Elizabeth Warren just gave a stunning interview to Rachel Maddow, and it’ll shake up the entire primary race
When it became clear earlier this week that Elizabeth Warren no longer had a path to the nomination, Palmer Report predicted that if she did drop out, she wouldn’t endorse anyone at this time. Instead she would start using her leverage to try to steer the remaining candidates in the direction she wants them to go, because the eventual nominee is going to need her endorsement in the end. It turns out I was correct. What I didn’t see coming was what Warren just did on live national television.
Elizabeth Warren gave an interview to Rachel Maddow tonight, and let’s just say that it’ll probably change everything. Warren made clear how proud she was that she forced corporate centrist Mike Bloomberg out of the race. Then, when it was time for her to take her big swing at shaping the remainder of the race, she decided that the more urgent remaining problem in the race is the toxic nature of Bernie Sanders’s most prominent supporters.
To be clear, Warren didn’t hold back. She said the same thing about Bernie’s toxic cult that I’ve been sounding the alarm about for the past month. She said it in a more thoughtful and eloquent fashion than I could have, because she’s a smarter and better person than I am. But she said it just as forcefully as I’ve been saying it. She put the onus on Bernie for being unwilling or unable to get his fans under control. She blamed his fans for costing Hillary the election last time, and she’s worried they’re going to cost Biden the election this time. She also made clear that she tried to speak to Bernie privately about his fans, but that he wasn’t interested in hearing it.
So why is Elizabeth Warren doing this right now? Bernie Sanders’ rank and file supporters are not toxic people. But his top campaign advisers and surrogates are some of the most toxic, divisive, immature, incompetent, dishonest stooges ever assembled on the liberal side of American politics. This band of goons running the show has convinced many of Bernie’s rank and file supporters that trolling, harassment, and conspiracy theories are the best way to get Bernie into office. And while there are some fake bots trying to amplify this toxicity online, many of Bernie’s most vicious online trolls are easily identifiable as being real people and real accounts. Many of them are so brainwashed, they don’t even think they need to bother voting for Bernie, as evidenced by his poor turnout in primary states thus far.
If something isn’t done about the toxic nature of the Bernie movement, it could cost us the election. In the increasingly likely event that Joe Biden is the nominee, Bernie’s fans don’t think they need to bother voting for him over Trump. And in the unlikely event that Bernie is the nominee, his fans seem to think they can spend the general election trolling people and reciting lunatic conspiracy theories, instead of getting out and driving the vote. Either way, it could be four more years of Trump.
Some of Bernie’s rank and file fans will listen to Elizabeth Warren, and some will merely begin trolling her. In fact that trolling of Warren is immediately underway on social media tonight, as some of Bernie’s furthest-gone fans are unwittingly proving her correct already. But the reality is that if Sanders wants any remote shot at getting anywhere, he’s going to need to eventually earn Warren’s endorsement. She’s making clear that he has no chance of getting her endorsement unless he cleans up his toxic shit show of a movement.
Based on this interview it’s clear, as I suspected all along, that Elizabeth Warren is just fine with an honest mainstream liberal like Joe Biden being the nominee, even though he’s not as far to the left as she is. She knows that if Biden is President, he’ll listen to her on things like economic reform. Warren simply didn’t want an unaccountable money bag centrist like Bloomberg to be the nominee. It’s also clear that, as I’ve long suspected, Warren thinks Bernie is a stooge who does a poor job of representing the far left.
