Don't Underestimate Elizabeth Warren and Her Populist Message

Don’t Underestimate Elizabeth Warren and Her Populist Message
By John Cassidy
January 3, 2019
Elizabeth Warren uses the same sort of economic critique that enabled Bernie Sanders to carry twenty-two states in the 2016 primary. And she isn’t merely talking the talk.


For those of you who haven’t been keeping track, there are (just) thirteen months until the Iowa caucuses. By releasing a campaign video on New Year’s Eve and planning a trip to the Hawkeye State this weekend, Elizabeth Warren, the sixty-nine-year-old Democratic senator from Massachusetts, has effectively fired the starting gun in the 2020 Democratic primary, and indicated that she’s ready to go the full distance. In prediction markets, which are already accepting bets on the final outcome, Warren is in the second tier of candidates, behind the early favorites Beto O’Rourke and Kamala Harris. Her record suggests that she will be a formidable presence in the contest. Certainly, she will be a forceful one.

The rap on Warren is that she missed her best chance in 2016, allowing Bernie Sanders to seize the mantle of populist tribune, and blundered last fall by rekindling the controversy over her ancestry. These are backward-looking critiques, the force of which is yet to be determined. What we know for sure is that, with at least a dozen Democrats thinking seriously about entering the primary, it will take someone resolute, resilient, and well organized to prevail. The successful candidate will need a message that distinguishes her or his campaign from the pack and resonates with Democratic voters. Since the prize is a head-to-head contest with Donald Trump, the winner will have to be someone who doesn’t shy away from confrontation.

On all of these grounds, an argument can be made for Warren, who has been in the Senate since 2012. Ever since Trump launched his 2016 Presidential bid, she has been mocking him. “Let’s be honest—Donald Trump is a loser,” she wrote in March, 2016. “Count all his failed businesses. See how he kept his father’s empire afloat by cheating people with scams like Trump University and by using strategic corporate bankruptcy (excuse me, bankruptcies) to skip out on debt.” At other points, Warren called Trump a “small, insecure money-grubber” a “loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud,” and “a large orange elephant.”

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