Sen. Elizabeth Warren is not a viable candidate to win the Democratic presidential nomination outright. The Massachusetts Democrat has suffered humiliating losses in early primary contests and even lost the primary in her neighboring state of New Hampshire. She’s about to get crushed again, this time in South Carolina. Yet it’s still entirely possible Warren could end up the Democratic nominee.
So what exactly is Warren’s path to the nomination? A brokered convention, where establishment Democrats and the activist base settle for her as a compromise candidate. This may be why Warren isn’t dropping out.
Over the weekend, she held a campaign rally in Washington, a state which votes a week after Super Tuesday. This indicates she’s planning to stay in it for the long-haul, even if she’s losing. Warren will pick up some delegates on March 3, but not nearly enough to catch up to Sen. Bernie Sanders, a candidate she showed reluctance to criticize during the Las Vegas debate. Instead, she turned her attention to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Warren viciously and effectively took down Bloomberg’s sexism, clearly knocking him out on stage, and likely helping to stall his momentum nationally. Her performance no doubt hurt Bloomberg, but did it help her?
Conventional wisdom suggests Warren would appeal to the same voters the Sanders campaign is after. They’re both far to the left, traffic in the same talking point that the economy is rigged against working people, and appeal to voters with painfully transparent virtue signaling. And their crowds show younger, white liberals forming the base of their support. But conventional wisdom may be wrong.
There was a small moment on the Las Vegas debate stage that happened almost in passing. It may actually reveal the Warren strategy.
NBC moderator Chuck Todd noted to Warren that “you went out of your way to call yourself a capitalist …” Warren responded, mid-question, “Yes, because I am.” She then pivoted to attack Bloomberg once again.
Toward the end of the debate, Warren joined the others on the stage, except Sanders, in pledging to use the Democratic National Convention’s rules to pick the nominee. She would not abide by Sanders’s request to give the nomination to whichever candidate has the most delegates even if that candidate is short of the required 1,991 to win the nomination outright.
This very well may be Warren’s play at the nomination.
Warren’s rally in Washington suggests she’s looking at the long-game and likely won’t ditch the campaign after Super Tuesday. There’s a growing belief that the Democratic convention will be brokered, with Sanders with a clear delegate lead but not able to win outright. And while Bloomberg is quietly navigating his brokered convention strategy, Warren appears to be setting herself up as the compromise candidate.
Warren calls herself a capitalist not to brag about her beliefs — she’s hardly a traditional capitalist, if you believe her — but to differentiate herself from Sanders. He owns the socialist identity proudly. It’s exactly why establishment Democrats don’t want him as the nominee: An open socialist won’t become president and can’t beat President Trump given the realities of the Electoral College map.
And Warren is attacking Bloomberg to maintain her activist support among a left-wing base who views wealth as a fatal flaw in a candidate. If Sanders doesn’t have 1,991 delegates, Warren can come to the rescue!
She’ll save the party, and the Democrats’ chances of winning the White House, by appealing to both the establishment and the activist base. She’ll argue she’s not as far to the left as Sanders: She’s a capitalist, after all, and that should placate some in the establishment. But Warren is also uber-woke and anti-wealth, with an activist-friendly plan to tax the evil “1%” while also talking the liberal talk on healthcare. She can placate some in the activist class without totally isolating the establishment and moderate Democrats.
Is this strategy perfect? Far from it. Warren risks being seen as just as far to the left as Sanders, only with a less authentic personality. And there will be plenty of Bernie Bros who loathe her for calling them out and for “betraying” Sanders.
But, if the liberal activists won’t turn out for Bloomberg and the establishment won’t back a socialist such as Sanders, Warren could make a compelling argument that the Democratic Party ought to settle for her.
Jason Rantz (@jasonrantz) is a Seattle-based talk show host on KTTH 770 AM and a regular guest on Fox News. He is a contributor to the Washington Examiner‘s Beltway Confidential blog.
