Warren Is Having a Hard Time Convincing Her Own State to Vote for Her
Super Tuesday probably isn’t going to be a fantastic night for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
This is an issue for her inasmuch as her campaign’s “firewall” — I want to ban that word after South Carolina, so please email me a better metaphor if you have one — is the fact she has the best campaign infrastructure on Super Tuesday.
It turns out that and $6 will get her a rental of “Parasite” on Amazon Prime. (Good movie, by the way, even though President Trump slagged it and it’s a bit leftist.) Warren is in real trouble in virtually every state she’s competing in on Tuesday — and that’s taking into account the fact that these states award delegates proportionally.
There are a lot of states voting on Super Tuesday. Gosh. There are a whole lot of glittering delegates out there for the taking. California’s the biggie. Texas, too. Those two might be difficult for Warren. North Carolina — that’s also not her kind of bag. Oh, wait, Massachusetts — she’s from there, right? I’m sure she can cash in her wampum there.
Well, uh, maybe not. Boston’s NPR affiliate polled the state’s residents and they apparently prefer another radical.
“With Super Tuesday just days away, a new WBUR-FM poll finds Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders well ahead of Sen. Elizabeth Warren in her home state of Massachusetts,” the station reported.
“The poll shows Sanders is the choice of 25% of likely Democratic primary voters, while Warren is in second place with 17%. The former mayors, Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg, are in a virtual tie for third at 14% and 13%, respectively. Former Vice President Joe Biden rounds out the top five at 9%.”
The problem with predicting Massachusetts like your name was Nate Silver is the fact there’s not a whole of polling in what might be the nation’s most liberal state. It is, after all, not one of the huge prizes on Tuesday if your name isn’t Elizabeth Warren. If your name is Elizabeth Warren, however, the WBUR polling adds to a small pool of polling that doesn’t exactly look comforting.
According to RealClearPolitics, none of the polls conducted in the Bay State this year have Warren ahead. Instead, the favorite son of Massachusetts has been the geriatric Green Mountain Peter Pan that is Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Polls in 2020 have shown Sanders besting Warren in the top two slot withs percentages of been 21-20, 25-23, 25-17 and 24-22 , all for Sanders. (It’s worth noting, however, that in all but one of those polls — the WBUR survey — Warren was within the margin of error.)
Former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg is in third place in all of those polls, something that will no doubt be a great consolation to a guy who’s apparently going to get absolutely creamed on Super Tuesday.
In Massachusetts, however, things are not looking great for the favorite-ish daughter, at least when compared to Bernie Sanders’ strength.
“According to the poll, Sanders’ strength is propelled by younger Democratic voters: almost half of those under the age of 45 say they support the Vermont senator. Warren does well with highly educated voters and women — but overall, she trails Sanders by eight points,” WBUR reported.
“That’s a pretty good size lead,” Steve Koczela, president of MassINC Polling Group, is quoted as saying in the article, because apparently the obvious needs restating.
He also notes that — get this — primary voters are fickle.
“Particularly in primary polling, numbers can change very quickly,” Koczela said. “Think back to New Hampshire, where we saw 50% of voters in the Democratic primary who made up their minds just in the last few days.”
This is the most disposable man in the history of politics.
Also dispensable is the Kennedy legacy, which is somehow involved in this. Joe Kennedy III, last seen in a major public venue in front of a car being repaired for reasons unknown, is a Warren supporter and optimistic she has better than a 1/1,024th chance of winning the Massachusetts primary.
“I think you’ve got a long time [to go],” Kennedy told WBUR.
“March 3rd is an eternity. I believe in her. I think the people here believe in her. I expect she’s going to have a great day here, and I think she’s going to have a great day across the country.”
March 3 is an eternity? I remember New Year’s Eve 2018, when The New York Times alert came over my phone that Elizabeth Warren was forming an exploratory committee to run for president. I knew enough to know an exploratory committee is legally indistinguishable from an actual run for the presidency, which meant Elizabeth Warren was the first major Democrat candidate for president.
Joe Kennedy III made this comment last week, which means Warren’s candidacy was, um, well underway. I’ve crammed for a few papers before. I don’t think you can cram for being down in your home state’s primary when it’s literally the only thing you need to win on Super Tuesday when it’s just a few days before Super Tuesday, particularly when you’ve been in the race since us conservatives were setting up our “Welcome to 2019” fireworks in the backyard.
Bottom line: If Elizabeth Warren can’t win her home state, she’s done. It doesn’t matter how many debates there are are and how many low blows she can aim at Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg isn’t the target anymore, but she hasn’t become his replacement.
Perhaps she wants to hang around in the back of the room like John Kasich in 2016 hoping for a divided convention. That’s fine. However, if there is a brokered convention, nobody’s going to have any love for Warren, particularly since she helped bring about that state of affairs by not dropping out.
At least Kasich won his own state, though. Warren might not even be able to say that.
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