She no longer persisted.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren pulled the plug Thursday on her once-promising campaign after failing to score a single victory or even a second-place finish in the Democratic presidential race.
Her exit reduces the contest to a virtual two-candidate race between former Vice President Joseph R. Biden and Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont and raises questions about where her supporters will gravitate.
“I was told at the beginning of this whole undertaking that there are two lanes: a progressive lane that Bernie Sanders is the incumbent for and a moderate lane that Joe Biden is the incumbent for, and there is no room for anyone else in this,” Ms. Warren told reporters outside her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I thought that wasn’t right, but evidently I was wrong.”
She vowed that the end of her campaign would not be the end of her “fight for the hardworking folks in this country who have gotten the short end of the stick over and over.”
Ms. Warren also lamented that the nation will have to wait at least another four years before electing its first female president.
Though her far-left ideology is more closely aligned with that of Mr. Sanders, he is not the guaranteed inheritor of her voters. Her followers tended to be college-educated women who backed her ambitious liberal plans but not necessarily the “political revolution” Mr. Sanders offered.
Mr. Sanders and Mr. Biden were aggressively courting her endorsement, but Ms. Warren said she would be “taking a deep breath” before giving her stamp of approval.
The 70-year-old entered the race in February 2019 as a darling of the far left. She backed up her platform of “big structural change” for U.S. government and society with a series of detailed plans, including a 2% tax on the wealthiest Americans to pay for new benefits including tuition-free college, universal day care, student debt forgiveness and a down payment on a Green New Deal environmentalist makeover of the economy.
Earlier, in announcing her decision to campaign staff, Ms. Warren said they came up short but succeeded in altering America’s political landscape. She urged her staff members to keep fighting.
“So if you leave with only one thing you leave with, it must be this. Choose to fight only righteous fights, because then when things get tough — and they will — you will know that there is the only option ahead of you: Nevertheless, you must persist,” she said in a conference call with campaign staff.
That was a reference to Ms. Warren’s viral moment in 2017 when she was arguing against the appointment of Jeff Sessions as attorney general and read a letter insulting him on the Senate floor. The Republican leader ordered that she be punished, saying she had been warned not to read the letter but “nevertheless she persisted.” She wore the barb as a badge of honor, and it quickly became a feminist mantra in the Trump era.
Ms. Warren recently began to reposition herself slightly to the right of Mr. Sanders, an avowed socialist who dominated the far-left lane of the race but sustained stiff opposition from the Democratic Party establishment.
Ms. Warren’s exit leaves Mr. Sanders in a head-to-head contest against the establishment favorite, Mr. Biden.
The only other major candidate remaining is Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, whose underdog run on an anti-war platform has yet to gain significant traction.
The final blow to Ms. Warren’s campaign was dealt this week from the Super Tuesday primaries. She finished a distant third in her home state.
Sanders supporters viewed Ms. Warren as a spoiler who peeled off enough votes from their candidate to give Mr. Biden key victories.
President Trump gave voice to that viewpoint. He said Thursday that Ms. Warren should have quit sooner.
“Elizabeth ’Pocahontas’ Warren, who was going nowhere except into Mini Mike’s head, just dropped out of the Democrat Primary … THREE DAYS TOO LATE. She cost Crazy Bernie, at least, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas. Probably cost him the nomination! Came in third in Mass,” the president tweeted.
Mr. Sanders and Mr. Biden reportedly spoke with Ms. Warren after results came in from the Tuesday primaries.
Ms. Warren stumbled into the race after trying to explain away her past claims of American Indian ancestry. She gradually found her footing and even led some polls in mid-October.
The downward turn began in the October debate in Ohio when her rivals took a more aggressive aim at her far-left policy vision — in particular her support for “Medicare for All.”
They questioned how a candidate with an “I have a plan for that” message was unwilling to fill in details of how she would pay for her vision and whether it would result in higher taxes on the middle class.
Ms. Warren tried to stop the criticism by eventually outlining a plan to pay for her Medicare for All by raising taxes on businesses and corporations.
With polls showing Americans didn’t support abolishment of private insurance or more taxes for health care, Ms. Warren started backing away from Medicare for All in December. She said her initial focus would be to expand Medicare through a public option and implement a Medicare for All program later.
The move damaged her image in the eyes of far-left activists, making it easier for them to rally around Mr. Sanders.
• Alex Swoyer and Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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