When Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., resisted efforts to draft her to run for president in 2016, she ceded ground to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who emerged as the default option for those on the Left who wanted to challenge the system. After a slow and steady rise in polls, she may be in the process of reclaiming her “rock star” status.
Recent polls have shown Warren challenging Sanders’ second place standing in the 2020 Democratic nomination fight. On Wednesday, Monmouth University added to this trend, with a survey showing Warren at 15%, slightly edging out Sanders, at 14%, as Joe Biden remained in the lead with 32%. That’s a big shift from the same poll taken in March, which had Biden at 28%, Sanders peaking at 25%, and Warren in fourth place with 8%.
A closer look at the numbers shows the big shift toward Warren has been among liberals. In the March poll, Sanders was at 30% among liberals, with Biden at 20%, and Warren at just 8%. Yet in the new poll, Warren has surged to 25% among liberals, Biden has edged up to 24%, and Sanders was down to 17%.
In this context, it’s worth recalling that around four years ago, liberal activists were begging Warren to challenge Hillary Clinton. She became a left-wing martyr after her appointment to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was blocked by Republicans, and that vaulted her into her 2012 Senate race. It was in that race in which she went on a riff about how “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own” at a house party. The video went viral, and inspired President Barack Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech.
It was only after she declined to run that liberals seeking somebody who would take on Wall Street-backed Clinton ended up rallying around Sanders. Warren’s decision to sit out was instrumental in Sanders being able to build his movement.
By the time Warren decided to run this time around, this created an initial obstacle for her campaign, because there was somebody else in the race with wide name recognition who was drawing from a similar pool of voters. Of course, distinctions between Warren voters and Sanders voters exist and will become more apparent over time. But clearly there’s a lot of overlap in their economic message.
After months of diligent work, lots of sweeping policy proposals, and positive coverage from liberal writers, Warren seems to be reclaiming her status among liberals.
