Warren makes her move

For Warren to make a serious run at the nomination, she will have to stake out ideological ground between Biden and Sanders while attracting the supporters of the candidates in the rear of the field once they drop out. According to Morning Consult, the second choice for Biden supporters is Sanders, and vice-versa. Among Harris and Buttigieg supporters, Warren is their next choice.

Biden represents what can now be called the “moderate” wing of the Democratic Party. Considering Biden’s ideology is rooted in Obama-era policies and politics, it’s amusing that he’s regarded as the moderate among the top-tier candidates in the race. He also holds the honor, as of now, of having a better chance of beating President Trump in the general election since Biden is more “electable” than his counterparts. Jill Biden, during an August campaign stop in New Hampshire, said, “I know that not all of you are committed to my husband, and I respect that, but I want you to think about your candidate, his or her electability, and who’s going to win this race.”

The former vice president also gets a good deal of his support from African American primary voters, holding on to nearly 39% in the latest Morning Consult primary data.

Sanders remains a solid contender. With a very enthusiastic base, a campaign infrastructure maintained from his 2016 run, and uncompromising positions, he’s the anti-establishment candidate he was in 2016. While Biden has a steady lead among Democrats with black voters, Sanders is second with over 21% support. Added to Biden’s total, the two of them command 60% support among black Democratic primary voters.

Biden and Sanders, however, represent two competing visions of the Democratic Party, especially as it relates to defeating Trump. Biden sees the 2020 election as one in which the country can return to a sense of normalcy. When he first announced his candidacy, Biden said of Trump, “I believe history will look back on four years of this president and all he embraces as an aberrant moment in time.”

Sanders, on the other hand, believes the entire system should get upended, and the problems he wants to fix were in place long before Trump set foot inside the White House. When Sanders launched his 2020 campaign, he said, “Make no mistake about it, this struggle is not just about defeating Donald Trump. This struggle is about taking on the incredibly powerful institutions that control the economic and political life of this country.”

All of it presents a quandary for Warren. She does, however, have some things going in her favor. She’s drawing large, boisterous crowds to her events. In August, she attracted a crowd of 12,000 in St. Paul, Minnesota, and another 15,000 at an event in Seattle. At a recent campaign event in New Hampshire, Warren couldn’t speak for the first five minutes as the crowd of 5,000 chanted her name.

Warren, as the highest polling female candidate, also attracts a lot of favorable press coverage. The “first woman president” narrative is likely to resurface in the coming months as the Iowa caucuses draw closer. The narrative of a woman beating out two men for the presidential nomination will be too irresistible for many in the media to pass up.

As for age, Sanders just turned 78 and Biden will be 77 in November. Warren, despite celebrating her 70th birthday in June, appears to have a buoyancy and energy not exhibited by the other two. Videos show Warren literally running during campaign events, and she routinely electrifies campaign events when she speaks. (According to the New York Times, Warren set a goal of walking/running six miles a day on her Fitbit.)

But the boisterous crowds, energy, and media fascination with elevating a female candidate won’t be enough. Warren will require more to separate herself from Biden and Sanders.

At first glance, Warren and Sanders don’t appear to be all that different ideologically, and it’s fair to say they both have put forth radical policies they claim will help “working Americans” at the expense of the rich but will more likely increase the size and scope of the federal government, as the programs they’re proposing will cost trillions of dollars to operate.

Warren claims she’s a capitalist and said so to differentiate herself from Sanders. Others have agreed with that distinction. In an interview with Vox, political scientist Sheri Berman said, “Both Sanders and Warren have put forth a slew of policies [that] a couple of election cycles ago would have been seen [as] just far ahead of where the Democratic Party was. If you believe in capitalism and you believe it has gone a little off the rails in the last generation, but it remains the best system to maintain economic growth and democracy, then Warren is the better candidate for you.” Zaid Jilani, writing in the left-wing publication Jacobin, wrote, “When Warren says that the primary difference between Sanders and herself is that she’s a proponent of capitalism, it’s not just rhetoric. Her life’s work has been to make markets more competitive and equitable, not to redistribute money from the rich to the poor and remove big chunks of economic life from the private sector.”

Such an approach by Warren might work to differentiate her from Sanders, but on closer inspection, Warren occasionally veers into territory that even Sanders doesn’t tread. For example, on Sept. 6, Warren tweeted the following: “On my first day as president, I will sign an executive order that puts a total moratorium on all new fossil fuel leases for drilling offshore and on public lands. And I will ban fracking—everywhere.”

It’s doubtful a President Warren would have the authority to implement such an executive order, and neither does it take into consideration the harm it would do to the economies of states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, which have benefited from the technology. Sanders, unlike some of his Democratic counterparts, is not promising to exert executive power to implement policies that are the proper province of Congress. Warren also supports direct payments for reparations and would encourage Democrats, if they take over the Senate, to do away with the filibuster in its entirety.

Warren can say she’s a capitalist all she wants, but her ideas on fracking, as well as her proposed wealth tax on net worth as opposed to income, will make it difficult for her to appeal to Biden’s voters. Biden more than anything else is selling himself as a candidate who will return political normalcy to America. Biden promises no early-morning tweetstorms, and he won’t pick fights with every person who slights him. During his presidential campaign announcement, he said, “The American people want their government to work, and I don’t think that’s too much for them to ask. I know some people in D.C. say it can’t be done. But let me tell them something, and make sure they understand this — The country is sick of the division. They’re sick of the fighting. They’re sick of the childish behavior.”

Under pressure to prove his wokeness among fellow Democratic presidential candidates, Biden’s “moderation” on policy has also taken a hit. After supporting the Hyde Amendment (which bans federal dollars from being spent on abortions) since its inception, he now opposes it. Biden was an ardent defender of Obamacare, and while he rejected the Medicare For All scheme, he says he wants to add a “public option” to the Affordable Care Act. Biden was a major player in getting the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact passed but now says he’d “renegotiate” before signing on. What he’d renegotiate is anyone’s guess. More likely, the Democratic base, not unlike its Republican counterpart, has soured on free trade and globalization.

Warren, on the other hand, publicly expressed support for Medicare For All, though she’s lately attempted to downplay it. Warren’s abortion policies mirror the radicalism of a few left-wing state laws passed in recent years, with her calling for legislation that guarantees the right to an abortion in federal law in case the Supreme Court ever overturns Roe v. Wade. Her trade policies come with restrictive preconditions so onerous that CNN recently confirmed that under such conditions, the United States would not have the authority to enter into a trade agreement with Germany.

It’s a fine line for Warren to walk. She has to sell herself as a more progressive choice than Biden, willing to embrace radical proposals such as the Green New Deal and Medicare For All. She must make the case that Biden represents the Democratic Party of yesteryear, timid and unwilling to fully confront its mistakes, and that she represents a new vision, one that will really take on big banks, big business, and even big tech, to the benefit of the average citizen.

At the same time, she has to convince people she’s not interested in the kind of cultural revolution they might receive from Sanders. While Warren sees banks and corporations as exerting too much power in the public sphere, Sanders considers the entire system at fault, and that includes elected officials as well as those on the business side looking to use its influence.

The flame-out of Beto O’Rourke and Buttigieg, the slow descent of Harris, and the last gasp of the 1% to 2% candidates all allowed Warren to move into a tie with Sanders and within striking distance of Biden. The three of them shared a debate stage for the first time this campaign season as this issue went to press, and the next debate is scheduled for Oct. 15. Depending on the moderators and the questions asked, Warren will have the opportunity to make the case that she represents the best choice among Democrats to take on Trump in the general election.

Whether or not she’s able to do that will depend heavily on how well she overcomes the difficulty of having to sell her ideas and herself to a Democratic primary voting public that, right now, seems more comfortable with Biden or Sanders at the top of the Democratic ticket.

Warren is trying to make the case that she’s no moderate but still represents the middle ground. If she can do it successfully, she’ll be tough to beat. But for now, she’s on the highwire without a net.

Jay Caruso is a deputy editor for the Washington Examiner Magazine.