Chat with almost any political professional in and around Washington, and you find something of a consensus building on the following:
1. Elizabeth Warren is going to be the nominee.
2. She’s going to have a hard time beating Trump.Last week, I spent time looking at the first point. Today, I want to walk through the second.
The easiest case to make against Warren is that she’s too liberal, too coastal, and too polarizing to win the former “Blue Wall” midwestern states needed to capture the Electoral College. Moreover, Democrats’ biggest political successes since 2016 have come in suburban America, where former GOP voters, so turned off by Trump’s personality and policies, have been voting for Democrats. Successful suburban Democrats, however, spent 2018 de-emphasizing the kinds of ‘big, structural change’ that Warren espouses, like Medicare for All, elimination of student debt/free college and the break up of big banks and big tech. CONT.
Amy Walter, Cook Political Report