As the media's preferred candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has enjoyed an enormous amount of softball coverage.

Yet, the harder journalists work to win her the nomination, the worse her chances seem to become.

Warren launched her 2020 candidacy amid what should have been a much bigger scandal. Her false claim of Native American heritage only received the coverage it deserved after she announced a DNA test showing she was somewhere between 1/64th and 1/1,024th Native American. Until then, this whiter-than-bleached-clothes-in-a-snowstorm politician had been given a pass for her lie.

Warren claimed later, in April 2019, that Republicans win elections only when they cheat, an outrageous and conspiratorial allegation much like the ones for which President Trump is so often pilloried. Yet, because it came from Warren, it, too, went largely unreported. The senator then declined an invitation to appear on Fox News, calling the network a “hate-for-profit racket.” The press, which has spent the entirety of the Trump presidency warning about “chilling” attacks on the free press from elected officials, had nothing to say about this. Later, when Warren suggested the same cable news network inspired a mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, members of the media were, again, silent.

CNN and others have instead focused much of their 2020 coverage on Warren-friendly stories. For example, who could forget when the obscure Democratic strategist Danny Barefoot announced to his 5,738 Twitter followers that he was endorsing the senator’s candidacy? The Washington Post published a news report later comparing Warren's campaign “selfies” to Frederick Douglass’s portraits. Later, the Washington Post also went to bat for Warren after her claim to being fired from her job as a teacher in the 1970s for being “visibly pregnant” was proven false by a written record showing that she had actually been asked to stay on in the position.

Reporters have also worked hard to shield Warren from similarly legitimate questions about whether her astronomically expensive Medicare for All proposal would raise taxes on the middle class. MSNBC daytime host Hallie Jackson cheered Warren’s absurd white paper explaining how the senator plans to fund the $34 trillion Medicare for All proposal, calling it the “ultimate clapback to her critics.”

Meanwhile, both the Washington Post and MSNBC declined to cover the moment in November when Warren was confronted by black supporters of school choice at a campaign rally in Atlanta. The media took no interest in Warren’s lie of omission when she shot back at one of the protesters, claiming, “My children went to public schools," when in fact they also went to private schools.

Yet, despite the media's heroic efforts, Warren's candidacy is in free fall, down 10.6 points from a high of 26.2% in July, according to the RealClearPolitics average. Her fundraising numbers are down, and she has quietly stopped talking about Medicare for All on the campaign trail. She did not mention her major healthcare proposal even once in the last Democratic primary debate.

Even now, the media are trying to get Warren across the finish line. CNN, for example, publicly took her side this week in a disagreement with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who she claimed told her a woman couldn't be elected president. This story, by the way, was first reported by CNN based on information provided anonymously by the Warren campaign.

Warren's leak of the supposed details of a private conversation might have won her sympathy from journalists who already support her, but she has sealed her fate by earning the contempt of Sanders’s supporters.

In a way, it is fitting that CNN's pro-Warren story could be her undoing. Perhaps the kindest thing the press can do for the senator right now is to stop trying to help.