conservative' (as this data could be interpreted to show, white non-grads going for Biden), but that's not the full story - especially when considering the reasons why women might be encouraged or discouraged from pursuing higher education. The second part of this story - about beliefs about hostile sexism correlating to Warren voters, plus how education shapes those beliefs, is a lot more interesting to me than that conflation.
posted by dinty_moore at 9:08 AM on March 10, 2020 [7 favorites]

The conflation of education level with income level or class helps nobody -

this is hardly a new insight but it comes up because I distinctly remember hearing it when I was maybe fourteen -- my mom having a bit of an argument with one of her friends about class and whatnot.

"It's not about how much money you have, it's your values. Where they were formed. My values are middle class, maybe a little lower because I grew up in the depression."

Come to think of it -- it's probably the only time I ever heard my mother use the word "class" in this sort of context (as opposed to, 'how was class today?').
posted by philip-random at 9:26 AM on March 10, 2020

Okay, yeah, that's a lie. The conflation of education level with income level or class helps the Joe the Plumbers of the world - small business owners who use their lack of higher education to pretend that they're the true voice of the working man (ignore their employees). If your rubric for workers includes landlords but excludes teachers, it's a bad one.
posted by dinty_moore at 9:36 AM on March 10, 2020 [17 favorites]

There are also complicated ways in which gender interacts with education. Women are more likely than men to have bachelors degrees, but women with bachelors degrees earn much less than similarly-educated men. In fact, women with bachelors degrees earn, on average, about as much as men with associates degrees. One of the reasons that women pursue higher ed at higher rates than men is that we know we need the credentials to overcome the economic effects of sexism.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 10:12 AM on March 10, 2020 [18 favorites]

The exit polls do not provide a gender and educational breakdown of nonwhite voters, but you can also see that Warren did better with white male college grads than with the all nonwhites category.

Lol. Yes, this definitely tells us anything about non-white people, that great lump.
posted by dame at 11:02 AM on March 10, 2020 [5 favorites]

If anyone is interested I think this is the exit poll data used in the Vox piece here: https://edition.cnn.com/election/2020/entrance-and-exit-polls/massachusetts/democratic

It contains an education by race breakdown not in the Vox article but no education by race by gender breakdown. They would obviously have that data but it is not reported. Just glancing at it looks like no education by race interaction for Warren and Sanders but there is one for Biden.
posted by Beware of the leopard at 11:33 AM on March 10, 2020

Lol. Yes, this definitely tells us anything about non-white people, that great lump.

There is a reason that the "non-white lump" is not broken down. It is because the sample size is too small to give reliable results. Sub-sets of non-whites would likely have margins of error of 10% or more.
posted by JackFlash at 11:34 AM on March 10, 2020

What's a little frustrating for non-social-scientists about all this is that, at least when looking at data, the effects are often less, rather than more, complex than people expect. That is, when you use data to try to model Warren, Sanders, Biden or Trump votes with demographic info such as age, race, gender, income, education, and ideology, you mostly see linear effects: being older makes people more likely to vote for Trump or Biden, being male makes people more likely to vote for Trump or Sanders, being white makes people more likely to vote for Trump or Warren, being richer makes people more likely to vote for Trump or Warren, being more educated makes people more likely to vote for Warren or Biden, and being relatively more conservative makes people more likely to vote for Biden and of course Trump.

But when you look into subgroups, such as women or African-Americans or whatever, there is usually no clear pattern that differs from the trends overall. Older women tend to lean more towards Biden than Warren, non-white women tend to lean more towards Biden and Sanders vs Warren (if this includes Hispanic/Latina), more liberal and younger African-Americans tend to lean towards Sanders vs Biden, etc. That is, for the most part the general linear trends for age, race, gender, income, education and ideology work about the same in subgroups as they do in the population at large. There may be subtleties, but these are really hard to measure without huge samples. So to a first approximation, if there are strong income, education and age cleavages in the primary electorate, you will find that the subset of core supporters that have non-supporter characteristics tend to diverge from the core. Eg, non-white or young women who might otherwise support Warren due to their gender and ideology who instead lean Sanders, or highly educated young white men who might otherwise support Sanders who instead lean Warren or Biden.
posted by chortly at 11:43 AM on March 10, 2020 [8 favorites]

(if Menaker is going to be a proxy for 'every progressive' at least mention Amber's background)

I think the data just shows that Warren's support was mostly about gender as a decision driver. She likely had more support from Dems who are fairly centrist/Obama approving but are acutely frustrated with the paucity of women in leadership positions among Democrats. She probably could have taken far less progressive positions and had the same numbers (losing some progressives to Sanders but picking up from the other centrists). The subset / nexus of strong progressives / strong woman-first voters is likely pretty small.
posted by 99_ at 11:49 AM on March 10, 2020

I think the data just shows that Warren's support was mostly about gender as a decision driver.

Please show the data to support that.

She likely had more support from Dems who are fairly centrist/Obama approving but are acutely frustrated with the paucity of women in leadership positions among Democrats. She probably could have taken far less progressive positions and had the same numbers (losing some progressives to Sanders but picking up from the other centrists).

Assuming that is true, why did Harris/Klobuchar/Gabbard do so much worse when they are female and much more centrist?

The subset / nexus of strong progressives / strong woman-first voters is likely pretty small.

I would also like to see any sort of data you have on that, as well.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 12:09 PM on March 10, 2020 [16 favorites]

Reading the Vox article, there's two parts - a) Elizabeth Warren did better with white people with higher education than with any other group (that we can find out information about from the exit polls) b) White people attaining higher education is highly correlated them being more sensitive to structural inequalities, in this case sexism.

Higher education is a bad stand in for class or income, but that doesn't mean it's useless to include that data. Elizabeth Warren's base is more likely to believe that sexism is currently an issue (graph is a little hard to read, but there's an explanation in the Vox article). Whether you think that Elizabeth Warren's supporters just corrected for the misogyny in our current system in their interpretation of Elizabeth Warren or if they overcorrected seems to really depend on where you are on the hostile sexism scale yourself.

(Personally, I thought that it was telling that Klobuchar wasn't doing better - wouldn't she be better for the capitalist #girlboss?)
posted by dinty_moore at 12:18 PM on March 10, 2020 [3 favorites]

(ugh, wrong graph, this is the correct one - the one linked earlier just has a gender breakdown)
posted by dinty_moore at 12:27 PM on March 10, 2020

I think the data just shows that Warren's support was mostly about gender as a decision driver.

Funny, I think the fact that we ended up with two men as the final candidates shows that their support is mostly about gender as a decision driver.

But, just like Republicans, white men on the left never like to acknowledge the role that "identity politics" plays when we end up with a government by white men and for white men.
posted by hydropsyche at 12:31 PM on March 10, 2020 [33 favorites]

I fully expect that the negotiation and coordination that happened before Super Tuesday very much was conditioned by that - both internalized bias and strategically flawed thinking (a woman can't beat Trump), but that's not on Sanders supporters. They were never going to be in that room.
posted by 99_ at 12:48 PM on March 10, 2020

There is a reason that the "non-white lump" is not broken down. It is because the sample size is too small to give reliable results. Sub-sets of non-whites would likely have margins of error of 10% or more.

Ah the sweet taste of mansplaining. Perhaps — and hear me out here — if you can’t talj to enough “non-white” people to differentiate them, you should just leave them out and admit you can’t really say anything, as opposed to implying all non-white people is an at-all useful category?
posted by dame at 1:42 PM on March 10, 2020 [10 favorites]

I think it's fine to lump together all non white voters in a conversation about Warren since the numbers are so small. It would be hard to extrapolate any conclusions aside from their collective disinterest.
posted by 99_ at 2:10 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

But, just like Republicans, white men on the left never like to acknowledge the role that "identity politics" plays when we end up with a government by white men and for white men.

So I don't believe that leftist ideas are intrinsically racist and sexist. It gives me cold comfort that the main criticism of voters shifting against leftism is in large part that actually existing leftists are too white-male-dominated. Because that is a fixable situation. It reminds me of myself saying to myself sometimes, I left science because my experiences of it was overly straight male dominated, but that doesn't mean I had to give up being intrinsically interested in science and continuing to care about it on my own terms.
posted by polymodus at 2:20 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

So I don't believe that leftist ideas are intrinsically racist and sexist.

No, not at all.

I think what the left is having is kind of a moment where a lot of white men in particular previously not interested in the left are suddenly realizing that their economic prospects are not bright, and there needs to be something better if they, personally, are going to get taken care of. And so they're fleeing to the left because of the economic ideas, but they don't have kind of the structural other stuff that leftist ideas entail, around equity and access. So like: the Gamergater types wound up breaking, in my view, into populist lines - some of them went right-populist with Trump, some of them went left-populist with Sanders, but they brought their shitty sexism with them.

And so there are a lot of shitty misogynist actions because these guy's introduction to caring about anything political was inherently misogynist, and because most of their political interaction is online, they're not experiencing actual leftist spaces which don't tolerate that kind of behavior. Your person going in person to protest planning meetings is not going to come with that racist/sexist melange, but I think someone who found out about X leftist idea on Reddit may well.

And - it's hard to know what to do with this enormous influx. Do you call them all out right away and risk them leaving? Do you welcome them in and hope their behavior changes? This isn't easy, even if I am frustrated about the effects spilling all over.
posted by corb at 2:43 PM on March 10, 2020 [35 favorites]

aside from their collective disinterest

Well, as a non-white Warren fan, it seems like your willingness to dismiss who we (not they, thanks) are might maybe be tied to your willingness to accept our representation as an undifferentiated lump. I am not willing to accept it though. Just say you don't know instead of attempting to make assertions you cannot.
posted by dame at 3:08 PM on March 10, 2020 [10 favorites]

Some Spanish-language news outlets in the US pay pollsters to collect a large enough sample of responses from Hispanic/Latino voters to do a breakdown by age and gender. Otherwise, outside of states like California and Texas, they usually just get lumped together in the "other" part of the "white/black/other" breakdown of most poll results.

If you want pollsters to collect the data to permit this kind of analysis, though, you have to pay for it. Usually though, pollsters are working for media companies that cater to white, anglophone audiences. They aren't interested in that kind of detail.
posted by nangar at 3:11 PM on March 10, 2020

Look, I'm interested in any individual's narrative about what is meaningful to them when talking about building policy and law. And I think a politician has an obligation to build a campaign that makes the widest possible coalitions of support. Your voice and vote absolutely count. Warren's support was narrower (in terms of totals and percentages) than Sanders (or Biden) among either all non whites or when broken down by specific races. Why that happened is likely a pretty important thing to discuss within the framework of progressive organizing (especially when you factor in gender bias) but it's not inflammatory or dismissive to note that Warren's campaign was primarily driven by support from white, college educated people.
posted by 99_ at 3:28 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

they're not experiencing actual leftist spaces which don't tolerate that kind of behavior.

It’s worse than that. They’re taking over leftist spaces (especially online; those still count), and creating their own, where the sexism is absolutely fine.

And other people are buying it.
posted by schadenfrau at 4:19 PM on March 10, 2020 [12 favorites]

it's not inflammatory or dismissive to note that Warren's campaign was primarily driven by support from white, college educated people.

It is inflammatory and dismissive to suggest that people voted for Warren only because she is a woman, especially since you still refuse to acknowledge that some people vote for Bernie and Biden only because he is a man.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:26 PM on March 10, 2020 [23 favorites]

It would be really nice if some of you could acknowledge that access to health care is a real issue that effects real people, like me, for instance, and that may have affected how some of us voted.
posted by nangar at 4:52 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

I think it's absolutely true some people *only* voted for Bernie and Biden because they are men and I think it's true that some people making decisions not solely based on gender preference were also impacted by gender bias. Her overall economic / reform capitalism stance was always going to be out flanked by more centrist candidates, so she was fighting for votes with candidates who pandered better to a wider swath of Democrats who also exhibit structural gender bias.
posted by 99_ at 5:15 PM on March 10, 2020

I think it's fine to lump together all non white voters in a conversation about Warren since the numbers are so small.

So.... again. Do you have data to back up your claim?

It would be hard to extrapolate any conclusions aside from their collective disinterest.

Maybe the "collective disinterest" is how you are just lumping together all of "them".
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 5:17 PM on March 10, 2020 [9 favorites]

corb, that was a fantastic comment. I always struggle in trying to describe the propensity for the gamergate-type personalities to split off into on-the-surface ideologically dissimilar groups like the Trump-alt-right and Sanders-chapo-left.

I do feel it's far too simplistic to measure how a candidate polls with white vs non-white demographics and use this to draft some sort of model about how non-white supporters might feel about said candidate (disinterest, really?), and it's certainly far too simplistic to not also mention the myriad factors for which "white" is a proxy. For that matter had we better data, black, Latinx, AAPI, tribal membership, etc. are also proxies for all sorts of other different hidden drivers (language, religion/values, wealth, educational attainment, risk-aversion, and even stuff like age, related cohort effects, etc.). What's inflammatory is to tuck all those proxy effects away and pretend they don't exist when making broad generalizations.

Of course, if I were to try to make a broad generalization with this information, I think I would see the "non-white" category as roughly being a proxy for (among other things) a greater aversion to risk than those who identify as "white". Maybe non-whites' hypothetical position on some sort of "aggregate risk" curve means they see a higher "cost" associated with taking on additional risk, similar to how marginal wealth effects are magnified for less wealthy individuals. This is why hearing black Biden supporters say they don't trust average white people to vote for a progressive (like Warren or Sanders) over Trump absolutely makes sense to me. In fact, I think the electorate as a whole is similarly more risk-averse than in previous elections, so much so that a candidate like Obama might not win the nomination in a year like 2020.

For the sake of anecdata, I want to add that I'm a non-white male-identifying Warren supporter here whose partner requires regular drug infusions for survival. We do not currently have health insurance, and if Trump is re-elected we may likely flee to a country with a national health care system.
posted by donttouchmymustache at 5:22 PM on March 10, 2020 [10 favorites]

So.... again. Do you have data to back up your claim?

In California, every other candidate who has a statistically signifcant result had more support from non-white voters. Warren did not.
posted by 99_ at 5:29 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

You are not seriously trying to tell me California is representative of anything related to the presidential race, right?

There are 49 other states (and some territories) that also vote. Almost all are more conservative than California.

But, fine. You have cherry picked.

I think the data just shows that Warren's support was mostly about gender as a decision driver.

I think it's fine to lump together all non white voters in a conversation about Warren since the numbers are so small.

I think you should take a step back and maybe take a minute or two to contemplate how misogynistic and racist this sounds.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 6:38 PM on March 10, 2020 [12 favorites]

Gentlepersons! You can't fight in here.. this is the war room!
posted by Nerd of the North at 6:54 PM on March 10, 2020 [2 favorites]

In the case of the latter I will own up to some sarcasm that I should have avoided.

For the former I literally don't understand your point. Whenever I vote in a low information situation (judges) or in cases where there isn't a striking difference in policy positions, I default to picking a woman if available. I would call that gender as a decision driver and I think everyone should be doing that. If that's misogyny, then I guess I own that too.
posted by 99_ at 6:59 PM on March 10, 2020 [1 favorite]

Joe Biden is a spleen. Back when he was Vice President, average spleen-bearing voters weren't forced to think about him that much. If they did think about him, he seemed to be doing an okay job, they guessed.

Donald Trump is a diseased spleen. Suddenly the average voter is forced to think about their spleen every day. Their spleen threatens everything they hold dear. How could a spleen be so terrible? This is a crisis.

The Doctor says to the average American, we have two treatment options. We can transplant a regular spleen. Or, you can opt for Bernie, the Experimental Super-Spleen. This spleen will give you increased stamina and mental agility. It's the spleen of the future!

The majority of average voters have decided, no thank you Doctor, I just want my regular spleen back. I don't want to think about spleens any more.
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 at 7:30 PM on March 10, 2020 [57 favorites]

That's a good analogy, and you have my thanks for exspleening it so.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:37 PM on March 10, 2020 [14 favorites]

Man-spleening
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 8:34 PM on March 10, 2020 [14 favorites]

SPLOTUS
posted by tonycpsu at 8:45 PM on March 10, 2020 [10 favorites]

I've been thinking a lot about that Michael Harriot Twitter thread.

On the one hand, it is absolutely strategic to vote for the Name Brand Spleen, especially when the Newfangled Spleen Company has not gone out of its way to connect with you, and when Sick Spleen Inc. has actively been targeting your health and wellbeing for ages. Plus, Newfangled Spleen doesn't sound like it's centering your medical needs, and you'll be the first to be fucked over if the new device falters.

So Name Brand Spleen it is. Only Name Brand knows this, so they take your support for granted and barely meet your splenic needs. They're too busy focusing on the bilirubin goals of Jamie Dimon, even though we're in the middle of some kind of lymphatic public health crisis.

I wish someone could CRISPR a progressive spleen from the scaffold up that centers the needs of voters who deserve both security and reform.
posted by evidenceofabsence at 9:23 PM on March 10, 2020

Seems to me we had one but our bodies rejected her because she wasn't similar enough to our previous 45 spleens.
posted by tonycpsu at 10:16 PM on March 10, 2020 [24 favorites]

Reminder, again: this isn't a megathread; if you don't want to discuss Warren, that's okay, but this is a thread about Elizabeth Warren. If someone wants to post about the current status of the primary, that's probably a good idea.
posted by taz (staff) at 12:42 AM on March 11, 2020 [5 favorites]

Experimental Super-Spleen has been successfully used in Europe and Canada for at least 50 years, but has not yet received FDA approval.
posted by clawsoon at 4:31 AM on March 11, 2020 [12 favorites]

I voted for Warren in the Washington primary despite her officially dropping out and was happy to see that she got something like 12% of the vote. I wonder how many of those were ballots that were mailed in before her withdrawal.
posted by Slothrup at 4:58 AM on March 11, 2020 [9 favorites]

It would be really nice if some of you could acknowledge that access to health care is a real issue that effects real people, like me, for instance, and that may have affected how some of us voted.

It would be really nice if some of you could acknowledge that similar concerns motivated many Warren voters. Many of us don't think we have the luxury of obsessing over whether someone is sufficiently anti-capitalist or writing someone off because they had the wrong political positions 30 years ago. We don't have the luxury of believing political fantasies about how policies just enact themselves if you're pure enough. We want someone smart and competent who knows how to get shit done, because we really need the shit to get done.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:09 AM on March 11, 2020 [57 favorites]

We want someone smart and competent who knows how to get shit done, because we really need the shit to get done.

In an age where you'd no longer get a ciggie paper between general attitudes toward politics and team sports, "smart and competent and knows how to get shit done" is apparently insufficiently gladiatorial.

This is not entertainment. I am not entertained.

Warren has a proud record for tearing arseholes new arseholes, but rooting for the lions is always going to be a bit niche.
posted by flabdablet at 7:17 AM on March 11, 2020 [9 favorites]

It would be really nice if some of you could acknowledge that access to health care is a real issue that effects real people, like me, for instance, and that may have affected how some of us voted.

This is just such a perplexing comment. Are there people not affected by "access to health care"? All the people in the immortal segment of the electorate perhaps?
posted by armadillo1224 at 9:20 AM on March 11, 2020 [7 favorites]

I voted for Warren in the Washington primary despite her officially dropping out

Why? How is that different from just not voting?

and was happy to see that she got something like 12% of the vote.

You were happy that 12% of voters were removed from the decision process? I get that some were mail-ins from before she dropped out, but it sounds like the rest decided "eh, Biden, Sanders--all the same to me. It's more important that I state an opinion than that I have any influence over the election." Why would it be a happy thought when people vote for someone who literally cannot win because they're no longer running?

Serious question. Is this about showing she has influence and therefore both top candidates should consider adjusting their platform to win her supporters? Or rallying for her getting a cabinet post or potentially the VP position?
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 12:37 PM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

So, for me, I checked 538, as I do, and saw last week that Sanders had less than one percent chance of getting a majority, and a three percent chance of getting a plurality. So at that point, whether Sanders wins in Washington or not is pretty irrelevant - if he can’t get a majority or a plurality, he’s not getting the nomination unless Biden drops out, which he’d get either way if that happened regardless of the Washington vote.

So at that point, you want to make noise as a voting bloc to hope to steer the statewide party towards the type of person who represents you best. For me, that’s Hermione Granger. I want our state to think “Hmm, there’s a lot of folks who care about solid policy thinking. Maybe I’ll try to run some people who represent that.”
posted by corb at 1:04 PM on March 11, 2020 [17 favorites]

I get that some were mail-ins from before she dropped out, but it sounds like the rest decided "eh, Biden, Sanders--all the same to me.

From upthread it seems like this is indeed the case for some:

Interestingly, every professional Warren organizer that I know has come out for Bernie, while most ordinary Warren supporters I know think both Bernie and Biden are trash and don't really care which of them gets the nomination. It's actually kind of fascinating.
posted by Beware of the leopard at 1:07 PM on March 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Are there people not affected by "access to health care"?

Well now.
posted by Mrs Potato at 1:09 PM on March 11, 2020

There was really no downside to voting for Warren if she was your favored candidate. If, as it appears likely, Joementum will put Biden over the line, then at least expressing your convictions and having a marker in the Democratic platform is worth something.

The one thing we know for sure is that there will be a Democratic candidate. We also pretty well know it'll be Biden. So throwing your chits in for Warren gives her more power in the forming of the platform. (Same argument for Sanders.)

Warren and Sanders put important ideas out there. They've helped move the needle. And they need whatever support they can get to keep doing it.
posted by sjswitzer at 1:21 PM on March 11, 2020 [13 favorites]

> It would be really nice if some of you could acknowledge that similar concerns motivated many Warren voters.

I'm the person who made the comment you're attacking. I voted for Warren on Super Tuesday. I liked her because I thought she had a very clear-eyed understanding of what she'd be up against in trying to get the policies she cared about implemented, and thus was more likely than Sanders to actually get stuff done. I thought she would make the best president out of all the candidates running, and probably the best president we've had in a long time.

I'm sick of being told I'm a misogynist bigot and left-wing purist for caring about access to health care. This is an issue that impacts me in a direct personal way. Most US MeFites will never have to worry about paying for health care. Most of you will never have to worry about what will happen to you if you can't.

I'd hoped to point out that other people on the site are human, and that sometimes we have personal, human reasons for caring about the issues we care about.
posted by nangar at 1:41 PM on March 11, 2020 [5 favorites]

Most US MeFites will never have to worry about paying for health care.
Cite please?
posted by neroli at 2:09 PM on March 11, 2020 [24 favorites]

I'm sick of being told I'm a misogynist bigot and left-wing purist for caring about access to health care.

I haven't seen that line of attack here, but I understand your frustration. Health care is my number one issue. Pretending that others don't care is I think what people are attacking.

As far as most US MeFites not caring, Me and my SO do not have health insurance, she needs regular medical care. I will have to flee this country if Trump gets reelected.
posted by donttouchmymustache at 2:15 PM on March 11, 2020 [6 favorites]

Most US MeFites will never have to worry about paying for health care. Most of you will never have to worry about what will happen to you if you can't.

I'd hoped to point out that other people on the site are human

The irony here has seriously rendered me speechless.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 2:53 PM on March 11, 2020 [7 favorites]

I'm sick of being told I'm a misogynist bigot and left-wing purist for caring about access to health care.

Citation please? Absolutely nobody has said that here- and speaking as someone who deeply cares about health care AND bigotry, guess what! You can care about both!
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 2:57 PM on March 11, 2020 [6 favorites]

Experimental Super-Spleen has been successfully used in Europe and Canada for at least 50 years, but has not yet received FDA approval.

In other places they just call it "spleen"
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:58 PM on March 11, 2020 [5 favorites]

Elizabeth Warren Is Unlikely to Endorse Bernie Sanders. Here's Why.

Mr. Sanders’s highest-profile surrogate, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, said she understood Ms. Warren’s hesitation, and suggested it was a teachable moment for the left.

“I always want to see us come together as a progressive wing,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “I think that’s important and where we draw strength from. But at the same time, I come from the lens of an organizer, and if someone doesn’t do what you want, you don’t blame them — you ask why. And you don’t demand that answer of that person — you reflect. And that reflection is where you can grow.”

[...]

Four years ago, Ms. Warren stayed neutral in the Democratic primary between Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Clinton, and during the general election she used her influence among liberals to push Mrs. Clinton to make more left-leaning personnel choices in her transition team. “That was the template that she designed in 2016,” Mr. Fallon said. “Wait back, hold until the nomination is settled and then be very practical and hard-boiled about what your asks are.”

Most of the progressive groups and individual leaders that backed Ms. Warren do plan to support Mr. Sanders in some form, including the Working Families Party and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which emailed its members encouraging them to support Mr. Sanders before the Michigan primary.

posted by kliuless at 5:23 PM on March 11, 2020 [21 favorites]

Comment deleted, we're not gonna keep going in circles on this. Tensions are high all around and people are arguing with the specific you, the generic you, the proxy-for-candidate you, etc. in a way that makes conversations more difficult than they need to be, and I'll ask that everybody here make more of an effort to both (a) be clear who you're talking about if you're actually talking about someone specific and (b) not personalize general discussions as personally targeted. We're not gonna get through this with anybody still talking to each other otherwise.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:53 PM on March 11, 2020 [8 favorites]

That makes a lot of sense to me, kliuless. I've often thought that the degree of public divisiveness on display during the last few Democratic Presidential primaries might not be that good for the party or its goals in the long run. It certainly had a role in how the last election went.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:07 PM on March 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

The Week Bernie Sanders Realized He Was Losing

About a month ago, when it was clear that Warren had little chance to win, one person inside the campaign said they put out feelers to Sanders’ operation in an attempt to create new lines of communication. At the time, senior Sanders officials showed little interest, the person said, in reciprocating.

I wonder if this has anything to do with the lack of an endorsement by Warren.
posted by chernoffhoeffding at 8:26 AM on March 12, 2020 [3 favorites]

Warren on the coronavirus.
posted by Slothrup at 11:04 AM on March 12, 2020 [14 favorites]

she's got my vote
posted by philip-random at 1:37 PM on March 12, 2020 [14 favorites]

My take on the lack of endorsement by Warren is that by the time she suspended after Super Tuesday, every indication pointed to Sanders not being able to win against Biden. I think she understands that in order for a push toward a more progressive agenda to be successful, it's far better to extract concessions for support than waste political capital on endorsing a sinking campaign. Similarly, in 2016 she made Clinton agree to a list of demands before endorsing (just 2 weeks before Sanders), even after it was clear Clinton would win. It's absolutely consistent with her MO of knowing where the levers of power are and applying pressure.

If Sanders' team didn't want to coordinate with her team before it was clear she would have to drop out, that seems consistent with his campaign's theory (before Super Tuesday) that they wouldn't need any help to win while the moderates were splitting the vote, shortsighted though it was.

Unrelated, I honestly feel she would have had a stellar debate this Sunday were she still in the race. She understands how to deal with multi-layered issues like this pandemic better than all other candidates, better than almost anyone in politics at the moment, I'd wager.
posted by donttouchmymustache at 3:18 PM on March 12, 2020 [28 favorites]

that they wouldn't need any help to win while the moderates were splitting the vote, shortsighted though it was.

this always struck me as incredibly ... I'm not sure the word. Being Canadian and not that tuned to the nitty gritty of American political process, I just assumed things were somehow different down there, that the way the delegate thing played out, you could somehow secure a nomination without at least 50.1 percent of the count ...

Because I never saw Bernie's numbers getting close to that.

And I never doubted that as the moderates took each other out, eventually one would be left standing, and like the biggest blob of mercury in a petri dish, the rest would find her/him. I suppose it goes back to being a teen and sitting with my parents as the Canadian Conservatives chose themselves a leader over a long, protracted afternoon of live TV. There were a bunch of candidates and at the first ballot, one guy was way ahead of rest. But I recall one of the commentators saying something like, "this looks good for him now but as my grandpa says, never trust a first ballot that isn't a knockout punch."

And sure enough, ballot after ballot, the guy kept on coming up short, and each time shorter than the first time ... as various candidates dropped out and either officially endorsed other candidates or just set their delegates free to choose for themselves.

Bottom line, the front runner eventually bottomed out and they ended up with Joe Who!?!? as party leader, eventual Prime Minister.
posted by philip-random at 8:32 AM on March 14, 2020 [5 favorites]

philip-random: Bottom line, the front runner eventually bottomed out and they ended up with Joe Who!?!? as party leader, eventual Prime Minister.

Scheer won the recent Conservative leadership race in a similar way, coming up the middle from out of nowhere.

Both Clark and Scheer earned about 35% of the popular vote in their federal elections as leaders, and Clark had one of the briefest stints as Prime Minister after his minority government failed after a few months, which doesn't say much for the candidate in the leadership race whose primary attribute is "at least he's not the guy we don't like."
posted by clawsoon at 10:54 AM on March 14, 2020

I just assumed things were somehow different down there, that the way the delegate thing played out, you could somehow secure a nomination without at least 50.1 percent of the count ...

You can, and that is called a brokered convention. Once the first tally shows no majority, delegates are released from their oaths to vote as they desire. And since 2018, superdelegates will not vote in the first round. For about a month, polling suggested a 30 percent chance of a brokered convention.

That said, the superdelegates are going to veer towards the center. A sizeable chunk of superdelegates are sitting politicians. A moderate President that can sign your bills into law is more useful than a liberal candidate that lost the election. You'd have to be afraid a moderate president would veto your bills to bother voting for someone less likely to win the general election. There are very few such sitting politicians that can push for policy that far left and retain their seat at the next election. You likely know them by name, but they make a small fraction of the superdelegate total.
posted by pwnguin at 11:36 AM on March 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

So, uh, would it matter if I voted for Sanders for President but voted for Warren's delegates? Would that weaken my vote for Sanders? I realize its probably a moot point by now, but I would've voted for Warren if she were still in the race and potentially viable. I want to support Nernie to send a signal that I want the party to be more aggressive in holding to its principles, but I figure if some Warren delegates could go it would be good (waves hands) even if Warren herself wasn't the candidate.

If doing that would weaken my signal, though, I'd be fine with voting for Sanders' delegates. I realize its probably just beanplating at this point, but if anyone has any thoughts I'd be interested.
posted by Reverend John at 12:19 PM on March 14, 2020

IIRC, voting for one candidate but then a different candidate's delegates spoils your ballot, at least here in Alabama. Can't find it atm, but there was an article warning people not to bother voting for friends and family running as delegates unless they were also voting for that candidate.
posted by Rhaomi at 12:46 PM on March 14, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'd be voting in Illinois, FWIW.
posted by Reverend John at 3:12 PM on March 14, 2020

Pedantry: it would no longer be a brokered convention, because the old power brokers don't exist anymore in the post-McGovern-Fraser Commission world. A convention with multiple candidates with sub-majority delegate totals actively trying for the nomination would be a contested convention.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:55 PM on March 14, 2020 [5 favorites]

Well, I wanted Warren,

But I just notched one (+5) for Nernie.
posted by Reverend John at 3:26 PM on March 15, 2020 [6 favorites]

I had to laugh. This guy on Twitter actually posted that Warren was a fatally flawed candidate, but just wait four years for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to run.

I mean seriously, the second AOC runs for president, "Leftists" like that guy will be detailing all the ways she really isn't a progressive.

Let's face it, at this point the most likely scenario for a woman president is Ivanka Trump ascending to the presidency 2 years and one day into her term as VP. Right after Donald Trump suddenly passes away one minute after midnight.
posted by happyroach at 10:43 AM on March 19, 2020 [8 favorites]

Eh, maybe. But people used to say the first black president would have to be a Republican.
posted by Chrysostom at 11:54 AM on March 19, 2020 [9 favorites]

Welp, by way of an epilogue, the donors to Warren's Super PAC are finally public. Almost all of the money, $14.6 million, was from Karla Jurvetson, also a major donor to notorious racist Sheriff Joe Arpaio's 2018 Senate run.

The linked article mentions that Warren's defenders are already arguing that the Arpaio donation was actually Jurvetson trying to split the right-wing vote to boost the Democrats' chances.

But it's an ironic defense in this context. The huge infusion of Jurvetson's cash into the floundering Warren campaign on the eve of Super Tuesday clearly performed the exact same function: splitting the progressive vote to boost Biden.

At best, Warren was unwittingly used by Biden and the donor class. At worst, she knowingly carried water for them by breaking her pledge about Super PACs, accepting the cash, and staying in the race.
posted by Beardman at 2:05 PM on March 21, 2020 [3 favorites]

It would certainly be interesting to hear from Jurvetson herself about the Arpaio donation, but it seems worth noting that her 2.7k donation there was three orders of magnitude smaller than her multi-million dollar donations to Women Vote! and Fair Fight Action, and four orders of magnitude smaller than her donation to the pro-Warren Persist PAC. It would be the equivalent of one of us mortals giving $1000 to the candidate of our dreams and 50 cents to some more dubious exercise in disrupting the other side.

Obviously there are problems with any one person being able to pour millions of dollars into a single election, but unless there's a broader pattern I don't think we can read much into that Arpaio donation.
posted by Not A Thing at 3:31 PM on March 21, 2020 [5 favorites]

The best part about the weak "splitting the vote" gotcha attempt is that Sanders' own people said his electoral strategy was to have enough candidates in the race to split the POC vote so he could squeak by with about 30% of the delegates.

I could be wrong here, but it's almost as if political donors trying to influence a race from the sidelines have different priorities and rules of engagement than candidates participating in it.
posted by tonycpsu at 4:18 PM on March 21, 2020 [7 favorites]

Yeah, with inconsistencies like that, it's going to be extremely hard to take her seriously as a viable candidate.
posted by tonycpsu at 4:44 PM on March 21, 2020 [4 favorites]

Just stop. Sanders wasn't owed "the progressive vote" and trying yet again to find someone to blame for his not getting the nomination is stale and feels ugly when it's keeps getting pinned on a woman.

I didn't say Sanders was "owed" the progressive vote; I said Warren split it by staying in the race after she had no chance of becoming the nominee. As a result, Biden won several more states than he otherwise would have, strengthening his comeback narrative. Maybe that's why Sanders failed to get the nomination, maybe not: I don't know, so I didn't make that "ugly" claim. My observation was just that in a zero-sum contest, Warren proved useful to Biden, irrespective of her motive.

I don't think we can read much into that Arpaio donation.

I see the point you're making, but honestly, rather than doing moral mathemathics on politicians' behalf, sometimes it's OK to just be disgusted. Warren claimed to oppose the malign influence of dark money in politics, and she claimed to be an intersectional candidate who was concerned about the conditions on the southern border. Then she took a truckload of dark money from someone who also maxed out donations to Joe "tent city concentration camp" Arpaio.
posted by Beardman at 8:27 PM on March 21, 2020

Super PACs can't coordinate with candidates . . . are they even allowed to share donor names ahead of public disclosure?

But it's an ironic defense in this context. The huge infusion of Jurvetson's cash into the floundering Warren campaign on the eve of Super Tuesday clearly performed the exact same function: splitting the progressive vote to boost Biden.

Is there the slightest evidence that the infusion of cash led the SuperPAC to run adds that moved measurable numbers voters from Sanders to Warren?
posted by mark k at 8:44 PM on March 21, 2020 [2 favorites]

Sanders was drawing dead either way. Warren's share of the vote can't both be so small that she was required to drop out, yet so large that a fraction of it could have saved Bernie from annihilation on Super Tuesday. The move from Warren to Bernie (and to some extent Biden and others) had already happened in large numbers.

Use whatever number you like for the proportion of Warren voters that would have turned out for Sanders if she'd dropped out -- and there was ample evidence posted in the Nevada thread that it's not actually that high a number -- and Bernie wins, what, maybe one additional state and a handful of extra delegates? There is no world in which that would have changed anything given how many voters Warren herself had already lost.

Warren didn't make this happen. This spectacle of Sanders dead-enders poking at the carcass of Warren's campaign is grotesque, and it needs to stop. The revolution was plan A, and when the revolution didn't materialize, there was no plan B. That's how Bernie wanted it, and it's how many of his supporters wanted it.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:43 PM on March 21, 2020 [21 favorites]

I get the anger and frustration. I'm still there. But eventually Sanders' supporters are going to have to stop blaming the only progressive ally in the race who was actively reaching out to expand and grow the coalition of progressive supporters, and they're going to have to face the fact that the Sanders campaign, and many of the supporters themselves, believed they didn't need to.
posted by donttouchmymustache at 10:22 PM on March 21, 2020 [18 favorites]

If you are committed to M4A, this is the single best moment in history to advocate for it regardless of who the candidate is. The failures of privatized medicine are as stark as they'll ever be. Contact your reps.
posted by benzenedream at 11:14 PM on March 21, 2020 [12 favorites]

And if none of that addresses whatever belief any of us wants to hold about what might have been, fine. Hold whatever belief you want, but the world isn't standing still and we can't go back, so let's try and focus on the enormity of the current crisis which requires immense unity of purpose to both address now and prevent what happens after from being an even bigger catastrophe. Sanders and Warren are trying to do this and that's exactly what the rest of us should be doing.

There's zero benefit to Metafilter or the wider world in increasing antagonism over something that doesn't have the kind of tidy narrative some seem to want as people's values and actions don't fit neatly into those kinds of molds.
posted by gusottertrout at 11:24 PM on March 21, 2020 [4 favorites]

METAFILTER: it's almost as if
posted by philip-random at 11:28 PM on March 21, 2020

No. The argument is that Sanders was the second choice of many Warren voters, so had she dropped out before Super Tuesday, instead of using that PAC money to fuel the campaign for a couple more days only to drop out right afterward, then on Super Tuesday there would've been significantly more votes for Sanders. (Not all of her voters would've gone to Sanders, obviously – you can see that in this thread – but the plurality if not the majority would have gone to him.)

OK, is there the slightest evidence of a causal relationship between her not dropping out and the super PAC receiving money? It's not like that money was paying her campaign staff. She didn't drop out because she wasn't planning on dropping out.

Heck, I'm old enough to remember when people were surprised Buttigieg and Klobuchar did drop out in that two day window.
posted by mark k at 12:18 AM on March 22, 2020 [5 favorites]

To follow my own advice, I'm removing this from my activity, so there won't be any further response from me.
posted by gusottertrout at 12:32 AM on March 22, 2020

I see the point you're making, but honestly, rather than doing moral mathemathics on politicians' behalf, sometimes it's OK to just be disgusted

"Honestly" it is not OK to condescendingly lecture others on whether they should be "disgusted" even with a lot of ironic di🐍tance.
posted by snuffleupagus at 12:27 PM on March 22, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's not moral mathematics, it's mathematical mathematics. Arpaio would have been slaughtered if he'd made it out of the primary.
posted by tonycpsu at 1:27 PM on March 22, 2020 [4 favorites]

I don't see how the Arpaio donation is any different from Claire McCaskill boosting Todd Akin in the 2012 GOP Senate primary in Missouri.

Also, re:Warren's effect on Super Tuesday -- even if every single Warren voter had voted Sanders instead (which would not have happened even with an enthusiastic endorsement), he would have flipped five more states -- one by the skin of his teeth, and two by under 10 points:

STATE	BIDEN%		SAN+WAR%	BLOOM%
OK	38.7%		38.8%		13.9%
MN	38.6%		45.3%		8.3%
TX	34.5%		41.4%		14.4%
ME	34.1%		48.6%		12.0%
MA	33.6%		48.1%		11.8%

Sanders narrowly winning a few extra states instead of losing them would have softened the media narrative somewhat -- from "Biden had a fantastic night" to "Biden had a decent night", but because the Democratic primaries are proportional the delegate math would not have changed much. And the media narrative can't change the fundamentals of the race: Bloomberg still would have dropped out, the young/new/non-voters still would have stayed home, Biden still would have racked up massive wins throughout the South the following week, and Sanders would still be hopelessly behind. Heck, Biden's advantage was so enormous that according to FiveThirtyEight even in the event of a massive Sanders surge -- winning Michigan, doing 10 points better in FL/AZ, and doing 20 points better everywhere else -- he would not only still be behind Biden, he would have fallen further behind. It's the same story as in 2016: Sanders gets a couple of big wins in small states, a few narrow wins in big states, some narrow losses in many states, and massive losses everywhere else. Nothing Warren could have done would have changed that.
posted by Rhaomi at 6:32 PM on March 22, 2020 [9 favorites]

Okay, putting this thread on lockdown. Go find another place to fight.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:58 AM on March 23, 2020 [13 favorites]

Doubling down on the above, we are in fact gonna have frimble formally close this up, something we haven't previously used as a tool on the blue. The amount of mod effort that's been required to keep this thread halfway non-shitty, and the number of times folks have just declined to meet us in that effort, is a good example of how much of an exhausting strain managing politics discussion can be on the site. This isn't a function I want us to make much use of and having to do so in the future is going to continue to come in tandem with folks just being told to stay off the site until 2021 at least. Please make more of an effort going forward, I'm tired of this nonsense.
posted by cortex (staff) at 11:59 AM on March 23, 2020 [21 favorites]

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Elizabeth Warren exits the US Presidental race March 5, 2020 6:28 PM Subscribe

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Elizabeth Warren exits the US Presidental race
March 5, 2020 6:28 PM Subscribe