Of all the candidates the Democrats fielded this year, I think Elizabeth Warren would have made the best President. But, for whatever reasons, her campaign did not muster the necessary strength. And now she has dropped out.
The question arises: what should she do about endorsing someone else now, in what is a two-man race between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden?
Here’s what I would advise based on this sole criterion: she should do what maximizes the chances of the defeat of Donald Trump in November.
(As it happens, my advice would also potentially serve her own remaining political ambition, but that is only incidental.)
When it comes to maximizing the likelihood of defeating Trump, I believe two things are most essential:
that the Democratic Party emerge from this nominating process as unified as possible; and that Joe Biden and not Bernie Sanders is the nominee. (See my piece from Monday, “How the Urgent Need to Defeat Trump Has Compelled Me to Change How I’ll Vote Tomorrow.”)I will assume here that Warren agrees with me on both those points, although I am only speculating on whether she agrees that Sanders would be too risky a candidate in this national emergency in which Trump must be defeated.
Elizabeth Warren may have an important role to play in enabling the Party to achieve unity for the general election. That’s because, of major Democratic leaders, she is the closest ideologically — and somewhat personally — to Bernie Sanders and is correspondingly held in high regard by Bernie’s followers.
That standing she has with the Sanders camp could prove important for party unity in either of two ways:
1) If Biden is the nominee, he could choose Warren for his running mate. That might help minimize the defections of the Bernie supporters around the nation, and thus help achieve that party unity that everyone agrees is so important.
(Being Biden’s VP could well turn out to be a path to Warren’s becoming President in only four years. My own belief is that Biden should serve only one term: he’s already showing his age more than one would wish; and the historic task of getting Trump out of the White House — and thereby potentially saving American democracy itself — would be a great accomplishment, and he could then leave the presidency at the age of 82.
(Elizabeth Warren would be 75 years old when she assumed office, if she were elected in 2024, which is younger than either Biden or Sanders is right now. She seems now to be young for her age, but if she wouldn’t get to run for President until 2028 when she’s 79, that would not be so great. So if Biden were to plan on serving eight years — not my preference, though I understand he can’t declare out loud an intention to serve only one term — it would be better for him to choose a younger person for VP at this summer’s convention. My choice for that would be Amy Klobuchar, for a variety of reasons— and she’s only 59 now.)
2) The other way that Warren might provide a means of achieving Party unity is if neither Biden nor Sanders comes to the convention with a majority of delegates, and if neither the Biden side nor the Sanders side is willing to accept the other candidate, it might be that the convention would ultimately turn to Warren as a compromise candidate acceptable to both sides and thus a means of holding the Party together.
(I no longer think that no one will get a majority on the first ballot. If Biden’s momentum — his great strength among those who voted on Tuesday versus with the early voting — does not falter, I’m expecting Biden to rack up a string of big victories and get a dominant majority of delegates even before the last primary.)
So Warren is in a potentially unique position to address one of those needs of the moment — holding the party together— because of her standing with many of the Bernie people. And now comes the question of endorsement, and the challenge of maintaining good standing with the Bernie people without jeopardizing the emergence of the stronger of the candidates — Biden — as the nominee.
Option # 1: She could endorse Sanders, believing that her endorsement will not change enough votes to endanger the desirable outcome (the nomination of Biden). At least that for sure would cement her ties to the Bernie supporters, keeping it possible for her to play the unifying role. I would work hard to confirm that the endorsement wouldn’t strengthen Sanders too much before I would choose this course.
Option #2: She could stay silent. I’d work on coming to some good judgment about whether or how much her silence would damage her standing with the Bernie contingent.
Option #3: I would give a speech — withdrawing from the race and speaking powerfully about the urgent need for Democrats to defeat Donald Trump, portraying the threat that he poses, and then move to declaring:
“Because the urgent task for us Democrats is to defeat Donald Trump, that means that we Democrats have to decide which candidate will give us the best chance of accomplishing that task. Who is most likely to win is the question we must be asking, because that’s what the nation desperately needs for us to accomplish.
“I don’t claim to have any special insight into that question. I have my beliefs, but as I see it, that’s a judgment our voters should make for themselves. So I am not going to endorse either candidate— though I will do absolutely everything I can to help whoever the Democratic voters of our nation choose through the nominating process.
“Instead, here is what I endorse for each of my supporters to do: Vote for the person you think will be the best bet for winning against Donald Trump in November, whoever you think will best gain the support from the American people to take the powers of the presidency out of the hands of this wrecking-ball of a President.”
I think this could maintain a connection with the Sanders people: while it would be true that she didn’t throw her support to Bernie, it puts the Sanders supporter in the position of either interpreting her call to vote for the strongest candidate as being a kind of endorsement of Bernie, or of having to acknowledge in some way that Bernie is less electable than Biden.
And in the meanwhile, it could focus the party on the task at hand, and it could include a big pitch for party unity. (“No matter what the outcome of this process is, we should all of us commit ourselves to remain unified to make as sure as possible that we accomplish this task that the nation so desperately needs for us to accomplish. It is our patriotic duty.”
And all of this would alert the nation to the extraordinary meaning of this year’s presidential election: it is about whether America will change in fundamental ways in directions contrary to what have always been our nation’s basic values.
This would be received and remembered not as a “withdrawal” speech, but as a speech providing national leadership. Not a bad way to go out.