Fuck Yeah!

So grateful to have had @MauriceWFP with me at our Washington Square Park event. @WorkingFamilies has been on the front line of the fight for racial and economic justice, and I'm honored to have their support. We're going to build this grassroots movement together. pic.twitter.com/WMxCY62IZF

— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) September 20, 2019

Tip O’Neill always warned candidates not to neglect the voters who could be assumed to be on their side: People like to be asked.

Elaine Godfrey, at the Atlantic:

In 2016, Bernie Sanders described the Working Families Party (WFP), a grassroots progressive organization, as “the closest thing there is” to his “vision of democratic socialism.” The group endorsed him in his primary race against Hillary Clinton, and it’s grown more powerful in the past three years, as it has sought to build a multiracial populist movement nationwide. But this time around, with Sanders taking another shot for the White House, the group is throwing its weight behind someone else: Elizabeth Warren. The group’s surprising decision could be an early indicator of how progressives—including those who backed Sanders in the past—are planning to organize and vote next year.

“The political conditions are different” in this election, Maurice Mitchell, the national director of the WFP, told me earlier this week, after the group announced that Warren defeated Sanders in a vote of WFP members and leadership, earning 61 percent compared to Sanders’s 36 percent. Unlike in 2016, there is more than one progressive candidate in the race to choose from, Mitchell said. Warren “has a track record of finding that nexus between visionary structural change and also the tools to operationalize it.”

Mitchell’s reasoning echoed the sentiments of other progressive voters I’ve spoken with recently. They have affection for Sanders and appreciate what he’s done for the movement, as roughly one dozen voters explained to me this week. But Warren, they argued, is proffering a kinder, gentler version of progressivism—one that is rooted in her experience, simple to understand, and compelling enough to attract a broad swath of voters.

“She’s everything Bernie is—but a bit more electable,” said Joe Piluso, a 71-year-old former Sanders supporter and former social-services worker living in San Diego…

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Excellent Read: “Why Ex–Sanders Supporters Are Backing Warren”Post + Comments (177)