As Yogi Berra said, it’s difficult to make predictions — particularly about the future. But Elizabeth Warren has announced her candidacy for president (and has by all accounts had a highly successful first foray into Iowa), which means that opinion writers feel compelled to opine. In advance, my apologies. Here goes.
Warren is smart, progressive, inclusive, and principled, and she carries with her a dignity that befits the office of president. Her cred on domestic economic issues is unassailable, and her membership on the Senate Armed Services Committee gives her foreign and military policy gravitas as well. In addition, she has assembled a marquee-level organization of fundraisers, social media gurus, and early state organizers.
But her candidacy makes me worry. A lot. Because if she were to win the Democratic nomination, I fear that she could lose to Donald Trump (or to a ticket of Mike Pence and Nikki Haley should Trump resign or be removed from office).
Warren’s candidacy will be formidable, and the new front-loaded-with-delegates schedule of primaries increases her odds of winning. The Iowa caucuses are scheduled for Feb. 3, 2020 and the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 11. Feb. 22 is the date for the Nevada caucus, and Feb. 29 for the South Carolina primary.
Three days later, on March 3, only one month after the Iowa caucuses, nine states — California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont, Alabama and Oklahoma – will hold their primaries, which means that the race for the Democratic nomination could be decided by that date or certainly by March 10, the date of the Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Mississippi, and Idaho primaries and the Hawaii caucus.
Before going too far down this path, let’s first admit that everything here is conjecture and pause to consider a diametrically opposite possibility: at the Democratic Convention no candidate has enough votes to win on the first ballot. Under the new rules, super delegates (delegates by virtue of their elected position or status as a party dignitary) are prohibited from voting on the first ballot but not after that, which means that the Democratic ticket could be picked in a smokeless smoke-filled room. Can you say, for example, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?
But let’s assume that the primaries and caucuses do in fact select the candidate. The Democratic primary season, as a practical matter, could take less than half as long as spring training for major league baseball, which is not much time to test and evaluate the person to whom you would entrust the fate of the nation.
The schedule probably helps Warren. As the first household-name Democrat to begin her campaign, her head-start helps. In addition, she has a core of progressive supporters in Iowa where the number of Democrats in the race could make the candidate who wins a plurality a big winner. Then Warren will enjoy a significant advantage in our neighboring state of New Hampshire. Early wins backed by a successful fundraising apparatus could move her into the presumptive front-runner position and ultimately assure her the nomination.
Warren will need to overcome the impression of her (unjustified, in my judgment) among some voters that she is an out-of-touch Massachusetts liberal. (Let’s reflect for just a moment on the political careers of John Kerry, Michael Dukakis and Ted Kennedy, all of whom I think would have had successful presidencies if they had won. But lest anyone need reminding, they didn’t.)
That task will not be easy. The negatives on Warren are already deeply baked into the electoral pie, with the elitism of her Harvard Law School professorship – at present anyway – overshadowing the dignity of her working class roots.
I am not making an argument in favor of electability as the overriding criterion for determining who should be the Democratic nominee. Far more important than a guess about electability 20 months before the election is a candidate’s characteristics such as decency, intelligence, reservoir of knowledge, authenticity and, importantly, the ability to inspire as, for example, Bobby Kennedy did. The candidate should have a keen sense of life as it is lived by the not super rich, not straight, not male, and not white. Warren checks many of the boxes.
But there is something far more important for the future of democracy (or not) in America than the possibility of electing Elizabeth Warren president. It’s denying Trump a second term, rejecting his dystopian future and ending what conservative columnist David Brooks recently warned is the impending kakistocracy – a system of government run by a country’s worst and most unscrupulous citizens.
Trump is counting on voter suppression, his powerful propaganda machine (to gin up racism and fear), and an outdated Electoral College system to keep him and his corporate cronies in power. Those institutions, processes and persons will come to his aid, which means, as a practical matter, that the American people must reject Trump emphatically enough for Republican elected officials and Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices to accept the verdict that Trump has lost.
Do remember that the Supreme Court in 2000 invented a rationale (that the court cautioned should never be used again) to install George W. Bush president over Al Gore. There’s little reason to believe that the present Supreme Court would be any more honest or principled if called upon to decide the winner of the 2020 Presidential election. In sum, the Democratic candidate will not only need to win, she will need to be the choice of a large majority.
Sadly, my guess is (let’s be honest, we are all guessing at this point) Warren vs. Trump likely would be close.
Although his policies on the environment, the economy and health insurance coverage inflict enormous damage on the people he purports to represent, his inflammatory words matter more, and his lies are accepted as truth.
Hatred and fear of “the other” are powerful forces that bind the Trump base together, to say nothing of the many Evangelicals who believe he is an instrument of God. His supporters will never leave him, and they will come out and vote unless and until the economy tanks.
Whether Elizabeth Warren could make a great president counts as an important consideration, but the other and more pressing question for me is whether she can become a superb general election candidate. That is not a given. And we haven’t yet spoken of hacked voting machines, dark money, Republican disinformation campaigns, and Russian bots.
Bill Newman, a Northampton lawyer, hosts a daily radio show on WHMP and is the author of Life on the Co-op Plan.