The 2020 Democratic primary took place in a disorienting atmosphere. The 2016 election, in which the supposedly unelectable candidate had defeated the supposedly safe one, seemed to overturn all the conventional assumptions about the electorate, and many activists and candidates went into the next election as if those assumptions weren’t true. Perhaps the voters were craving an even more radical change to the system. Maybe the key was to activate the moribund progressive voters who had been energized by Bernie Sanders and then sat out the general election. ….
Persist, Elizabeth Warren’s new memoir of her life and presidential campaign, is an excellent and informative account of how that bubble formed. Her campaign was perhaps a prime case study in the delirious post-2016 atmosphere and the errors in political judgment it produced. CONTINUED
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine
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