Pointgod wrote:Elizabeth Warren has been killing the debates. She’s put out substantial policies and has put out plans to get things done. However her biggest problem is two fold, one there’s a cult of personality around Bernie Sanders which Warren will never crack. And give all the credit to Bernie’s campaign they’ve l built a ground game and have a ton of work to reach voters and turn them out. Bernie’s supporters don’t care what he said about Cuba 50 years ago they want a revolution and most will admit that he won’t get a lot of his plans passed.
On the other hand of the spectrum Warren has managed to spook away the moderate candidates by tying herself so closely to Bernie. In reality Warren is incredibly smart, capable and pragmatic. Biden, Mayo Pete and Klobachar supporters would align to Warren because she’s not trying to blow up the system or fight against her own party. She’d implement her plans in a thoughtful and pragmatic manner without blowing up the economy. But that’s her own fault for not differentiating herself from the beginning of the campaign.
I don't think it's Warren's fault. This race, like all politics lately, has become a race of extremes. People who fall anywhere in the middle ground get squeezed out. Warren is politically way out there from people like Booker and Harris but she's being squeezed out because she's still in the absolutely massive canyon that is the political middle right now. She's close to Bernie but she's not quite Bernie in terms of being extreme because, like you point out, she's pragmatic and explains how she's going to attempt to do things rather than just yelling out a list of things that are she wants to have. And while supporters of those more moderate candidates might support her, they won't do it until basically all of them drop out of the race, which isn't going to happen. I'd even suggest Andrew Yang was squeezed out for similar reasons, just different lines. He represented rather dramatic change but he wasn't revolutionary enough as a personality to really drive things home and was too revolutionary for people who wanted to think things through a bit.
That's the drawback for Warren is that it meant that she was sort of caught in the middle trying to figure out where to go next. She's been murdering the debates from the outset but as soon as the cameras go off, people find excuses to go right back to their pre-established positions. She's not going to move far enough politically to draw support from Pete, Biden, etc. and she's not going to crack Bernie's personality cult even though she stands a better chance of actually achieving some of their mutual goals.
And that's where I have an issue with a fair few Bernie supporters and even Bernie himself. This fallback into the idea that he's essentially going to be able to dictator his way into achieving some of these goals, or admitting that he won't achieve his goals but wanting him elected anyway. I don't actually think Warren would come close to achieving everything she's suggesting she will, either, but she'll get significantly more of it accomplished and that's not nothing because change is coming ever faster whether we want it to or not and the ability to at least try to functionally tackle it as it comes is going to matter. Expecting the economy to be proactive is basically begging for failure; it's already proven that it isn't proactive several times over and has actively pushed against it unless they could tilt the balance of power even more into the favor of the wealthy.
As it stands, I think Warren's best path is to hold out and get as many delegates as she can until it becomes clear that a lot of moderate candidates that simply can't win and they start deciding that Warren looks way better than Bernie for all the reasons you just described, which have been patently obvious from the start. I doubt it gets to that point as it seems like the race is dividing even more with people moving even further from whatever qualifies as a center.
