As Yogi Berra said, it’s difficult to make predictions — particularly about the future. But Elizabeth Warren has announced her candidacy for president, which means that opinion writers feel compelled to opine. In advance, my apologies. Here goes.
Elizabeth Warren is smart, progressive, inclusive and principled, and she carries with her a dignity that befits the office of the 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 fills me with trepidation. 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 is a formidable primary candidate, and the new and truncated schedule of primaries increases her chances. 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.
On March 3, one month after the Iowa caucus, nine states — California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Virginia, Oklahoma, Texas, Vermont, Alabama and Oklahoma — have 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 admit that all of this 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, superdelegates (delegates by virtue of their elected position or being 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 Joe Biden and Kamala Harris?
But let’s assume that the primaries and caucuses do in fact select the candidate. The Democratic primary season is 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 plays to Warren’s strengths. She has a core of progressive supporters in Iowa where the number of candidates may make the candidate who wins a plurality a big winner. She will then 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.
Sen. Warren is the first household-name Democrat to announce her candidacy (Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Maryland Congressman John Delaney are also already in this race). There is an impression of her (unjustified, in my judgment) among a substantial percentage of voters that she is an out-of-touch Massachusetts liberal — another John Kerry, Michael Dukakis or Ted Kennedy, all of whom I think would have had successful presidencies, had they won. But lest anyone need reminding, they didn’t. And the negatives on Warren are already deeply baked into the electoral pie with the elitism of her Harvard Law School professorship — at least for now — overshadowing her working-class roots.
For me, there is something far more important for the future of democracy (or not) in America than electing Elizabeth Warren president. It’s denying Trump a second term and his dystopian future and ending what conservative columnist David Brooks recently warned is the impending kakistocracy. A kakistocracy is a system of government run by a country’s worst and most unscrupulous citizens.
Trump is counting on voter suppression, his powerful propaganda machine and an outdated Electoral College system to keep him and his corporate cronies in power. Those institutions 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 select 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 (let’s be honest, we are all guessing at this point) is that Warren vs. Trump likely would be close. Today, around 40 percent of Americans still approve of Trump, including 88 percent of Republicans. Although his policies on the environment, the economy and health insurance coverage inflict enormous damage on the people whom 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 those 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 would make a great president is not the point. The relevant question is whether she can become a superb general election candidate. In 2020, the odds are against her. 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.”