Elizabeth Warren, the most prominent female candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential field, is ending her “dream big, fight hard” campaign.
On Thursday, the Massachusetts senator will reportedly tell her staff in a call that she is dropping out of the race and deliver a public announcement later in the day.
The Massachusetts senator, 70, staked her candidacy on broad left-wing proposals such as a wealth tax on millionaires and billionaires, breaking up Big Tech companies, and forgiving student loan debt. Her plethora of policy proposals led to “I have a plan for that” being a signature rallying cry, and she spent hours taking photos with any person who wanted one after campaign rallies, resulting in more than 100,000 selfies.
After poor performances in early states — she came in third in Iowa’s caucuses, fourth in the New Hampshire and Nevada caucuses, and fifth in South Carolina — Warren’s campaign insisted that she still had a path to the nomination.
Her exit from the race comes after she fell flat in Super Tuesday states. Warren failed to win her home state of Massachusetts, or any state contest, and was on track to be hundreds of nominating delegates behind Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden.
Billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who Warren skewered on February debate stages in part by attacking him for allegations of inappropriate comments toward women, also dropped out of the race following a poor Super Tuesday performance.
Warren surged in early state and national primary polls through late summer and early fall, with many thinking she could replace Sanders as a more palatable left-wing candidate. But her support and fundraising took a dive in the winter, leaving her scrambling to remain a force in early nominating contests.
Warren long refused to say whether her desired “Medicare for all” government-funded healthcare system would raise middle-class taxes, even though Medicare for All bill author Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, 78, conceded that taxes would go up while overall healthcare costs would go down. Most outside estimates said the bill would cost about $32 trillion in additional spending over 10 years.
She eventually released a plan that estimated the cost of the program at $20.5 trillion and would be funded without raising taxes on middle-class families in part by implementing a $9 trillion tax on employers.
Questions surrounding Warren’s honesty about her personal history plagued her campaign.
A DNA test Warren released in fall 2018 in an attempt to put an end to questions about her claims to Native American ancestry backfired, and she repeatedly apologized for identifying herself as a minority. Warren told a story in stump speeches about being fired from a teaching job at 22 for being “visibly pregnant,” but records revealed in October said that she resigned from that post. In November, Warren asserted that her children went to public school, but her son spent at least one year at a private school.
