A recent Avalanche Strategy poll of likely Democratic voters found Joe Biden in the lead, but when voters were asked to “imagine that they have a magic wand and can make any of the candidates president,” Elizabeth Warren narrowly became the top choice. https://t.co/tIsWKwMh27
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) June 21, 2019
Even if it is Politico announcing it — “Warren emerges as potential compromise nominee”:
… With 99 town halls and 30,000 selfies under her belt, Warren has offered a level of access that has disarmed some critics. She’s also made a point of traveling to some of the reddest of red-state locales — Mississippi, Utah and West Virginia, among them…
Polling suggests that at least one of Warren’s lightning-rod proposals — taxing the net worth of the wealthiest Americans — has support that extends beyond progressive circles. According to a recent Morning Consult survey, 61 percent of all voters favored her 2 percent wealth tax on households worth at least $50 million. Among Democrats, 74 percent favored the plan…
Ezra Klein, at Vox, had an excellent interview before the current ‘surge’ on “Elizabeth Warren’s plan to pass her plans” — I’d read this if nothing else:
… Ezra Klein: How different would it be for Democrats — or in this case for you — to run against Donald Trump in 2020 after he has passed all this agenda, the Republican agenda, versus in 2016, when he was claimed to be a populist running to reform the Republican Party. In polls, people thought Donald Trump was quite moderate in 2016. It seems running actually having a record now is going to snap what he is into place in a way that makes his reelection campaign very different.
Elizabeth Warren: He’s now got a record. Over and over, you can say he gave away a trillion-and-a-half dollars that just all went to the rich guys. The tariffs are killing you. It’s the ability now to come back and just say here are the facts. Here’s what happens and just hold him to it.
Now I don’t want to kid myself about it. He is a master at distraction and will want to talk about something else. I think part of this will be talking about what he’s done, but I think the much more central part will be, as Democrats, are we just going to be not-Trump? In which case, we ignore the fact something was broken in this country to elect a guy like Trump. Or are we going to be the party that says we get what’s wrong, we have a plan to fix it, and we’re going to build a grassroots movement to make that happen?…
Cole linked to Dahlia Lithwick’s Slate article when it first appeared, but it’s worth highlighting:
… [T]he women who come to these early Warren rallies like being addressed by an adult as adults. At a time when America has devalued teachers, empathy, expertise, and planning for the future, Elizabeth Warren serves as one reminder of what we have lost. It doesn’t mean the voters will necessarily throng to her side. It just means that the women I spoke to, and more and more of the women I know, don’t mind being educated about how everything went so terribly wrong in their political lifetimes. Elizabeth Warren can explain it, and has a plan for it, and believes she can fix it. It’s not glittery, and it may not make your heart beat faster in a stadium. But in a world of noise and bluster, her clarity has its own sort of charm.