Chris Roberts, American Renaissance, March 3, 2020

The pool of candidates for the Democrat presidential nomination is shrinking. Pete Buttigieg, Tom Steyer, and Amy Klobuchar all dropped out this week. Three viable candidates remain: Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, and Michael Bloomberg, while Tulsi Gabbard continues her protest candidacy. And then there is Elizabeth Warren. Unlike Miss Gabbard, she always hoped to win. Throughout 2019, Mrs. Warren was considered a serious candidate with a decent chance. But 2020 has delivered one disappointment after another. She finished third in Iowa, fourth in New Hampshire and Nevada, and fifth in South Carolina. No upcoming states promise her a victory — not even her home state of Massachusetts, which she may lose to Bernie Sanders. [Update: She placed third in Massachusetts, behind Mr. Sanders and Mr. Biden.]

So what motivates her? It seems to be a mix of resentment and entitlement. Earlier in the campaign, her pitch was that she was progressive, like Bernie Sanders, but less threatening to “establishment” Democrats. As a compromise between the radical Sanders wing and the neoliberal centrist wing, she — and she alone — could unite the party. But after four defeats, no chance of winning, and nothing original to say, why stay in the race? The socialists behind the popular podcast Chapo Trap House — all of whom back Mr. Sanders — discussed this during one of their recent shows:

Amber Frost: . . . she started out with pure intentions, but ultimately she just wants the power. She just wants the fucking power, and you saw her make a decision, you saw her shift from like, “Look, maybe I’m a little out of my league, but you know, I wanna be a force for good,” and then she was like, “But what if I kneecapped Bernie Sanders by some bullshit sexism claim, and then I could be in charge of everything!” . . . Felix Biederman: I want, like, going back to what she said after — you know — eating shit in two contests, is that Bernie’s campaign is built on a foundation of hate. It made me think, what actually is the Elizabeth Warren campaign built on . . . can you pinpoint one issue, one idea? Because it’s the most all-over-the-place fucking campaign I have seen — Matt Christman: Plans! AF: Do you know what her career is? Do you know what it is, though? . . . . It was corruption. It was, “Um, he’s cheating! He’s cheating!” Like, that is the basis of her thing, is that she is a fucking tattletale. Now, it is true that a lot of people are cheating, but — MC: She’s a hall monitor. AF: Yes, exactly, she’s a fucking hall monitor. She’s like . . . “No, I just want to scream at people for cheating.” That’s the entire basis of her career and her campaign.

MC: It’s a cargo cult, they’re fixated on the academic thing of, “She’s the most qualified, therefore she should be President, therefore some ‘God hand’ is gonna reach down and just make it so, because it’s what’s fair.”

Chapo Trap House touches on a defining characteristic of Mrs. Warren: she’s a “woke” scold. She may be the most prominent example of a certain class of white professionals who revel in their status of “enlightened anti-racist liberals” and try to use that status for their own benefit while posing as generous and compassionate. I’ve met people like this — almost always white women: Teachers who ignore black-on-white violence but punish students for using the word “retarded;” professors who lower your grade because you use “gendered” words such as “mankind” instead of “humankind;” people who tell you you have no right to an opinion on whether welfare recipients should have to pass drug tests because you’ve never been on welfare.

It’s a class of people whose power and status come from finding superficial “problems” and imposing moralistic solutions that boil down to censorship. These people never try to solve really important problems because that doesn’t increase their power. A bureaucrat in the communications department of a company can be a petty tyrant by, say, banning certain unfashionable words or phrases. There’s no thrill in asking the C-Suite to give the company better dental coverage.

Elizabeth Warren is that kind of person. Before entering politics, she claimed American Indian ancestry — despite being obviously white — to take advantage of affirmative action. In theory, liberals who look white should forgo preferences, even if they really do have a small amount of non-white ancestry, because preferences are supposed to make up for “discrimination” against non-whites. Mrs. Warren has obviously never been discriminated against for being an American Indian, but between standing aside for a real Indian and getting a good job, she took the job.

During her campaign, she got the most attention by scolding other candidates, using her sex as a perch. During a debate in January, she claimed that Mr. Sanders had once told her that no woman could ever become President. She was trying to cast Mr. Sanders as a sexist bigot, and herself as a victimized woman. She never produced any evidence that Mr. Sanders said this, and didn’t even try to square this with all the campaigning he did for Hillary Clinton in 2016. During a debate in February, Mrs. Warren tried to paint Michael Bloomberg as a “sexist.”

Another prominent feature of Mrs. Warren’s campaign is her insistence that she has a detailed plan for each policy, and other candidates don’t. This is absurd. Every candidate has policy prescriptions. How detailed they are is not important, because every President has to compromise to get anything done. Who votes for a candidate because of the details in his plan for “Addressing Discrimination and Ensuring Equity for Farmers of Color”? Her constant talk of plans makes her sound like she’s saying, “I’m smart, smarter than these other guys. All the evidence you need is in the plans I’ve posted on my website that almost nobody has read.”

She acts as if she’s a downtrodden woman with brilliant ideas, and resents the country for not seeing this and supporting her. Her supporters see her — and themselves — the same way: virtuous because of an unfalsifiable “oppressed” status, bitter about their lack of popularity, and deriding critics as insensitive bigots.

If Warren were a man, she’d be the clear frontrunner. Everyone who’s calling her “mean and nasty” would be describing *him* as the only candidate with solid, detailed plans to lift the middle class and the best one to take on Trump. — Kimberley Johnson (@AuthorKimberley) February 20, 2020

Many claim there is a media conspiracy to deny Mrs. Warren coverage.

Warren’s debate performance, despite media erasure, was characteristic of overqualified women who bafflingly get overlooked at workhttps://t.co/Wd21b3dwNb — Natalie Daher (@NatalieDaher7) February 20, 2020

I like seeing President Warren trending, because it shows it’s a possibility. It’s easy to try to dismiss people…hell, this week, we saw an attempt at her erasure. But tonight’s debate performance reminds me of Steve Martin’s words: “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” — Cristela Alonzo (@cristela9) February 20, 2020

I’ve tried to contain my rage at the erasure of highly qualified female candidates but I am over it. I can’t. NBC’s total erasure of Warren is just too much. — Karoli (@Karoli) February 19, 2020

The Erasure of Elizabeth Warren Continues via @thenation https://t.co/0XpvuRSfVf — Joan Walsh (@joanwalsh) February 7, 2020

This is fantasy. Mrs. Warren has been widely discussed for the whole election and has been in every debate. If anything, she has been covered too much. In the first four contests, she has placed third, fifth, and fourth twice — why should political analysts consider her a serious candidate? Meanwhile, there’s another campaign that is much more popular than Mrs. Warren’s that the media sometimes does minimize:

lol CNN has been showing polls without any poll numbers. Bernie polling at “no arrow.” Amy polling at “green arrow up with no number” pic.twitter.com/7D8xbcNpF5 — Mike Prysner (@MikePrysner) February 13, 2020

The media is such a parody of itself https://t.co/tvGiQco4RK — Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) February 12, 2020

Many of Mrs. Warren’s supporters find her “anti-racism” to be one of her best qualities.

Thank you Elizabeth Warren for challenging race-neutral universalism when it comes to housing or anything else… class centric bullshit needs to go. Race operates independently and anyone who doesn’t see that is a racist or a pathetic white Marxist or both — Tim Wise (@timjacobwise) February 26, 2020

Elizabeth Warren’s engagement with intersectional thinking has only gotten richer as her campaign has progressed. https://t.co/899ypNKxSV — The Nation (@thenation) February 25, 2020

“Intersectionality” is defined as “the complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.” But nearly all supporters of the Massachusetts Senator are white. They are well-educated whites who use jargon like “intersectional.” All her talk about “racial justice” and reparations for not only blacks, but Indians has not led to non-white support. In 2019, Politico reported on the interesting differences between fans of Mr. Sanders and Mrs. Warren, noting,

In poll after poll, Sanders appeals to lower-income and less-educated people; Warren beats Sanders among those with postgraduate degrees. Sanders performs better with men, Warren with women. Younger people who vote less frequently are more often in Sanders’ camp; seniors who follow politics closely generally prefer Warren.

Polling that year put Mrs. Warren’s black support at 4 percent, and Political wrote, “At some rallies in cities with large black populations — such as Chicago this past weekend or Memphis earlier this year — her crowds have been whiter than is representative.” Her surge towards the end of 2019 had almost nothing to do with non-whites. As a black Washington Post writer wrote, “Warren’s recent rise in the polls . . . is due to an increase in support for the lawmaker from several groups. But the biggest gain . . . [was because her] support grew from 25 percent in late August to 37 percent in late September with white college-educated voters.”

If her support with Hispanics had increased since then, she wouldn’t have finished fourth in Nevada; if her support with blacks had increased, she wouldn’t have finished fifth in South Carolina. Her campaign serves as another example of how anti-white posturing and woke jargon impresses a certain group of whites much more than it does non-whites. Tim Wise may like Mrs. Warren, but she gets fewer votes from blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, and Asians than the “pathetic white Marxist” Bernie Sanders.

Elizabeth Warren is the candidate for whites steeped in academic hogwash. She appeals to the “anti-racist” bureaucrats who love to hound white people: the overbearing teacher, the college diversity commissar, the power-hungry number-two at a second-rate office, the preening teacher’s pet, the director of the “oversight committee.” They seem to think egalitarian orthodoxy entitles them to berate you. They are the worst of our race. Fortunately, Mrs. Warren’s floundering campaign suggests there aren’t many of them.