EXETER, New Hampshire — Elizabeth Warren’s once promising presidential campaign is at risk of flatlining in New Hampshire, and the Massachusetts senator knows it.
“You know what we need for president? Someone who’s been winning unwinnable fights all her life!” she said in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, during her final rally Monday night ahead of Tuesday’s 2020 Democratic primary.
Warren, 70, the candidate who brags about having “a plan for that,” has struggled to regain her summer momentum in polling and fundraising after releasing a costly proposal for her version of “Medicare for all” that raised more questions than it answered.
Her closing argument in Iowa, pitching herself in her Oklahoma twang as the unity candidate between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, didn’t resonate. And her once-daunting ground game didn’t bare its teeth, leaving her in a distant third behind chief rivals Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. She’s competing with the pair for liberal and college-educated voters, respectively.
Now, Warren faces a likely third or worst finish in New Hampshire, which shares a border with her home state. No Democrat has become the party’s standard-bearer after losing the first two contests, and she hasn’t, generally speaking, connected with minority voters in other early nominating states like South Carolina.
In the intervening week between Iowa and New Hampshire, she hasn’t had any luck in jump-starting her stalling White House bid, even with an uptick in rare national TV interviews.
Her campaign was rocked last week by a report into an exodus of aides in Nevada over complaints of a noninclusive work environment, jarring with Warren’s “Dream Big, Fight Hard” for all working people motto. The champion high school and college debater also failed to deliver a standout performance at last Friday’s debate despite strong showings in the past.
“I know that you all want to talk about process, and I get it: We’re coming down to the line. But we still have 90% of the delegates to choose,” she told reporters Monday. “I built this campaign to go for the long run.”
Some New Hampshire voters, such as Lisa Morris, 53, of Salem and Debbie Lane, 60, of Hudson, whom the Washington Examiner met at a Warren rally in Derry last week, said they were drawn to the senator’s energy and ideas. Yet others are not.
“My feeling is that as soon as she went a little bit more Left and talked about everybody on government healthcare that she went a step too far,” Joanna Pellerin, 81, said at a Klobuchar rally in Exeter.
The local retired teacher and Biden supporter added, “I think her demeanor puts people off because she’s so intense. I can’t take that in the Oval Office.”
Amy Teas, 41, a Klobuchar fan, agreed that Warren was “too extreme” for her and her friends.
“In general, the state of New Hampshire does not consider themselves much like the state of Massachusetts,” a local stay-at-home mother and former banker said at a Klobuchar event in Nashua. “I think New Hampshire and Vermont seem to find more common ground in terms of lifestyle. Massachusetts lifestyles, I think, is what separates us.”
Warren averages 11% support in New Hampshire, tying with Biden for third place, according to RealClearPolitics data. The two trail Sanders, who has 28.7% of the vote, and Buttigieg, who has 21.3%.
