Six minority women staffers quit Warren's Nevada campaign, some complaining of "toxic" environment

I’m chagrined to learned that an organization run by a pretend Native American wouldn’t be responsive to minority concerns.

This Politico story is noteworthy not just for the off-the-charts schadenfreude involved in watching an ostentatiously woke campaign called out for insensitivity but because Nevada looks to be Warren’s last chance to resuscitate her campaign. The polling this week in New Hampshire has not been kind to her, placing her fourth consistently. If she tanks there, Berniebros will begin screaming for her to get out and help Sanders unite progressives as the centrists splinter among Buttigieg, Biden, and Bloomberg. She’ll insist on taking one more shot in Nevada, I think, but if she tanks there too she’s in truly dire straits. No one expects her to do anything meaningful in South Carolina except hoard a few votes from Bernie that he could badly use. She’s in fourth in the polling average there right now but seems destined to slip to fifth after Buttigieg does well in New Hampshire and bounces past her.

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I think she’s done after Nevada unless voters there save her. This story will not be useful in convincing them to save her.

A half-dozen women of color have departed Elizabeth Warren’s Nevada campaign in the run-up to the state’s caucuses with complaints of a toxic work environment in which minorities felt tokenized and senior leadership was at loggerheads…

“During the time I was employed with Nevada for Warren, there was definitely something wrong with the culture,” said Megan Lewis, a field organizer who joined the campaign in May and departed in December. “I filed a complaint with HR, but the follow-up I received left me feeling as though I needed to make myself smaller or change who I was to fit into the office culture.”…

[Another former staffer] added: “We all were routinely silenced and not given a meaningful chance on the campaign. Complaints, comments, advice, and grievances were met with an earnest shake of the head and progressive buzzwords but not much else.” A third former field organizer who was also granted anonymity said those descriptions matched her own experience.

How did Politico get in touch with these women? Did one reach out to the paper with her story and provide the names of others? Or did some of these women migrate to Team Bernie, with the Sanders campaign helpfully putting them in touch with the media?

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Either way, two of the three who spoke to Politico say they’re now unsure whether they’ll even caucus for Warren. Hoo boy.

There’s bigger news buried later in the piece. Months ago Warren’s organization in Nevada was cracked up to be lethal, a “monster” praised as the most impressive of any candidate’s. (Second place went to, er, Kamala Harris.) Politico reports today that Warren has spent just 12 days total in the state and that her ad spending there has declined recently. They’ve been understaffed with Spanish-speaking organizers and under-sourced with Spanish-language literature — Latinos are a huge component of Nevada’s electorate — and there’s reportedly confusion about which of two staffers is actually in charge of the state campaign. (Harris’s campaign was also notorious for its leadership muddle, coincidentally.) Now, on top of all that, she has bad press in the state related to minority staffers.

Serious question: Is she going to make it to Nevada?

There’s a serious possibility that she finishes fifth in New Hampshire next Tuesday. Amy Klobuchar was tied for fourth with her in one poll there taken within the past week and trailed by a point in another. Meanwhile, it’s possible that Buttigieg upsets Bernie there and then rides the momentum to an upset in Nevada too. If Iowa taught us anything apart from the fact that Democratic leaders there don’t know how to count votes, it taught us that Mayor Pete’s organization is good at caucusing. Nevada’s another shot for him to do that. On the other hand, the greater racial diversity and union strength within Nevada’s Democratic electorate gives Biden a fighting chance at a comeback, especially if some Democratic power-brokers like Obama decide to ride to his rescue and endorse him beforehand in the name of holding off Bernie.

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Putting all of that together, if she crashes and burns in New Hampshire, what would be the best thing Elizabeth Warren could do to serve the progressive cause she believes in so ardently? Fight it out in Nevada and take 10-12 percent of an electorate that might otherwise have made the difference for Bernie Sanders? Or bow out early, endorse Bernie, and hit the trail for him? Seems obvious, no?

Maybe she’ll even try to swing a deal with him. If he agrees to make her VP, she’ll drop out right away and get behind him. Would he take it?

Cabinet meetings in the next administration are going to be amazing.

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