How Elizabeth Warren Could Win The 2020 Democratic Primary

It’s as if we skipped right from 2018 to 2020. On Monday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren became the first major Democratic candidate to formally dip a toe in the water of the 2020 presidential campaign, announcing the creation of an exploratory committee. Not everyone who creates an exploratory committee ends up becoming an official candidate, but Warren is very likely to. For all intents and purposes, she is now running for president.

Warren has experienced a swift rise, if not a meteoric one, to political stardom. A celebrated consumer advocate and law professor, she oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (better known as the post-financial crisis “bailout”) and shepherded the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau during President Obama’s first term. In 2012, she ran for and won elected office for the first time, defeating Republican incumbent Scott Brown 54 percent to 46 percent in the U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts; she was re-elected by 24 points in 2018. Though not quite at the level of the current Beto-mania, she’s had her moments as a progressive folk hero — a viral video on fair taxation that helped clear the field for her first Senate campaign and Mitch McConnell’s swag-spawning complaint that “Nevertheless, she persisted” after she was cut off in the middle of a speech on the Senate floor.

But if you listen to conventional wisdom — and our favorite quasi-scientific tool, betting markets — Warren’s star has dimmed in recent months. President Trump’s repeated references to her as “Pocahontas” have kept alive a seven-year-old controversy over Warren’s claims that she has Native American ancestry, which potentially helped advance her career. Her release of a DNA test in October 2018 that she hoped would settle the matter was not well received. And in a party reportedly thirsty for a new generation of leadership, the 69-year-old Warren may have missed her window. For the first but certainly not the last time this year, let’s take a look at the case for and against the chances of a major 2020 Democratic candidate.


Ideologically, Warren is right where a Democratic primary candidate should want to be — it’s one of the strongest cards in her hand. According to FiveThirtyEight’s Trump Score, she votes with the president just 13.1 percent of the time, making her the third-most anti-Trump senator in the 115th Congress. Although she’s best known for her stands against income inequality and big banks, she is deeply liberal on both social and economic issues, according to an analysis of her votes and positions by OnTheIssues — although not quite as liberal as Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of Warren’s potential 2020 rivals.

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https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-elizabeth-warren-could-win-the-2020-democratic-primary/