To me, that's where the current front-runner for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders, continues to fall short. Despite winning the popular vote in both Iowa and New Hampshire and demonstrating some appeal among voters of color in the polls, Sanders still hasn't lived up to his promise of turning out an army of young people and other nontraditional voters to propel Democrats to victory in the fall. Sanders' promise has been that by inspiring nontraditional voters to turn out in droves, he can beat Trump without getting overly concerned about appealing to disaffected conservatives and other voters looking for an alternative to Trump. But he has yet to deliver on that promise and has underperformed in both Iowa and New Hampshire according to the expectations his own campaign set. In Iowa, he predicted huge '08-level turnout that never materialized and found himself struggling to make the case that he had won. In New Hampshire, where turnout exceeded 2016 levels, Sanders just barely edged out Pete Buttigieg for first by little more than one point after absolutely clobbering Hillary Clinton there in '16, 60%-38%. Sure, there's more people in the race, but that night was custom-made for Bernie and he underperformed again. As the Washington Post writes:

The share of Democratic voters ages 18 to 29 dropped from 2016. And [Cook Political Report's Dave] Wasserman observed that turnout increased by higher percentages in areas where Buttigieg and third-place finisher Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.) won than they did in Sanders's towns. This suggested the overall increase in turnout was likely attributable to GOP-leaning independents who opted to vote in the Democratic primary, rather than Sanders bringing out new voters.

So even though Sanders has more delegates and arguably more momentum than any other Democrat in the field, his electability argument for beating Trump has not held up. In fact, so far, Sanders has not demonstrably broadened his coalition beyond where it was in 2016. The loyalty of his core of supporters runs deep, which makes him a good-enough candidate in a crowded field but doesn't necessarily make him a formidable candidate in a two-way race. In short, Bernie may ultimately win the war of attrition, but this isn't the stuff of a revolution.

I also personally believe that Bernie is Trump's dream opponent, which is why Republicans have consistently tried to rile his base supporters into believing establishment Democrats are treating him unfairly. As GOP strategist and anti-Trumper Rick Wilson observed on MSNBC Friday, looking out across the field, Republicans absolutely want to run against the actual socialist who’s had recent health problems and plans, above all else, to take away people's private health insurance. That's a whole bunch of scary stuff teed up for Trump and the GOP. And I’m not saying any of that is fair, but it does appear to be the match up Republicans want most in the general election.

The problem for the other Democrats right now is that, while Sanders hasn't exactly closed the deal yet, they are dividing the rest of the pie up amongst themselves. In fact, some three-quarters of the Democratic electorate still prefers some other candidate to Bernie. Analysts have generally thought of these divisions in terms of lanes, with Sanders and Warren in the liberal lane; Buttigieg, Vice President Joe Biden, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the moderate lane; and Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer in the "billionaires buy elections" lane. I say that last part only half facetiously because, while Bloomberg in particular is now running third nationally, it's not yet clear that he has any ideological pull among Democratic voters other than his ability to flood the zone with billions if he's the nominee. That idea alone may appeal to some voters who are absolutely desperate to unseat Trump, but the more I think about it, the more it turns my stomach. If Bloomberg were to win the nomination and take on Trump, our presidential elections would be forever changed into a billionaire showdown every four years.

Where Warren comes in is that she is the only candidate who can bridge the divides of the party. If she were to be nominated, she could excite the widest swath of Democratic voters, leaving no single bloc with the burden of holding their nose at the voting booth. This isn't just my opinion, it has bore out in polling metric after polling metric (some of which I've written about before). But in brief, Warren has twice won a polling question that asked, if you could wave a magic wand and nominate anyone in the Democratic field, who would it be? Warren was the top pick in both June 2019 and January 2020, the only two times the question was asked.

Earlier this week Warren also topped a Quinnipiac poll showing that she would draw more Democratic votes than anyone else in the field in a head-to-head with Trump. Most other candidates were mere points away from her but the takeaway isn't that she absolutely dusts everyone else. The takeaway is that voters have talked themselves into the idea that a woman can't win against Trump, or is somehow unelectable. That fear-based bill of goods has harmed Warren's candidacy more than anyone else in the field, and frankly, it's an absolute shame so many voters let it dissuade them from voting their heart.

The latest poll demonstrating the breadth of Warren's appeal is one that pitted each Democratic candidate against Sanders, the current frontrunner. Warren is really the only other Democratic candidate who rivals Bernie for the affections of Democratic primary voters. She's not only within two points of him (42% Warren to 44% Sanders), she puts the most undecided votes in play at 14%.

That's a particularly interesting finding because it shows Warren's ability to draw a coalition of support that includes both moderates and liberals, since Sanders has shored up more of the liberal vote by now. Warren is also better suited for the general election particularly because she doesn't identify as a socialist. Whoever the nominee is, Republicans will smear them as a socialist, but in Bernie's case it will actually be true. There's a marked difference between that smear and that reality, and Warren's self-identification as a capitalist will give her the ability to provide a safe space to voters who don't exactly want to vote Democrat but can't stand Trump.

But all electability arguments aside, Warren has my vote because she would make the best president hands down. Although she is not a life-long politician or creature of Washington, she has proven her ability to get things done (like creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau). She has been a U.S. Senator just long enough to have the relationships and institutional knowledge needed to effectively enact policies. She also has a slew of well-reasoned ready-made policies, which (fairly or unfairly) have received far more vetting from the press than those of any other candidate. As writer Kaitlin Byrd put it, Elizabeth Warren is who you vote for if you like Bernie Sanders’ policy but actually want it enacted.

In fact, in a marked turnaround this week, some staunch Sanders supporters began to admit that he likely couldn't actually achieve passage of his signature issue: Medicare For All. Most notably, one of Sanders' most high-profile surrogates, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, told HuffPost that compromising on Bernie's signature proposal might be necessary.

“The worst-case scenario? We compromise deeply and we end up getting a public option. Is that a nightmare? I don’t think so,” she said.

The entire article suggested that, whatever the differences between candidates' goals on health care, the realities of what can be achieved in Congress might result in very similar outcomes. In fact, I generally agree with that contention, but it is a very notable departure from the litmus-test proposition the Sanders campaign has promoted on the campaign trail. Warren, in particular, was demonized for creating and presenting a transition plan to Medicare For All. On top of that, exit polls in New Hampshire suggested that just 6% of Democratic primary voters support single payer only, while 61% support offering both a public option and a single-payer plan. Bernie dominated among the small slice of hardcore single-payer only fans, winning 65% of them, which clearly helped him eke out a victory in the state. But it's not where the bulk of Democratic primary voters appear to be.

What has consistently polled well among both Democrats and the general electorate alike are Warren's signature issues: an anti-corruption bill and a wealth tax. In poll after poll, Warren's 2% wealth tax on households with a net worth exceeding $50 million has polled at 60%-plus among American voters. And while both the wealth tax and M4A have lost a bit of traction after being debated for a year on the campaign trail, the wealth tax continued to gain the support of more than six in 10 Americans, according to the New York Times as of last November.

Furthermore, Warren's emphasis on ending corruption in Washington is the perfect antidote to the reelection bid of Trump, easily the most corrupt president in American history. Equally as important, her anti-corruption package—the bill she would champion first and foremost as president—would be the linchpin to getting future major legislative wins because it would end the stranglehold that entrenched lobbying interests have on otherwise very popular policies. They include measures like combatting gun violence, climate change, and ever-increasing healthcare costs.

All that analysis is a long and perhaps tedious way of saying that I've thought about this a lot, and I have concluded that this political moment yearns for both a Warren candidacy and a Warren presidency. And although her chances of winning the nomination now are very slim, I am dedicated to the proposition that you must never stop fighting the good fight for the things you believe in. This is easily the most volatile and unpredictable field of primary candidates most of us have witnessed in our lifetimes, and only a tiny homogeneous percentage of the Democratic electorate has spoken. I'm putting my money on Elizabeth Warren not because she has the best chance of winning the nomination but because I believe she is the best candidate in the field. And one thing I have never regretted in my life is holding true to my ideals and fighting for them no matter what the odds. The greatest wins are never the most obvious ones—they are the dreams that triumph because a group of committed individuals refused to let them die.