I honestly believe that if Kamala Harris had stayed in the race Warren would be President elect. The reason is because most Democratic states had yet to vote, and I think Bernie’s anti-Democratic rhetoric would have ended up hurting him and seeing a split moderate vote would have encouraged more progressives to vote for the candidate who has actually sponsored legislation which was signed into law in the last 20 years.
Warren would have stayed in the race to the end, she would have done better in the early primaries (because fewer voters would have voted for Sanders). She would have continued to stump for down ballot candidates throughout the entire campaign and she would have done better than both Biden and Sanders. It says a lot really, when Warren announced her candidacy there was Kamala Harris in the center, and she had a very clear path to the nomination. Kamala Harris dropping out before 2020 even began made that path far less clear, and Warren still pulled over 5% of the vote. She had the best performance of a candidate who came in third place in a Democratic Presidential primary since Paul Tsongas in 1992.
With only one New Democrat really in the race, and two progressives, a lot of would be Warren voters played it safe by voting for Sanders (who got more attention, because being unable to pass any laws he sponsored in the last 20 years nullifies him as a threat to establishment) which is how we ended up with Sanders getting over 20% of the vote. When we get to the general, with Warren as the nominee we would have had a lot more work by her campaign on down ballot races, which would have improved our chances in Maine and Iowa and also improved the chances of progressive candidates in the primary last August which would have meant we would have done better in the House elections, and we would already have 50 seats in the Senate for a trifecta.
The last 20 years have made it very clear to me that New Democrats are not safe picks in the General, but they are very strategic in ensuring that they get the nomination.
We have seen a resurgence of progressive nominees over the last 15 years because in 2000 and 2004 we saw two moderate Democrats as our nominee, one of them just barely lost, and Kerry was absolutely destroyed.
After losing twice in a row, that gave Obama a significant advantage by running on progressive values, progressives got control of the DNC, campaigned to issues Americans care about, and we got the biggest trifecta since FDR was president.
Sanders was never a very good candidate to be honest, and it shows in how much he lost the African American vote. This year I believe Warren was the best pick for President, with the longest coat tails in the race, but she was too progressive for cable news.
Because of this, Sanders got more attention, Warren got either ignored and attacked by her opponents more than any other, and we both lost seats in the House and the Senate is dependent on two runoffs in a state which hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in over 20 years.
It is a really big problem that the main narrative is that Biden won, so his strategy worked. His strategy worked because he was campaigning against a pandemic, a 33% drop in GDP, and unemployment which was over 10%.
The question now is… will a moderate message work in an economy which has been growing for 3 years, an unemployment rate of 5%, no spoiler for the Republicans, and no epidemic? The last moderate candidate President who did that was Jimmy Carter, running against Nixon’s ghost.
The last moderate Democratic President before Carter was Woodrow Wilson, who was elected before my great-grandmother was born and then only because of a massive spoiler effect. History seems to imply that moderate Democrats lose without extreme circumstances and all of this is as the Republican Party has just become more and more extreme over the last century. 2024 is going to be a significantly different election from 2020, and we are going to ensure that we keep the House and gain the Senate in 2 years and then give Republicans the spanking they deserve in 2024 to force them to rethink their platform. I don’t expect another candidate like Ross Perot in the future, because if we were going to see one we would have seen one this year.
Without a spoiler, epidemic, or recession, the two campaigns we need to study and emulate are those of Obama in 2008 and Kennedy in 1960.
That will be a winning strategy, a campaign which speaks to voters, and for once we need to learn from history.