Aaron Goldstein argues at National Review Online that a single controversial freshman in the U.S. House of Representatives helped sink Elizabeth Warren’s White House bid.
Since Elizabeth Warren dropped out from the 2020 Democratic race, we have been treated to a litany of articles lamenting her departure. Many of the writers predictably decried sexism as the cause of Warren’s failure to win the Democratic Party nomination. …
… The most striking disparity for Warren concerns not gender but ideology. While progressives might not be the majority in America, they do constitute a critical mass of the Democratic Party. In New Hampshire, Sanders outpolled Warren among liberal voters by 20 points (33 to 13 percent) and nearly 30 points by very liberal voters (48 to 19 percent). …
… These results are worth mentioning because none of the aforementioned postmortems of Warren’s failed presidential bid made any mention of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s decision to endorse Bernie Sanders. To ignore AOC’s endorsement of Sanders over Warren is to ignore the Democratic Party’s evolution from a liberal to a democratic-socialist political party and her influence on that evolution.
Warren had been leading in the national polls. After AOC’s endorsement, Warren led in only one more national poll, and by mid December her numbers would never again be better than Bernie’s.
