On Thursday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., seemed to signal she’s mailing it in on the 2020 presidential election before it’s even started.
Warren told reporters on Thursday that if she won her re-election bid for the U.S Senate seat in Massachusetts in November, she would serve her full six-year term ending in 2024. “Yes, that’s my plan. I’m running for the United States Senate in 2018,” Warren said. “I am not running for president of the United States. That’s my plan.”
If Warren were to run for president in 2020, she would almost immediately have to begin her campaign as soon as he starts her second term. In the 2016 presidential election, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, was the first candidate to announce he’s running and did so in March 2015.
Perhaps Warren realizes that she would be putting her constituents at a disadvantage by not fighting for their interests on Capitol Hill. However, there’s a strong likelihood that Warren understands that the cards would be stacked against her in both the 2020 Democratic primary race and the general election, if she were to win the nomination.
While there hasn’t been an abundance of polling on a hypothetical Trump-Warren matchup, polls as recent as August 2017 suggest Warren would be a formidable opponent in the “blue wall” states that Hillary Clinton lost in the 2016 election. However, according to a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll conducted in January, Warren found herself in the middle of the pack in the Democratic primary in which she trailed leader former Vice President Joe Biden by 17 points. She also trailed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Hillary Clinton, and Oprah Winfrey.
Maybe we should be giving Warren credit over her decision to serve her full term, if re-elected for the Senate. She’s exhibiting she has some level of foresight that the path to the presidency for her will be more turbulent than many of her optimistic supporters would be blind to see. In fact, Warren may have a quality that some Democrats wished Hillary Clinton had when she decided to run for president in 2016. If it’s not your time to run, then it’s best to move out of the way.
At least Sen. Warren has that going for her.
