Warren Campaign Outlines Nomination Path, Citing Rivals’ Flaws
Warren’s campaign released a memo that highlights the vulnerabilities of her leading rivals.
(Bloomberg) -- Elizabeth Warren’s campaign released a memo Tuesday that lays out a path to the Democratic presidential nomination and highlights the vulnerabilities of her leading rivals.
The memo by campaign manager Roger Lau aims to reverse perceptions that Warren’s candidacy is fading. It comes as polls show she could place fourth in the New Hampshire primary after a middling third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses last week. She also is trailing in South Carolina, the next state to hold a primary.
Lau takes aim at Bernie Sanders, who is leading in New Hampshire and nationally, saying the Vermont senator has a political “ceiling that’s significantly lower than the support he had four years ago.” He goes on to note the drop in support for onetime front-runner Joe Biden and says Pete Buttigieg, who collected the most delegates in the Iowa caucuses, will be hampered once the race moves to states that are more diverse.
Lau said the campaign has the infrastructure to weather a “wide-open” and “volatile and unpredictable” race even if Warren doesn’t finish first in the contests before Super Tuesday, on March 3, when California, Texas and 12 other states and territories hold primaries.
“The road to the Democratic nomination is not paved with statewide winner-take-all victories,” Lau said. “It’s not a straightforward narrative captured by glancing at a map, and the process won’t be decided by the simple horse race numbers in clickbait headlines. That’s never been our focus -- our focus is on building a broad coalition to win delegates everywhere.”
The tone of the memo is a stark contrast with how Warren campaigns on the trail, where she refrains from criticizing rivals and calls for unity among the candidates in the 2020 race.
“Every one of the Democratic candidates remaining would make a better president than Donald Trump,” Lau wrote. “But the primary contests ahead will be a test for all of the campaigns. Our opponents each tell the story of their strengths, but it’s worth a quick, sober look at the landscape of their challenges.”
The memo was reported earlier by the New York Times.
To contact the reporter on this story: Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou in Manchester at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Max Berley, Magan Crane
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