Politico has a new piece up last night discussing Elizabeth Warren and the role her endorsement could play in the Democratic primaries.
Most striking among everything that was said is the sense that seems universal in Washington- Elizabeth Warren supports Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, but has some difficult political calculations to go through as to when to make that public.
Democrats in Washington and New Hampshire — especially the ones supporting Hillary Clinton — want Elizabeth Warren to end the wait and endorse a candidate soon.
New Hampshire Democrats know that Warren’s support could be a boon for Clinton in the state where polls show a neck and neck race.
Sanders and Clinton supporters are both hoping to get the endorsement, but no one wants to push Warren on the timing.
So the partywide consensus about the potential power of Warren’s endorsement in her next-door state — other than those of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, it’s viewed as the one remaining endorsement that could swing the neck-and-neck early-state primary — has led supporters of each candidate to tread carefully around efforts to pressure Warren on a decision.
Hillary’s team has been doing the outreach to Warren’s office (and many former Warren staffers are now working for Hillary, while Sanders is not making a concerted effort to win her support.
While Warren’s office has kept in touch with the many former Warren staffers on Clinton’s team, for example, no details have leaked out about such discussions in the nine months since the front-runner launched her campaign.
While the Sanders campaign, which features a handful of staffers who previously worked for the Draft Warren movement, would also love her support, there is no behind-the-scenes effort to woo her coming from the Burlington headquarters, said chief Sanders strategist Tad Devine. Instead, the underdog is relying entirely on his personal relationship with Warren to make the pitch.
So what is Elizabeth Warren thinking?
But people close to Warren’s political advisers in Boston say an endorsement of Clinton is far more likely than one of Sanders at this point. Clinton allies have long pointed to a 2013 letter that Warren signed with other female Democratic senators urging the former secretary of state to get into the race.
Many of Warren’s supporters are already traveling to New Hampshire to help Hillary out, so the endorsement wouldn’t provide as much help in the way of infrastructure
An endorsement from the bank antagonist wouldn’t likely provide a major jolt to Clinton’s ground game in New Hampshire — which already features help from members of Warren’s political orbit who travel up from Massachusetts on the weekends — but the resultant news coverage would likely provide a dose of momentum, explained multiple Manchester, Boston, and Washington-based Democrats aligned with Clinton and Warren.
For their part, Clinton’s team is not expecting the endorsement to come before the New Hampshire primary
But Democrats close to Clinton aren’t holding their breath for a formal nod between now and New Hampshire’s Feb. 9 primary, figuring that Warren has little to gain from backing the front-runner and a lot to lose in terms of credibility among her progressive backers who are now with Sanders.
Sanders’s supporters seem to see the writing on the wall, as they are engaging in their usual behavior of attacking and dismissing progressive politicians and organizations that decline to back their guy.
By waiting so long to take sides in the first place, said a handful of Sanders allies, she has already started to lose her luster with the state’s most ardent progressives.
“Until Bernie really took off, Elizabeth Warren was the only voice of progressives,” said liberal New Hampshire radio host and Clinton critic Arnie Arnesen, a former state representative who’s run unsuccessfully for the House and the governorship. “Bernie, in an interesting way, has cast a shadow over Elizabeth. Not that people don’t love her still, but she’s not essential.”
“People don’t talk about her at all,” added fellow radio host and former state senator Burt Cohen, now a Sanders supporter. “I had a bumper sticker on my car urging Liz Warren to run before Bernie got in. The people that care about Liz Warren are all on board with Bernie, and there’s no talk about her whatsoever.”
The timing of Warren’s endorsement seems to be the critical thing here. It is less a question of ‘if’ and more of ‘when.’
As we’ve seen with other progressive heroes like Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, the supporters of Senator Sanders will throw Clinton endorsers under the bus in a moment, though Warren may have more visibility and political capital that would make that difficult than some of her lesser-known colleagues
The best possibility for Sanders would be for Warren to wait until the nomination is decided to make an official endorsement, as it seems likely that winning the nomination is the only way he would earn her support. Obviously Hillary would like to see the endorsement earlier rather than later, but also has a consistent and well-organized roll out program for prominent endorsers.
A Clinton endorsement by Warren has always seemed fairly likely, given Warren’s signing of a letter encouraging Clinton to run in the first place. Warren doesn’t want to see her progressive credentials have mud flung at them by Sanders supporters, but she also wants to win the White House next year for Democrats.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. If she does indeed endorse Clinton before the nomination is decided, it will also be interesting to see if she is attacked and dismissed as quickly as other progressives have been.