Elizabeth Warren, I Was Rooting for You

I remember sitting in my dorm freshman year arguing with my roommate’s best friend about who should be the next Democratic nominee. He tried to tell me Joe Biden would be perfect for the job. Forget about the fact that he touches little girls and has dementia. We need a centrist to win against Trump. Because that totally worked in 2016…

And while I gave my perfectly crafted arguments as to why a progressive would be the best chance we have, Elizabeth Warren announced her candidacy and I almost lost it. It seemed too good to be true. A progressive woman was running for president. There was no way it could have gone wrong. But of course, it did.

Since 2015, I have been a strong Bernie supporter. And if I’m being honest, I still am today. I wish I could have supported Elizabeth Warren, and for a short time, I did. It was amazing watching her and Bernie tag team throughout the first few debates defending Medicare for All. I loved how she stood up for progressive values and wasn’t afraid to call the other candidates out for misleading the American people.

But all of that changed when she began to receive extensive media coverage. Instead of backing Medicare for All, Warren began attacking it saying it wouldn’t work. She soon came out with her own plan which didn’t get rid of private health insurance. And she began to say she wouldn’t push for public healthcare until her third year in office. And simultaneously, her numbers started dropping in the polls.

It was clear to me why. People love economic populism. And Elizabeth Warren was perfect for pushing progressive values and ideas without stirring things up too much. But once it became clear that wasn’t where she wanted to go, people started looking elsewhere.

This was similar to Kamala Harris who used progressive rhetoric in what she said, yet still tried to appeal to centrists. The thing about that is, you can’t be both. And that is something I don’t think Elizabeth Warren understands. And considering her actions since Super Tuesday, it’s proving to be incredibly true.

Once voting and polling for the primaries started, it became clear that Warren wasn’t going to win any states. Yet she said she was staying in the race with the hopes of gaining the most delegates by the end of the Democratic Convention. I found that interesting considering before she was running for president, she believed whoever won the popular vote should be the nominee. But I guess we can ignore that. And to a degree I did. Sure, it would have been great if she dropped out and endorsed Bernie, but it’s a competition; so, in a way I understood.

But then, every progressive’s worst nightmare happened. All the centrists dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden right before Super Tuesday which ended up giving him the victory of the night. This sparked a conversation among the progressive base because the race ended up being between Bernie and Biden, and Elizabeth Warren was just kind of there.

Perhaps if she had dropped out then it would have helped Bernie. But we don’t know that for sure. What’s really upsetting me along with the rest of the progressive movement is that she dropped out and didn’t endorse anybody. And while we were all contemplating what would happen next, hoping she was going to do something to help the movement, she didn’t. Instead, she appeared on SNL and went on cable news with yet again another attack on Bernie and his supporters.

There are a lot of people saying that she doesn’t owe Bernie anything; and they’re right, she doesn’t. But it’s not that she owes Bernie something, it’s that she owes us, the American people something. She is a sitting Senator, which means she works for us. Her job is to do everything in her power to help us. But instead, she’s ultimately helping the man she joined politics to fight against, who has no chance of defeating Donald Trump, win the Democratic primaries. 

If Elizabeth Warren truly cared about progressive values, then she’d endorse Bernie. If she truly cared about giving everyone access to healthcare and stopping the climate crisis, she would endorse Bernie. But instead, she has stayed silent the same way she did in 2016. And this can only lead me to believe that it was never about the people, it was always about her branding herself as a “woke queen.” And in the midst of it, she somehow missed the irony of it all.

Want to see more HCFSU? Be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest!

• feminism
• FSU
• news
• politics
• primaries