I openly supported Elizabeth Warren this primary season, and still do! But it’s obvious by now that she won’t be our nominee. Despite the best efforts of so many, and for any number of reasons, the voters had other ideas.
Rural, white Iowa had other ideas, picking Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders. New Hampshire had other ideas, picking those two while giving a lift to Amy Klobuchar. Nevada and its Latinos went for Bernie. South Carolina decisively said, “JOE gets the Black vote.” And just like that, what was expected to be a day for Sanders to amass a delegate lead turned into a decisive and race-ending Biden rout.
Nowhere, in any of those contest, did Warren figure. Not even in her own home state of Massachusetts.
This race isn’t over, and there’s no reason Biden and Bernie shouldn’t keep fighting it out (and maybe even Warren, to keep her voice in the debates and maybe get some convention leverage). But looking at what’s left on the map, it’s pretty clear that Biden is likely to be the nominee.
I’m not at peace with Biden being the nominee. Not because of electability issues (I’ve long maintained that all our candidates are electable), but because of ideology and policy. I’m never going to be “excited” about Biden.
But you know what? I don’t need to be excited. Too many people act like picking a president is like picking a partner, or an American Idol winner. It’s not. You don’t need to be in love. You just have to fight for the candidate that will be better for America. And none of our candidates would put kids in cages.
If you want to be “excited,” there are plenty of down-ballot candidates who will light this place on fire. We can continue building a bench so that we have those better choices in the future. We also need the Senate for all the obvious reasons (No. 1: The Supreme Court.) But our job is to beat Trump, and whether it’s Biden, or whether Bernie somehow pulls off a miracle, we’ll need to rally. (We can save the policy battles—and there will be plenty—for after we win.)
Had Warren won the nomination, I would’ve hoped that the supporters of the rest of the field would come together and fight for the common good. It’s only right and fair that I extend that same courtesy to the eventual winner of this primary.
You don’t have to love Biden to fight to free kids from cages, and to ensure a liberal replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court. This isn’t about you or me. It’s not about what makes you “feel” better. With 22 candidates in the field, the odds were always stacked against our candidate winning.
This is about our country. And right now, we have to defeat Republicans from the top of the ballot on down. That’s the only thing that matters.