Elizabeth Warren is the Most Dangerous Democratic Candidate

Senator Elizabeth Warren at the fourth Democratic debate (John Minchillo/AP via The Philadelphia Inquirer)

Despite my very real issues with Warren, I really don't want this to come off as a hit piece of any sort. She is still easily better than almost all of her opponents, and vastly better than the guy who's currently at the top of every national poll. She has also put out some genuinely laudable proposals lately. Certainly, no one should lose sight of that, nor do I want there to be some split in the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

—The Latest Sedition, June 18, 2019

Well, I was wrong—and for whatever it's worth, you can feel free to consider this a hit piece. While Warren's recent bullshit about Sanders supposedly telling her a woman couldn't get elected president—an allegation that she's cynically left as vague as possible and which makes little sense based on Sanders's history—has turned my disenchantment with Warren into a full-blown disgust, that's not my main motivation for writing this piece. No; my newfound animosity toward her might make this more fun, but my change of heart stems from reason, not passion.

I laid out in detail in my last piece why our only hope lies with a radical disruption of the status quo, and explained that Bernie Sanders is the only candidate who would (hopefully) represent that disruption. But why couldn't Warren? What makes her so different? For one thing, the fact that she's a completely feckless appeaser who's unable to stand by the principles she claims to represent. She's claimed to support Medicare for All, but put forth a plan for getting there that's so patently stupid it's obvious her support isn't sincere. Big structural change? That's a funny joke when you're already talking about filling your administration with corporate lackeys. Whatever laudable work Warren may have done in terms of bankruptcy reform and consumer protection, it's plain at this point that she lacks any serious commitment to challenging the control the ruling class exercises in the United States.

Even her supporters can't make her sound like anything other than a nerdy technocrat. "She understands how to focus and wield the powers of the regulatory state better than anyone else," Ezra Klein gushes. Wow, isn't that inspiring! She knows how to focus and wield the powers of the regulatory state? Sign me up! I'm sure the candidate who wasn't even able to keep up the pretense of being a social democrat until the Iowa caucuses will be really ruthless in how she exercises those fearsome powers. Climate change and inequality are no match for this Bold Progressive!

To summarize: Warren 1. has no interest in moving away from the top-down, technocratic form of politics that's dominated the Democratic Party for decades and 2. is so weak and unprincipled that she couldn't lead (or even do much to encourage) any popular movement if she wanted to. The idea that one principled politician and their team of experts could solve the world's problems while the rest of us sit at home is an utter fantasy. But even if it weren't, that person isn't Elizabeth Warren because she's already proved to be either a coward or a fake who, either way, capitulates at the first sign of trouble. So, as I indicated last time: electing Warren solves nothing and only paves the way for the rise of another right-wing populist like Trump, but potentially smarter and more competent, therefore more dangerous. Again, this isn't wild speculation: just look at how the Democratic Party fared under Obama, and how his hand-picked successor fared against Trump.

But don't worry too much about that: if Warren does get the nomination, there's a good chance she'd just lose to Trump in the general election. Right now, RealClearPolitics' polling average has her ahead nationally by 0.4%; Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by over five times that much, and still lost the electoral college. RCP's average has Trump ahead by one point in Wisconsin, one of the key states that Trump flipped in 2016; in Iowa, his lead is over six points; in Florida, two points. If Trump can carry those states, all the states that Mitt Romney won in 2012, and Ohio (where head-to-head polling is sparse but which he carried by 8% in 2016), he's at 269 electoral votes. If he can also carry Maine's second Congressional district—which he carried by double digits in 2016—that makes 270 votes, which is enough to win the election. That's not even to get into Pennsylvania or Michigan, both of which Trump won in 2016. Warren leads narrowly in those states, though not by as much as Clinton did right before unexpectedly losing both.

All of this is before any general election campaign has even begun, and absolutely nothing about Warren indicates she'd hold up well against Trump. The fact she pretended to be a Native American for a huge portion of her life is an absolute godsend to someone like Trump, who—unlike Warren's fellow Democrats—will not be too polite to repeatedly bring it up. Her utter spinelessness in the face of criticism from her right so far in this campaign bodes poorly for how she would respond to Trump's attacks; and, like most of her fellow Democrats onstage at the last debate, she's announced her support for the proposed trade deal that will undoubtedly be one of the crowning achievements of Trump's first term.

Of course, Warren's not the only Democratic candidate who would make a lousy president (most of them would), or who might lose to Trump (any of them could, though Bernie and Biden certain look likelier to win than Warren does). But her faux-progressive veneer makes both results all the more dangerous. If she does win, we could see the same complacency that affected liberals and left-leaning people during the Obama years start to creep back in; high off defeating Trump and electing the country's first woman president—one promising to bring "Big Structural Change"—many progressive-minded people might be content to sit back and relax. There's no reason to think Warren would do much to discourage that either, given her technocratic mindset. What makes her especially dangerous in this respect is that even many people who want the Democrats to shift leftward think Warren is at least ok (I was one of them not that long ago); at least under a Buttigieg or Biden administration, these people would have no illusion that they'd won, and would have every reason to stay active. By the time Warren betrayed her promise to bring that big structural change (and she would betray it), it would probably be too late to do much about it—just as the left couldn't do much about it when Obama turned out to be a guardian of the status quo, not someone bent on overhauling it.

If Warren lost the general election to Trump, that would also carry unique dangers, again because of her (increasingly undeserved) reputation as a progressive. Given much of the media's undisguised hostility to anything that has even a whiff of leftism, we'd be certain to see a never-ending barrage of commentary on how the Democrats blew the election by nominating someone too radical, and that they could have won if only they'd gone with a safe choice like Joe Biden or Amy Klobuchar. Unfortunately, many well-meaning voters would readily fall for this, given that centrist candidates are already frequently seen as more "electable" than their left-wing opponents. Just as the example of George McGovern's landslide defeat in 1972 is still dredged up almost 50 years later, Warren's loss to Trump would be used for decades to come as an argument against nominating anyone "too extreme." If Biden or Buttigieg lost to Trump, at least no one could say it was because they were too left-wing. (Obviously, if Sanders lost to Trump, we would see the same arguments as if Warren did—but, again, Sanders looks likelier to win than Warren).

It should be clear, then, that Elizabeth Warren is not an acceptable alternative to Bernie Sanders. She is not even a good "second choice" for leftists. She is the most dangerous candidate in the Democratic primary, and her nomination must be prevented. As obscene as it may seem, if the choice comes down to Warren and Biden somehow (if, God forbid, Bernie has further health problems and has to drop out for instance), leftists should support Biden. If he lost, no one could say it was because he was too progressive, and if he won then at least there would be no illusion that we had achieved anything but a return to the Obama years; plus, it seems likely he wouldn't run for reelection, leaving the Democratic primary open in 2024 (if Warren was elected in 2020 she would, presumably, run for reelection in 2024 and easily secure her party's nomination). The likeliest outcome of a Warren nomination at this point appears to be her defeat in the general election, giving us not only four more disastrous years of Donald Trump but also handing the enemies of any sort of leftist agenda a powerful argument against nominating progressive candidates in the future; this is a far worse outcome than a Biden presidency.

But as long as Bernie Sanders is still in the race, the correct approach is to fully support him to the bitter end, particularly in the face of recycled smears that he and his supporters are a bunch of sexists. "Woke" leftist attempts to accommodate these accusations in the name of "recognizing misogyny on one's own side" are entirely the wrong approach when the accusations are motivated by pure cynicism, as well as by the classist notion that the poor and working class who support Sanders are a bunch of ignorant bigots. The only correct response is to recognize these attacks as the reprehensible smears they are, and even to ask why Warren and her supporters feel the need to dishonestly attack the candidate who would be our first Jewish president (perhaps they're all secretly antisemites themselves—no more ridiculous a claim than their own lies about Sanders and "Bernie bros"). And we should have no concern about "progressive unity" or handing Biden the nomination as we fight back; better the nomination go to an outspoken centrist than to one who pretends to be something they're not.

ADDENDUM: While it's moot now, I want to note that this post was written before Tara Reade came out with her full, and deeply disturbing, allegations against Biden; if these allegations had been public at the time I'd written this post, I would not have argued leftists should support Biden over Warren.