MANCHESTER, New Hampshire — With doubts percolating regarding its viability, the Warren campaign claims it still has a plausible path to the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
Campaign Manager Roger Lau laid out his team’s preparations for a “drawn-out contest” in a memo to supporters Tuesday afternoon, hinting that the Massachusetts senator is expecting to take a hit in the New Hampshire primary when results are released later in the evening.
Elizabeth Warren, 70, “is the consensus choice of the widest coalition of Democrats in every corner of the country,” according to Lau. He failed to name a state the White House hopeful can win, instead relying on delegate math.
Moving past Nevada and South Carolina, Lau cited internal data showing Warren can reach at least 15% support across about two-thirds of the Super Tuesday map, which comprises 14 states that vote on March 3. By reaching that threshold, he argues, she stands a chance of winning large swathes of the delegates available at a congressional level in 108 districts across the country.
“Warren is poised to finish in the top two in over half of Super Tuesday states (eight of 14), in the top three in all of them, and is on pace to pick up at-large statewide delegates in all but one,” he wrote, adding that only Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden were on track to remain viable, discounting Pete Buttigieg and Michael Bloomberg’s chances.
Lau, the first Asian American to be named campaign manager of a presidential bid, also compensated for his candidate, who rarely criticizes her rivals, by peppering the memo with digs at her opponents.
“Sen. Sanders starts with a ceiling that’s significantly lower than the support he had four years ago,” he wrote. He also alluded to the possibility that Biden’s base of older and black voters “collapses before South Carolina and Super Tuesday.”
He continued, “Former Mayor Buttigieg’s most significant challenge is yet to come, as the contest moves into states with more diverse electorates, and he still hasn’t answered tough questions about his record in South Bend.”
The Warren memo is another move by her organization to dampen expectations ahead of polls closing in New Hampshire after a disappointing, distant third-place finish in Iowa behind Sanders and Buttigieg.
“You know what we need for president? Someone who’s been winning unwinnable fights all her life!” she said during her final rally Monday night.
The preemptive strike coincides with Biden announcing he was leaving the state to drop into South Carolina before traveling to Nevada for the first-in-the-West caucuses on Feb. 22.
[Read more: Klobuchar leapfrogs over Biden and Warren in two New Hampshire polls]
