The clearest sign yet that the Warren campaign is dead in the water

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s 2020 Democratic primary candidacy is toast.

The Massachusetts lawmaker’s fundraising woes are evident, as is her collapse in the polls.

What many people probably have not noticed, however, is that she is also quietly trying to bury her signature domestic policy proposal: “Medicare for all,” an absurd multitrillion-dollar program that would require funding not even she can explain.

“Warren herself is barely speaking of the proposal,” the New York Times reported this week in an article titled, “Elizabeth Warren isn’t talking much about ‘medicare for all’ anymore.”

“After months of attacks from other candidates, and questions and some blowback from both liberals and moderates,” the New York Times reports, “[Medicare for all] is just a passing mention in her standard stump speech, rarely explored in depth unless a questioner brings it up.”

This is not the behavior of a campaign confident of winning the nomination. This is the behavior of a campaign so desperate as to shelve its key policy proposal.

“Medicare for all” has arguably done more damage to Warren’s polling and credibility than any other falsehood she has told, including the one about her supposed Native American heritage. After all, Warren’s numbers took a nosedive right after she released her “Medicare for all” plan and an absurd policy paper explaining how she plans to “fund” it. Her polling continued to hemorrhage when she declined during subsequent Democratic debates to address the specifics.

Warren’s campaign clearly believes her healthcare proposal is poison. But it is equally poisonous to pretend it doesn’t exist. Warren is supposed to be the fearless ideas candidate — she persists, and she has a plan for everything. Her actions now suggest otherwise.

Rather than promote her signature healthcare proposal in the weeks before the Iowa caucuses, Warren is focusing instead on a broader, generic message of fighting corruption in Washington. Amusingly, her aides claim that this was always her focus.

“Her campaign aides insist that fighting corruption has always been the message, and Ms. Warren has long argued that, more than any individual proposal, her suite of plans is rooted in an overarching vision of changing how Washington works, including reforms in campaign finance and lobbying,” the New York Times report reads.

Down the memory hole with all those big ideas. Gone now is the candidate who was roundly applauded during the first debate for scolding former Maryland Congressman John Delaney for his moderation: “I don’t understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for the president of the United States just to talk about what we really can’t do and shouldn’t fight for. I don’t get it.”

The truth of it, the New York Times reports, is that “Ms. Warren has not become fully comfortable with staking her candidacy on her plan for health care, even as many Democrats cite the issue as their top priority.”

The Warren campaign is near its end. You don’t shelve your key policy proposal because you are confident of victory.

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