Is there anything new to be said about this terrible result for Warren in New Hampshire that wasn’t said about the last terrible result for Warren in New Hampshire? No, not really.
Am I going to blog it anyway because it tickles me to see her struggling in her own backyard? Oh yes. Very much so.
In fact, I should warn you now. There are likely to be many terrible polls for her over the next 11 months and I’m apt to write about every one of them, purely for the schadenfreude factor.
Emerson carved up the results by age group: 18-34, 35-54, 55-74, and, weirdly, 75+. The only one in which Warren’s not stuck in single digits is the last, where she’s at 18 percent. Imagine having as your core constituency a group of voters that’s at death’s door. For most candidates, the challenge in New Hampshire is attracting support. For Warren, an additional challenge is not having her current support expire before primary day.
It’s too obvious to belabor the point but Bernie’s decision to run and gobble up the progressive vote is an immense problem for the almost-but-not-quite-as-far-left Warren. Sanders is crushing it with the youth vote here, piling up a lead of more than 30 points in that group over second-place Joe Biden. (Bernie’s share of the vote declines with each successive age cohort.) Warren is left at the margins, rolling out a splashy new progressive idea every week to try to pick off part of the Sanders personality cult. She proposed a new tax on the mega-rich, she started talking up universal child care, she floated the idea of reparations for slavery. Today she’s out with something new.
Warren’s bid for the White House has been defined since its start by themes of fighting corruption and money in politics. The Massachusetts Democrat took that to the next level on Monday, blasting out an email to supporters vowing to forgo any “fancy receptions or big money fundraisers only with people who can write big checks,” as well as phone calls to wealthy donors.
“For every time you see a presidential candidate talking with voters at a town hall, rally, or local diner, those same candidates are spending three or four or five times as long with wealthy donors — on the phone, or in conference rooms at hedge fund offices, or at fancy receptions and intimate dinners — all behind closed doors,” Warren wrote. “When I thank the people giving to my campaign, it will not be based on the size of their donation.”
She’s going to try to cut into Bernie’s vote through sheer hustle, figuring that the more proposals she rolls out, the more it’ll force progressives to consider that she’s a better bet as president to move an ambitious agenda than Sanders is. That’s worth a shot strategically if you believe primaries really are decided by policy contests. I tend to think they’re decided by “brands.” And Bernie’s brand is an order of magnitude more valuable on the left than Warren’s is.
Gotta look on the bright side, though. Biden might not run, which means she’s liable to finish no worse than, uh … fourth, once Klobuchar inevitably passes her. In the state next door to her own. Hoo boy.
Congrats to Kirsten Gillibrand on keeping pace with John Delaney, by the way.
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