Elizabeth Warren Is Unlikely to Endorse Bernie Sanders. Here's Why.

[Dennis Donovan]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-endorsement-bernie-sanders.html

By Astead W. Herndon and Shane Goldmacher
March 11, 2020, 6:07 p.m. ET

Senator Elizabeth Warren, whose endorsement became highly coveted in the Democratic presidential race after she dropped out last week, is unlikely to endorse her ideological ally Senator Bernie Sanders, according to several people close to her, even though Mr. Sanders is looking for political lifelines as he struggles against former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Ms. Warren is expected to withhold her endorsement from Mr. Sanders as well as Mr. Biden at this point, choosing to let the primary play out rather than seek to change its course, according to several people familiar with Ms. Warren’s thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss her considerations.

Even before Mr. Sanders lost four states in Tuesday’s primaries, dealing a huge blow to his presidential hopes, Ms. Warren was reluctant to support him, these people said. The spirited presidential campaign caused some rifts between the two liberals, including their clash in January over whether Mr. Sanders once told her that a woman couldn’t be elected president in 2020, an episode that deeply troubled her. Her camp also viewed Mr. Sanders’s electoral standing as fading in recent weeks, raising doubts about whether an endorsement would be a lost cause.

Ms. Warren has spoken to Mr. Biden once since Super Tuesday but multiple times to Mr. Sanders, as she and her team have fielded overtures from Sanders supporters seeking to coax her to his aid.

</snip>

That's a blow to Sanders, for sure.

[zentrum]

1. True to her values.

She know Bernie can't win. And she knows many of Biden's positions and much of his history does not align with hers at all.

[msongs]

2. she knows bernie does not have the right skill set to be president IMO nt

[Cha]

3. I wouldn't think so.

[Tweedy]

4. Coax her?

What was all of that on-line vitriol and obnoxiousness aimed at Senator Warren and her supporters about then?

This does not surprise me.

It did surprise me that Warren's groundgame folks helped Biden in Michigan although today, I don't find it so very surprising.

Senator Warren has spent her entire adult life trying to fix our financial house of horrors. She is not going to stop now. And Bernie Sanders should have become a democrat (& ceased bashing democrats) last election cycle.

[thesquanderer]

5. No way she endorses Sanders now, he's clearly going to lose! So it's Biden or no one. n/t

[Hortensis]

8. Biggest reason: Sanders is NOT her ideological mate.

Good grief. He demonizes and has spent decades insisting on the necessity of destroying what she values tremendously. She is a rational, competent, iconoclast of good character who believes in using the power of the large, very powerful mainstream "establishment" to serve everyone, of course including the mainstream voters who above all created it.

How many times and ways does that have to be proven?

She refused to endorse Sanders in 2016. There are genuine, implacable differences in ideology, personality and principles. Sanders made similar attempts to woo her then.

She instead waited basically to the end to endorse Hillary, another person Sanders demonized, during which time they negotiated what she wanted in return for her support. Btw, in 2015 and 2016 both Biden (considering running) and Hillary approached her seriously about her becoming their VP running mate, and she was open to discussion with Biden, who ended up not running, and, as we know, wanted to run with Hillary. They even took it out for a public test run.

[aikoaiko]

9. Its what she did in 2016, too.

[NoPasaran]

10. I think she's unlikely to endorse Sanders

Because there's little to be gained by boarding a sinking ship.

[ecdab]

11. That's right

She'll endorse Biden. She may wait for Bernie to exit the race, or for Joe to hit the 1,990 delegate threshold if Bernie is too stubborn to promote a unified Democratic effort against the most vile of Presidents.

[ehrnst]

12. I've been seeing AOC move towards Warren's POV and "the establishment" lately, and likely

for the same reasons. Calling Speaker Pelosi a "Mama Bear," and supporting incremental progress rather than upending health care in two years are two examples.

AOC sees the writing on the wall - getting things accomplished is what people want over pontificating and getting nothing done, and Bernie is on his way out of politics.

[BeyondGeography]

13. +1