Fight or unite? Elizabeth Warren’s mixed message complicates her comeback bid
Elizabeth Warren’s New Hampshire primary night speech warned against factional party infighting and presented her as the unifying candidate in the 2020 presidential field.
Forty-eight hours later at a campaign event in Virginia, she took less than two minutes to directly assail Michael Bloomberg, arguing his views on the cause of the 2008 financial crisis essentially disqualify him from becoming the Democratic nominee.
The abrupt messaging whiplash represents the latest challenge for Warren, who now faces the murkiest path to the nomination of all the remaining major contenders. After placing third in Iowa and fourth in New Hampshire, she’s attempted to position herself as a compromise between the progressive and center-left wings of the party.
At the same time, she’s leaned into her populist instinct to elbow her rivals for how they’re funding their campaigns — especially Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor whose nearly unlimited financial largesse has vaulted him into the lead in some Super Tuesday states.
Now as Warren prepares for Wednesday’s final debate before the potentially make-or-break Nevada caucuses, she appears to be openly wrestling with embodying the posture of a fighter or a uniter.
“Her message is complicated now,” said Mike Feldman, a former Democratic consultant who advised Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. “Her policy message got muddled with Medicare for All and her political message is now muddled by underperforming in Iowa and New Hampshire. That’s tough, it’s really hard.”
Warren’s supporters fervently stand by her attacks on Bloomberg, who they view disdainfully as a former Republican attempting to purchase the nomination by his sheer force of wealth. Warren’s competitors, in recent days, have also sharpened their criticism of Bloomberg, who is skipping the first four contests and will first appear on the ballot on March 3.
But many of Warren’s backers are more reticent of the Massachusetts senator aiming her rhetorical fire at the other candidates in the race.
“I think her comments about Mayor Bloomberg are topical to the media he is getting at this time,” said Dorathea Peters, who attended Warren’s event in Arlington, Virginia. “I do not want her criticizing the other Democratic presidential candidates. As she says, we have to come together, and unite.”
As she campaigned in Nevada over the weekend, she didn’t limit her critiques to Bloomberg. Speaking on a bus with reporters, Warren compared her grassroots fundraising appeals to three of her opponents who “headed off to suck up more money from millionaires and billionaires” following the New Hampshire primary, ostensibly referring to Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden and Amy Klobuchar.
“Wall Street money is pouring into the Democratic primary,” Warren said.
After heavy organizational investment and a perpetual drumbeat of her policy plans turned up disappointing finishes in the first two contests, there’s natural pressure to adjust strategies. But the ghosts of attacks past still loom large for Democrats.
“I’m against going after anybody in a multi-headed primary. I think it’s a mistake,” said Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential nominee who suffered from one of the most memorable attacks in history in his race against George H.W. Bush. “I think one of the reasons Kamala Harris’ candidacy died is because she went after Biden.”
Dukakis, who has endorsed Warren’s 2020 bid, said she incurred her most significant downfall when the public perceived a contradictory message on Medicare for All.
“I supported her and I love her dearly and she’s terrific. But I think she messed up the health care thing pretty badly,” Dukakis said. “When you propose a major new program and people say, ‘How are you going to pay for it?’ and you can’t tell them, that’s not good. I don’t know how that happened. She’s usually so thorough, she’s got really good people working for her. They couldn’t answer it.”
Asked if he saw a pathway back for her to capture the nomination, Dukakis replied, “It doesn’t look good.”
Warren’s last debate performance ahead of New Hampshire was forgettable. She passed on confronting Sanders’ democratic socialist ideology and only briefly took aim at Buttigieg for the way he dealt with racial difficulties as mayor of South Bend, Ind.
There is more urgency upon her now, given that both of them have placed ahead of her in two contests. But throughout the campaign, she’s shown reluctance toward engaging Sanders. Even after Warren lobbed arguably the most explosive charge of the primary — accusing Sanders of telling her that a woman could not win the White House in 2020 — she moved quickly to deescalate the feud, declining to discuss the situation any further as the Vermont senator’s most zealous supporters pillared her as a liar.
“She made a decision a long time ago never to go after Sanders and that gave him a free run at the left side of the party. Maybe she will now,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist. But he doubted such a late tactical shift would be effective. “I don’t see what lifts her at this point over him,” Shrum said.
No Democatic candidate has ever come back from third and fourth place finishes in the first two states to win the nomination, so Warren allies rest on the hopes of a marathon slog that could endure through the Democratic National Convention in July.
“This cycle may be the death knell of Iowa and New Hampshire as the early arbiters of political legitimacy in presidential campaigns,” said Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, who endorsed Warren. “She will just need to be patient as the logic of the race reveals itself. I don’t think the electorate has settled down yet to who the strongest candidate to defeat Donald Trump.”
While Warren has redeployed much of her Iowa and New Hampshire staff to states voting on March 3, known as Super Tuesday, a resurrection can’t realistically wait that long, especially given the resources it will take to compete in 16 simultaneous contests. (Warren’s spokespeople did not respond to inquiries regarding her current financial position, though the campaign has indicated it has raised $7 million since Iowa.)
Anything outside of a top three competitive finish in Nevada could end her candidacy in its tracks, Democrats say, given that South Carolina has never been fertile turf for Warren. And then there’s the prospect of whether her home state of Massachusetts, which votes on March 3, would be at risk if she soldiered on winless and without much momentum.
Bloomberg has already hired around 50 staff in Massachusetts with a half dozen offices and constant TV advertising. Many of Warren’s New Hampshire troops have returned to her home state, but that vaunted field organization has yet to prove itself.
“She had a very robust field plan and worked it really hard and people didn’t vote for her. Those people I think are just shellshocked. Everything has kind of gone quiet here,” said Scott Ferson, a Massachusetts Democratic operative. “If she doesn’t do well in Nevada, and she doesn’t do well in South Carolina — if our vote might matter, why would people want to waste their vote?”
This story was originally published February 18, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Fight or unite? Elizabeth Warren’s mixed message complicates her comeback bid."
