For a year now, Democrats have warned that Joe Biden could implode at any second. The first day of his campaign would be his best, very serious pundits predicted, and the end would come the moment Elizabeth Warren subsumed the Bernie bros and rendered Biden’s best case for his nomination, his perceived electability in both a primary and a general election, entirely moot.
But if you’ve been paying attention to the polls instead of the commentariat, you’d see not only has that not happened, but there’s little indication that Biden is on the verge of tanking and absolutely none that Warren is on the rise. For a single moment nearly two months ago, she surpassed a stagnant Biden in the polls, and she’s fallen back to third place ever since.
Warren’s deterioration hasn’t come from Biden voters, who have dominated around 30% of the Democratic electorate, or from Bernie voters, who’ve held their solid 20% for the entirety of the election. Instead, it’s increasingly come from the slow but steady rise of South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a candidate ideologically sandwiched between the traditional liberalism of Biden and the authoritarian leftism of the remaining lane of the primary. Although less publicized positions like court-packing and third-trimester abortion may make high-information voters balk, on marquee issues such as healthcare and foreign policy, Buttigieg checks all the right boxes for the moderately liberal electorate.
The Buttigieg boom has hurt Warren, whose supporters seem increasingly drawn to what she symbolizes rather than the numerous plans she puts out.
Although Warren has held the same “Medicare for all” and “Green New Deal” stances as Sanders and his socialist company, media sycophants haven’t forced her to flesh out her plans until now. Seeing that Sanders hasn’t sunk despite a campaign trail heart attack and his increasingly vocal support from the activist left, Warren embraced her war on America’s most productive by proposing wealth taxes and demonizing job creators.
And as it turns out, Brentwood trophy moms are less keen to show off their support for Warren when it increasingly means “eat the rich” instead of Hillary-esque “girl power.” That logic always made sense to everyone outside of the Acela corridor, and it’s clear as day in the polls.
Warren has sunk by nearly 10 points since releasing her “Medicare for all” plan and amped up her attacks on wealth creation. She’s lost her Iowa lead to a surging Buttigieg, Biden has maintained an extraordinary lead in South Carolina and Nevada, and her New Hampshire lead is on the wane.
Bernie’s base loves him because he vilifies what makes this country great, not in spite of it. But it’s evident that the rest of the Democratic electorate cares about gay and transgender rights, yet doesn’t love Warren sneering at religious people. They want the government to play a bigger role in healthcare, but not by forcing people off the healthcare they already have and like. They want the rich to pay more taxes, but not when the narrative is about punishing job creation rather than paying for a public safety net.
Furthermore, just as Barack Obama has warned, a softball primary leads to a brutal general election. Even though Hillary Clinton has been enemy number one of the Right for a quarter-century, the media’s sycophancy towards her has left her unchallenged and thus vulnerable in the general election. The press has all but ignored the lies mounting in Warren’s life story, making her ripe for culling at the hands of the RNC.
If Warren can hold on for two months and carry the momentum of a New Hampshire win to surge in other states, it’s not impossible to imagine her making it to the Democratic National Convention. But that’s far from the most likely option, and it’s increasingly clear that her moment is over.
