Alright, let’s talk about the Greek tragedy that is Elizabeth Warren.

I understand that this post is likely not going to make me any friends. So let me start by being clear on a few things. I take absolutely no joy in writing this piece. At the very start of this race, I was a supporter of Senator Warren before I ultimately decided that Bernie was the better candidate. I have been a fan of hers for years. However, given the dynamics of the presidential race (Pete and Amy dropping out to consolidate around Biden, Liz staying in the race), and the fact that Super Tuesday is tomorrow, I feel it is necessary to make my case. This post is primarily directed to my friends in California, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado, or any other Super Tuesday state, so feel free to share this if you live in those states.

This message is directed mostly at supporters of Senator Warren for the presidential race, but really anybody who truly wants progressive values to be reflected in our politics. I promise to be polite, level-headed, and respectful. Nothing I am saying here should be interpreted as a personal attack on any Warren supporter. Know that I truly understand what it’s like to fight hard for a candidate or a cause. However, I also understand all too well how much it hurts to see your candidate betray that cause. So yeah, this is gonna sting a little. All this being said, I will absolutely not hide my feelings or deep concerns about the continuing candidacy of Senator Warren. And, to be clear, if this course continues the way it is and Liz is making a play for a brokered convention, I will probably stop being polite. Because this shit is getting very, very real, and there is too much at stake. So please read this post in its entirety, and understand that this is coming from the heart, and from a place of deep respect, and of genuine concern and alarm.

(And Mom, I’m so sorry, but I want you to read this too so you can understand why I’m saying what I’m saying.)

Let’s start with a bit of a process lesson on how conventions works, a bit of history about brokered conventions, and tie it all back to the matter at hand.

In order to secure the nomination, a candidate for president needs to come to the convention with a majority — 50% + 1 — of the delegates pledged to said candidate. Generally, the ideal situation is for this to happen on the first ballot of the convention. If the leading candidate only has a plurality — 49% or lower — then there is no consensus, and you have an actual convention floor fight. Second ballot is also when superdelegates become a factor. Superdelegates are Democratic members of Congress, other high-ranking members of the party, governors, former presidents, former vice presidents, and the like. They are not bound to vote for a specific candidate at the convention like pledged delegates are. Because of reforms made to the DNC rules in 2016 (Thanks Bernie!), superdelegates are no longer allowed to vote on the first ballot. However, if there is no majority winner on the first ballot, they are allowed to vote in the 2nd. This creates the possibility that superdelegates could choose the candidate they want, and overturn the will of the plurality of voters who voted in the caucus/primary season.

It should go without stating, but a brokered convention would be a really, really, bad thing. But don’t take my word for it — let’s look at history. In 1968, President Johnson dropped out of the race after poor performances in early states. Senator Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy were the other contenders. After LBJ dropped, Vice President Humphery entered the race. At the height of the Vietnam war, McCarthy and RFK were both running anti-war campaigns. Humphery entered the race late, did not compete in any primaries, and inherited the delegates from LBJ voters in previous contests. He was also the only candidate who was pushing the ‘stay the course’ narrative regarding the war. Then RFK was shot dead on June 5th, leaving his delegates uncommitted. At the time of the convention, 80% of primary voters cast their ballot for an anti-war candidate. However, because there was no clear majority of delegates, and one of the candidates was dead, the convention ultimately ended with Humphery being chosen by the delegates at the convention floor on the 2nd ballot. This is attributed to some of the behind-the-scenes delegate wrangling the convention is famous for, with Mayor Daley and LBJ himself being big players in that role. The result was catastrophic — actual brick-throwing violent riots in Chicago (where the convention took place), and massive protests in other major cities across the country. The end result of this was a Democratic party in shambles, a lack of faith in the institution or the candidates nationwide, and the election of President Nixon in a landslide.[1]

If you consider the state of where we are right now at this moment in time — with the threat of coronavirus and lack of public health care looming large, with the climate disaster sitting like a Sword of Damocles ready to fall, and the ruthless lawlessness of the sitting president, I think it’s safe to say that we are in an even more perilous moment than we were in 1968. I also think that it is safe to say that if we are in a situation where the candidate with the plurality of delegates going into the convention is robbed of the nomination either through delegate negotiation, superdelegates, or both — it will make 1968 Chicago look like Disneyland. It will result in a devastating defeat in November to the most dangerous president in modern history. These are the stakes.

Okay, now that we have our process and history lesson out of the way, let’s cycle back to the present moment, the current state of the race, and where we go from here. After our recent dropouts, we have two candidates remaining who have actually won contests — Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. Michael Bloomberg is competing in Super Tuesday states (oh I’ll get back to you in a later post if I feel it’s warranted, here’s hoping he just gets rejected tomorrow and goes away.) Elizabeth Warren, who has not finished above 3rd in any of the early contests, is still in the race. Pete and Amy dropped out, including after Pete had strong early showings and tieing the vote in Iowa. So essentially we have a 2-person race going into Super Tuesday, with 2nd tier contenders still in the race.

What does this mean? If Bernie performs as polling has shown, he will get a delegate lead out of California and Texas that becomes mathematically impossible to surpass in the remaining contests. Meaning, no other candidates would be able to actually secure enough delegates for a majority — the only remaining candidate who would is Bernie. This, of course, means that there are only two possibilities — a majority win for Bernie, or a contested convention.

I know what you’re thinking — certainly if Elizabeth under-performs on Super Tuesday, she will drop out and endorse Bernie, since they are aligned ideologically and support the same programs and platforms, right? I wish that were true. It is not, and it breaks my heart. In both internal statements to campaign staff, and recently in publicly-released memos, Senator Warren has made it clear that she intends to stay in the race all the way up to the convention. [2] Her path to the nomination still exists even if she doesn’t win a single state, because she intends to go to a brokered convention, peeling support and delegates from Sanders after Super Tuesday, and resulting in no clear delegate majority at the convention in Milwaukee.

I know this may come as a shock to you if you’re a Warren supporter. It certainly is a disappointment to me. However, after watching this campaign unfold over the past year+, it’s become very clear to me that Senator Warren is not who we thought she was, who we hoped she was. She has demonstrated an unmistakable pattern of backing down on her progressive principles when it was found to be politically expedient. Here are some examples:

Senator Warren started out the race as a strong proponent of the Medicare-for-all plan introduced into the Senate by Bernie. After several debates, she backtracked on this in order to obtain votes closer to the political center. [3]

She campaigned strongly on fighting corruption and boldly declared that she would never take any Super PAC money. However, after poor performances in early states, and strapped for cash to maintain her campaign organization, she backtracked on this and started accepting Super PAC money just a few weeks ago. Her campaign has also refused to release the donor list to this PAC. [4]

This is not a new behavior for Senator Warren caused simply by the presidential election season. After all, Senator Warren WAS a Republican in the 1980s and early 1990s. Now, don’t get me wrong, I welcome all former Republicans into the tent with open arms, and she is no different. People are absolutely able to change their position as they learn more about their own philosophy and values. However, I do not think this is the case here. Senator Warren changed parties when it became the right career move for her, namely when a position opened up at UMass faculty. Drucilla Cornell is a philosopher and feminist author who has been at the forefront of feminist theory for thirty years. She was also a contemporary of Warren’s during her time as a professor at UMass. Last year, in a panel discussion at the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in London, Drucilla Cornell was asked about her time working with Elizabeth. In a recording of this panel, she describes a very different picture than one we get, and she outlines how and why Warren changed her political affiliation to advance her career to Harvard. [5]

So, let’s wrap this all up. Elizabeth Warren has only one path to the nomination, and that path would almost certainly result in a party fractured beyond belief, and a subsequent electoral victory for Trump in November. She has a proven pattern of backing down on her progressive principles when it is politically expedient to do so. So this is my plea. If you consider yourself a progressive or leftists that wants big structural change in this country, if you think healthcare is a human right and want to see reform of the banking sector, and if you truly care about the principles in your politics — do not vote for Elizabeth Warren tomorrow. There’s only one progressive left in the race who can actually win with a majority, coalesce the coalition necessary to win, then win with a mandate large enough to get real change to the material conditions of everyday people. That candidate happens to be Bernie Sanders. It helps that we don’t have to worry as much about him backing down on his own principles when it is expedient, because he has such a strong track record of never actually doing that.

I honestly wish I knew why she thinks staying in the race is a good idea if your goal is to advance a progressive agenda. Based on what I mentioned, it’s possible that she got a taste of it after being the front runner for so long, and now she’s chasing the white whale like Captain Ahab. Based on her backtracking, it’s possible she ultimately just wanted power, and didn’t actually hold the principles she ran on. Maybe this is more a result of her staff convincing her that this is the right path, and it’s not all on her. This is all just conjecture of course. I don’t have any answers as to her intentions and goals. But I do know this — if Senator Warren does what she says she is going to do — attempt to create a situation for a brokered convention — she will have set back the progressive movement at a critical moment.

We likely only have one shot at this, folks. Do not let your admiration for what Warren represents blind you from the realities in front of you regarding this movement. And to be perfectly clear — if the situations were reversed, and Warren had been the front runner going into super tuesday but unable to get a majority, and Bernie was performing poorly, I would absolutely 100% be in favor of him getting out and stumping for Warren immediately so that the race ends up with a progressive (hopefully) candidate at 50%+1 at the convention, which is the ideal outcome. And you know in your heart of hearts, the media calls for him to drop out would be deafening.

And lastly, the narrative about ‘Bernie Bros’ and personal attacks from Sanders supporters, or claims of sexism in their arguments against Warren, have no merit. If you know me, you know that I am a feminist. You know that I think representation is important. I wish that the leader of the progressive movement was, y’know, not an old white guy. That’s not the case, and we need to accept that. Politics is about so much more than who you see on television. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. So let me be crystal clear — I have been very, very polite and nice up to this point regarding my disdain for the Warren campaign. If that campaign continues down this track and attempts to tank the convention, I will stop being polite. The gloves will come off. This is too important to fuck up.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Democratic_National_Convention — Yes, I’m citing wikipedia. No, this isn’t a college course so I will do what I want. I did go through and look at the reference sources this page uses, and determined this is an accurate synopsis of events. You’re free to do so if you want to try to be a rules-lawyer about citing wikipedia.

[2]https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/01/warren-hail-mary-strategy-nomination-118319 — Warren Hail Mary Strategy for the Nomination — Politico

[3]https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/11/15/20966674/elizabeth-warren-medicare-for-all-plan-public-option Vox — Elizabeth Warren’s new Medicare-for-all plan starts out with a public option

[4]https://time.com/5792563/elizabeth-warren-super-pac-support/ — TIME — Elizabeth Warren Condemned Super PACs. Now She’s Benefiting From One

[5]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I1sHtVV634-- Recording of Panel Discussion featuring Drucilla Cornell