Or, longer title if DKos allowed more characters:
I think I Finally Understand Elizabeth Warren’s Strategy to Deal with Bernie Sanders as a Major Competitor for the Democratic Nomination
While Warren isn’t among my current top two candidate choices, I doubt anyone could make a credible case that another candidate has run a better campaign thus far. If you can make a case, let me know and I’ll happily ponder it. After stumbling a bit initially with the ancestry thing, from what I’ve observed, her campaign has been about flawless.
If you’ve read some of my comments here, you may have noted that I’ve essentially derided what has been called a “non-aggression” pact between Warren and Sanders. To me, it’s been kind of a “let’s bury our heads in the sand and pretend there is not now, nor will there ever be, a conflict between our two campaigns.” Almost as if they think they can both win if neither attacks the other.
That’s admittedly a silly thought on my part, but logic suggests that someday, unless one of them improbably drops out soon, and knowing they both truly want a progressive to be the nominee, there will have to be a showdown between them for the nomination. So why not just “have it out now”?
I think I finally understand Warren’s strategy to deal with this and it’s essentially that she believes that, with time, there will be a natural movement of progressives away from Bernie and toward her.
Recent trends in the RealClearPolitic’s rolling average poll-of-polls show she is definitely on the upswing (and presently in second place and ahead of Bernie). While Sanders is currently at about the 17%-ish average, he was at that same point at the end of June and since then, Warren’s trajectory has been to move past Bernie.
I don’t think she’s being condescending toward Sanders, but I think she believes (as I do) that there is almost no way that Sanders is going to be the 2020 nominee (see next paragraph), so it’s best to not alienate his current supporters and instead just plod along week after week, gaining in the polls and in the media narrative, while Sanders kind of trends in the opposite direction.
(Why I think there’s almost no chance Sanders will be the nominee, and I believe Warren also knows this: (i) It’s almost unimaginable that Bernie will win a majority of the Pledged Delegates during the individual primary and caucus events; and (ii) if no one else wins a majority of Pledged Delegates during the individual contests, and the convention is brokered, it’s also pretty unimaginable that Bernie would end up the consensus candidate (indeed he’d be one of the least likely consensus candidates).)
In other words, for Warren, there’s a lot more to be gained by “playing nice” with Sanders and just letting what she sees as the inevitable happen. She’s kind of “Bernie without the baggage”. Given their positions on key issues probably are about 90 percent the same, why choose Bernie when you can choose Elizabeth?
I suspect Team Sanders would answer that by saying that Bernie would do better in what were the key battleground states that decided the 2016 election (WI, MI, and PA)…..but if that’s the Sanders team’s rejoinder, how do they explain then that Biden would do even better in those states than Bernie would?
So I think I’d describe Warren’s 2020 strategy in the tortoise and the hare context as clearly taking the tortoise approach: slowly but surely moving along, all the while in an upward direction, not attacking her opponents, while everyone comes around to the realization that she is the better choice than Sanders (and everyone else)….and believing that even the “establishment” is going to realize this.