Sen. Elizabeth Warren is facing mounting hurdles as she considers a potential 2020 presidential bid.
The Massachusetts Democrat’s political fortunes are still reeling from her release two months ago of DNA test results, aimed as a pre-2020 pre-emptive strike against President Trump and others that have raised doubts about her claims of Native American heritage.
The results, however, indicated that she had a minuscule percentage of Native American decent, if any. Warren is now privately expressing concerns with advisers over damage to her relationship with the Native American community, The New York Times reported.
Advisers also told the Times that they are worried about her standing with progressive activists, who play an outsize role in deciding Democratic presidential nominations.
[Read more: 2020: Trump 7-5 fave to win re-election, Biden soaring, Warren dropping]
Warren’s challenge grew in urgency Thursday when the Boston Globe published an editorial suggesting in 2016 she squandered her most promising chance to run for president. The publication, the most prominent paper in Massachusetts, in 2015 urged her to run for president, “in part because of the lack of serious competition against Hillary Clinton,” the eventual Democratic nominee who lost to President Trump in one of the biggest upsets in American political history.
“Warren missed her moment in 2016, and there’s reason to be skeptical of her prospective candidacy in 2020,” the Globe wrote. “While Warren won re-election, her margin of victory in November suggests there’s a ceiling on her popularity.” Republican Gov. Charlie Baker “garnered more votes than she did in a state that is supposed to be a Democratic haven,” the editorial said.
