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The hits just keep on coming for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s would-be POTUS bid. The former front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination has dropped to a woeful 7th place in the latest CNN poll,  behind former Secretary of State John Kerry (who’s unlikely to even run) and newcomer Rep. Beto O’Rourke–who just lost his bid for U.S. Senate.

At 3 percent, Warren is tied with billionaire Michael Bloomberg and little-known Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.  This is a dramatic decline from four years ago when progressive groups like MoveOn.org were mounting a $1 million “Draft Warren” campaign.  As recently as May, Warren led the Democratic pack in a Suffolk poll and in August the Boston Globe was using the word “front-runner” to describe their home-state senator.

(Artwork via CNN)

Not anymore.

The Globe has since editorialized that Warren is “too divisive,” has “missed her moment” and should drop out of the 2018 race altogether. The new CNN poll is just the latest with Warren in the single digits and in the back of the pack.

While Sen. Warren’s sagging poll numbers are surprising, they’re not actually a surprise. In October, NHJournal reported concerns among Massachusetts Democrats over Warren’s potential candidacy and questions about her recent political performances. And Harry Enten, a political data analyst now with CNN, recently reported that Sen. Warren underperformed in her re-election bid in Massachusetts earlier this year.

Two top-level New Hampshire Democrats both recently told NHJournal that they didn’t know of any activists supporting Sen. Warren in 2020.  “Her name just doesn’t come up,” one Democratic player told NHJournal.

NH State Rep. John Cloutier is the kind of Democrat one would expect to see backing, or at least leaning toward Warren.  A veteran Democrat who represents Claremont (one of the most liberal cities in the state) and backed Bernie Sanders in 2016, Cloutier told the Valley News he’s looking for a younger candidate in 2018.  “I think we need a fresh face, with all due respect to Bernie and Joe and Hillary,” Cloutier said. “We need someone who is going to unite the party, appeal to independents to some extent, and be just a total difference from Donald Trump, frankly.”

In a straw poll of MoveOn.org activists, one-time darling of the movement Sen. Elizabeth Warren finished a distant fifth with less than 7 percent of the vote, giving her less than half the support of either Rep. Beto O’Rourke (16 percent) or former Vice President Joe Biden (15 percent). Finishing out the top five were Sen. Bernie Sanders (13 percent) and Sen. Kamala Harris (10 %).

The top vote-getter among MoveOn.Org members was “Someone Else/Don’t Know with 18 percent support. Straw polls are not scientific, but this one reflects what NHJournal is hearing from grassroots Democrats, who say they are in no hurry to pick a candidate and are looking forward to the campaign season.

“I can’t really name more than one or two people who are backing a candidate,” one Granite State Democratic insider told NHJournal. “Everybody else wants to be courted a little I think.”

A popular meme among MoveOn.org supporters in 2015.

That may be, but it’s hard not to compare Sen. Warren’s soaring stature among MoveOn.org progressives four years ago–they literally spent $1 million attempting to get her to #RunWarrenRun–as opposed to the lack of enthusiasm today.  It’s true that when MoveOn.org presented Warren with 365,000 signed petitions, there weren’t nearly as many potential progressive candidates as there are today.  At the same time, if she’s made a positive impact on these activists over the past four years, she wouldn’t be struggling to get them on board.

Instead, her actions thus far have driven people away. Her DNA stunt, for example. Here’s Tina Nguyen in the liberal magazine Vanity Fair:

The stunt was meant to put Warren on the offensive—a pre-emptive strike to head off a presumed weakness in her autobiography—but instead betrayed a sense of defensiveness that Trump and his allies quickly seized on. It rubbed Native Americans the wrong way, made some liberals queasy, and worst of all, reeked of the sort of consultant-driven, Clintonian groupthink that drove 2016 voters crazy. It was the sort of misstep that politicians make when they are trying too hard—and, perhaps, when they’re worried about the competition breathing down their necks.

Whether it’s “trying to hard” or, as the Boston Globe suggested, “missing her moment,” Sen. Warren’s currently headed in the wrong direction. Here are the entire results of the MoveOn.Org straw poll:

Someone Else / Don’t Know 17.89%
Beto O’Rourke 15.60%
Joe Biden 14.95%
Bernie Sanders 13.15%
Kamala Harris 10.02%
Elizabeth Warren 6.42%
Sherrod Brown 2.92%
Amy Klobuchar 2.75%
Michael Bloomberg 2.71%
Cory Booker 2.63%
Joseph Kennedy III 1.90%
Stacey Abrams 1.16%
Kirsten Gillibrand 1.09%
Tulsi Gabbard 0.78%
John Hickenlooper 0.71%
Eric Holder 0.59%
Eric Swalwell 0.54%
Julián Castro 0.48%
Jeff Merkley 0.42%
Jay Inslee 0.38%
Andrew Gillum 0.36%
Mitch Landrieu 0.35%
Chris Murphy 0.33%
Tom Steyer 0.28%
Marianne Williamson 0.26%
Deval Patrick 0.24%
Eric Garcetti 0.20%
Richard Ojeda 0.18%
Steve Bullock 0.17%
Pete Buttigieg 0.12%
John Delaney 0.11%
Bill de Blasio 0.10%
Howard Schultz 0.10%
Terry McAuliffe 0.10%

They are the headlines every potential presidential candidate wants to see a month after the midterms:

• “Liz Warren Is Catching Fire” – Politico
• “Elizabeth Warren Has Arrived And So Have We” – Daily Kos
• “Elizabeth Warren’s Moment” – NBC News

“The storyline…is that the heart of the Democratic Party really wants Warren,” wrote Chris Cillizza of CNN.com, while Rep. Keith Ellison of the DNC  said on Face the Nation: “I think that right now people want an authentic candidate. Elizabeth Warren comes off as a very authentic person. So that is what people are gravitating towards.”

That’s quite a December for any candidate. Unfortunately for Liz Warren, that was December….2014.

Four years ago this week, MoveOn.Org was touting the Massachusetts liberal as the progressive’s rising star on their  “Run Warren Run news” website. (“We’re excited for week 2 of the Run Warren Run campaign…”) A few weeks later they would pour $250,000 into their “Draft Warren” efforts, backed by veteran Democratic campaigners like New Hampshire’s Kurt Ehrenberg and Blair Lawton of Iowa.

The effort lasted into the summer of 2015, with excited Democratic activists gathering more than 365,000 signatures trying to rally a reluctant candidate to run for president.

Iowa MoveOn member Saba Hafeez (University of Iowa campus organizer) and New Hampshire Democracy for America member August Tucker (an 18-year-old HS senior from Portsmouth, NH) delivered the petition to Sen. Warren in June, 2015

Four years later, the roles are reversed.

It’s hard to imagine a “Run Warren Run” grassroots wildfire today. Despite her highest of high profiles, polls among Democrats show her in the single digits in the 2020 race. Most Democrats in her home state of Massachusetts aren’t keen on her running.  And her decision to release a DNA test in her ongoing #Fauxcahontas fight with President Trump—just weeks before the midterms—was viewed bad timing and worse strategy.

And so now Liz Warren is trying to transform herself into the very obstacle she faced four years ago: The next Hillary Clinton.

In a story headlined “Elizabeth Warren Forges a 2020 Machine,” Politico reports that if Warren pulls the trigger on her POTUS campaign, “she’ll be rolling out arguably the most advanced and sweeping infrastructure in the Democratic field, a plug-and-play campaign that could give her a massive head start on nearly every contender in the burgeoning primary roster.”  That includes $12.5 million in the bank and more than 50 people on her campaign payroll.

She’s “built a shadow war room….that has encompassed work in all 50 states and close coordination with more than 150 campaigns,” Matt Viser reports in the Washington Post. It’s an impressive tale. But is it true?

Some Democrats tell InsideSources off the record that they think this is largely spin from the Massachusetts senator, an attempt to build up her standing as a member of the 2020 short list.  “They’re pushing this 150 campaign number so it looks like she has a machine,” one New Hampshire Democrat told NHJournal. “But she’s no Hillary Clinton—at least, not yet.”

But could she be?  Hillary Clinton had the benefit of the Clinton brand, built on eight years in the White House and a narrow loss to the politically-talented Barack Obama in 2008.  Sen. Warren, on the other hand, is a Democrat in one of the most Democratic states in the country. The last Republican to win a general election campaign for the U.S. Senate was Ed Brooke in 1972.  (Scott Brown won a special election in 2010 and promptly lost to Warren two years later.)

In fact, according to data analyst Harry Enten of CNN, Warren is an underperforming Massachusetts Democrat. Adjusting for the high number of Democratic voters in her state, “Warren’s performance was the sixth worst of all Senate Democrats” in 2018, Enten says.

When it comes to 2018, all the standard caveats go here: It’s early, none of the best-known Democrats considering a run have even announced, the Iowa caucuses are more than 400 days away, etc.  But the stark contrast between the mood of progressives today and four years ago is hard to miss.  Instead of headlines like “A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth Warren,” the headline in the Wall Street Journal reads “Too Soon For Democrats to Dump Liz Warren?”

Yes, the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal lean right. But the headline from the left leaning Washington Post reads  “As Her DNA Test Still Reverberates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s Political Operation Shows Fissures.” Even her longtime allies at the Boston Globe have editorialized “Warren missed her moment in 2016, and there’s reason to be skeptical of her prospective candidacy in 2020.”

“She has become a divisive figure,” they added.

As Hillary Clinton demonstrated, you don’t have to have grassroots excitement or progressive bona fides to win the Democratic nomination. Bernie Sanders had both and she still beat him (with a little unauthorized help from the DNC).  But if Hillary couldn’t generate excitement, she could generate something else:

Fear. Few people wanted to cross Hillary Clinton, and fewer still wanted to fight against the first woman POTUS nominee of a major party among Democrats so focused on identity politics.

Liz Warren, unfortunately, has none of those advantages. There’s no cost to crossing her, there are at least three other women on the potential-candidates list, and the glass ceiling (for the nomination, anyway) has already been broken.

Four years ago, the chant was “Run Warren Run!”

Today, it’s closer to “Why, Liz? Why?”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s struggles to overcome the impact of her unproven—and likely incorrect—claims of Native American ancestry are well known. This week the New York Times reported that Warren and her close aides are finally realizing what many political observers have long known, that her strategy to use a DNA test to resolve the controversy was a fiasco.

But Warren’s been working on another effort to burnish her Native American bona fides that could be just as problematic: H­­elping the Massachusetts-based Mashpee Wampanoag tribe secure a $1 billion casino project in southeastern Massachusetts. As a result, Warren is making a strange bedfellow of a scandal-plagued, billion-dollar multi-national corporation–exactly the sort of company she has railed against at an outspoken economic populist.

THE MASHPEE CASINO MESS

When the Pilgrims first landed, it was on Wampanoag land.  The tribe counts Crispus Attucks among their members —the first person killed in the Boston Massacre and, therefore, America’s struggle for independence.  The Mashpee Wampanoags have a long history in the story of America’s founding.

What they don’t have, alas, is a long history as a federally-recognized tribe.  They didn’t get that designation until 2007, and only after paying tens of thousands of dollars to corrupt DC lobbyist “Casino Jack” Abramoff, who would eventually go to prison over conspiracy and fraud charges related to his work with various Indian tribes.

Soon after, the Chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe who worked with Abramoff, Glenn Marshall, was sentenced to 41 months in prison for crimes he committed “in connection with efforts to secure federal recognition for the Tribe,” according to the FBI.

And this is the tribe that Liz Warren is working so hard to help get into the casino business. She’s pushing legislation to override a federal court ruling and Department of Interior finding that, under federal law, the federal government doesn’t have the power to set aside land for them as “sovereign territory”—which is what they need for prime casino territory.

Their problem is that under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, the tribe needed federal recognition when the law was passed to be eligible–a requirement upheld by the US Supreme Court as recently as 2009. The Mashpee Wampanoags were 73 years too late.

But that didn’t stop the Obama administration from taking 321 acres in Mashpee and Taunton, MA into trust in 2015 and declaring it a sovereign reservation.  And with that designation, the Mashpee Wampanoags entered an agreement to build and operate a $1 billion casino complex with the multi-billion-dollar international gaming firm Genting Malaysia Berhad.

Artist rendering of proposed Mashpee Wampanoag/Genting casino in Massachusetts

How did the Obama administration get around the law? That’s precisely the question residents of Taunton, MA—who weren’t too keen on a casino coming to their small community—started asking. They sued in federal district court, which led to the rulings blocking the Mashpee project.

Enter Elizabeth Warren, who, as recently as 2014, opposed casino gambling entirely. “People need jobs, but gambling can also be a real problem economically for a lot of people,” Warren said. But now she’s stepped up as a champion for the tribe and its casino. And, unavoidably, the scandal-plagued company behind it.

Sen. Warren claims the Mashpee’s cause is a fight for social justice:

“The decision by the Trump Administration to move forward with denying the Mashpee Wampanoag a right to their ancestral homeland and to keep their reservation is an injustice,” Warren said in a statement released to InsideSources. “The Trump Administration’s action is yet another instance of the federal government reneging on a deal with Native Americans, and it underscores why Congress must pass our legislation: so that the Mashpee Wampanoag do not lose their home at the hands of the federal government.”

In fact, the people most desperate to see Warren’s legislation passed are the stockholders of Genting Malaysia Berhad.

“Liz Warren, Champion of Scandal-Plagued Billion-Dollar Corporations!”

Genting has a troubled background, to say the least.  It’s currently at the center of an investigation into a massive kickback scheme that helped bring down the previous Malaysian government. They’re also involved in a billion-dollar lawsuit against Disney and Fox Entertainment over another failed casino project.

Since entering their agreement with the Mashpee Wampanoags, Genting has poured around $440 million in the tribe’s coffers on the promise of a 49.4 percent ownership stake in that Taunton casino.  And now, it appears, the Malaysian company is ready to write the investment off and walk away.

In a financial report issued last week, Genting announced a third-quarter loss, which they said was “related mainly to the impairment loss of RM1,834.3 million [$438 million USD] on… promissory notes issued by the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe.”

“However, Genting Malaysia Berhad Group continues to work closely with the Tribe on options which include legislation being introduced in the US Congress which, if passed, will entail the US Federal Government to reaffirm the land in trust for the benefit of the Tribe.” [emphasis added]

“This impairment loss can be reversed when the Notes are assessed to be recoverable,” the report says.

And “reversing that impairment loss” is where Elizabeth Warren comes in. Her “Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act” would overturn court rulings and allow the federal government to create a new reservation.  If the effort succeeds, the Mashpee Wampanoags will be happy. But Genting Malaysia—on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars—will be ecstatic.

Sen. Warren isn’t alone in this fight, of course. Her fellow Massachusetts Democrats, Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Bill Keating are on board as well, and there is some bipartisan support in Congress.

But “Liz Warren, Champion of Scandal-Plagued Billion-Dollar Corporations!” isn’t exactly the image she has cultivated in American politics. In fact, it stands in stark contrast to her rhetoric of economic populism.  Why would Warren be willing to fight so hard to rescue half a billion dollars of Genting Malaysia’s money?

Warren declined repeated requests from InsideSources for comment, but the thinking is that it’s part of her broader, ongoing efforts to repair the damage done by her mishandling of the Native American issue. CNN reports that Warren “has quietly waged a months-long, behind-the-scenes effort to put ‘Pocahontas’ in the past.”

In March she gave a speech to the National Congress of American Indians defending her claims to Native American ancestry and declaring herself an ally. “For far too long, your story has been pushed aside, to be trotted out only in cartoons and commercials,” Warren said. “Every time someone brings up my family’s story, I’m going to use it to lift up the story of your families and your communities,” she told the group.

Warren insists she’s always been a champion of Native American issues, telling the Boston Globe: “I work on these issues,” said Warren. “I meet with tribal leaders. I attend events. I speak. I’ve appreciated the opportunity to speak out. And I’ve tried to be helpful.”Now that the DNA test stunt has blown up in her face, can Warren afford to step away from a Native American cause, even if the result is a $440 million boon to a troubled multinational corporation?

Perhaps a bigger question is whether the Mashpee Wampanoags still want her?  Warren’s standing as a potential 2020 candidate has steadily fallen in recent weeks, and she hasn’t had a positive news cycle in a long while.

An industry source who is following the issue tells InsideSources: “The tribe and the bill’s supporters have apparently realized she has become a liability to their effort.  The strategy may be to have Warren drop off the existing legislation, or not sign on as a co-sponsor, when it’s reintroduced in the next Congress ”

Even the liberal Boston Globe, long an ally that has worked hard to spin the “Pocahontas” story in Warren’s favor, editorialized this week that she should drop out of the 2020 presidential race altogether.

“Warren missed her moment in 2016, and there’s reason to be skeptical of her prospective candidacy in 2020,” the Globe editorialized. “While Warren is an effective and impactful senator with an important voice nationally, she has become a divisive figure.”

What Liz Warren needs to divide are her efforts for the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe from the international gaming conglomerate that stands to gain so much if she succeeds.

Lots of 2020 news for New Hampshire, starting with the departure of 2018’s Summer Superstar, Michael Avenatti.  The L.A. lawyer had an electric effect on the crowds at Democratic events in New Hampshire, and some longtime Granite State politicos had high praise for him.

Michael Avenatti works the crowd at a NH Democratic fundraiser in August, 2018.

Today, however, Avenatti announced on Twitter that he’s out of the 2020 race.

“After consultation with my family and at their request, I have decided not to seek the Presidency of the United States in 2020. I do not make this decision lightly — I make it out of respect for my family.”

In addition to his pledge to keep representing adult film actress Stormy Daniels in her legal battle with President Trump, Avenatti also reiterated something he told NHJournal in an interview over the summer:

“I remain concerned that the Democratic Party will move toward nominating an individual who might make an exceptional President but has no chance of actually beating Donald Trump,” Avenatti said. “The party must immediately recognize that many of the likely candidates are not battle-tested and have no real chance of winning. We will not prevail in 2020 without a fighter. I remain hopeful the party finds one.”

Avenatti suggested to NHJournal that the right fighter for the Democrats was…Michael Avenatti. But he’s out now, and while some are dismissing it as “dropping out before getting in,” in fact Avenatti started a political action committee– FIGHT PAC (motto: “Join the Fight Club”) and even ran an ad:

Interestingly, Avenatti was still talking up his prospects as a POTUS hopeful as recently as last night, tweeting out a national poll that had him at 2 percent and the comment “Better than Trump polled in 2015.”

Ah, but there is that whole “arrested for domestic violence” thing, so…

Oh, and about that poll Avenatti tweeted. Check it out, and look for the names “Warren” and “O’Rourke.”

That’s the Harvard/Harris poll. Here’s another version, but with Hillary Clinton added:

Notice a trend? Despite the fact that she’s been a darling of progressives for nearly a decade and he came out of nowhere over the summer, Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke is leading Sen. Elizabeth Warren in both polls.

Here’s another poll:

Aha, Warren’s beating Beto! Albeit by a point, but hey!

Wait. Check again. This is a poll of Democrats…IN MASSACHUSETTS.  Warren is essentially tied with a previously unknown congressman from Texas, in her home state. That’s not good. And smart people are starting to notice.

Harry Enten, former FiveThirtyEight numbers cruncher now at CNN, has a piece entitled “Some 2020 Warning Signs Elizabeth Warren Needs to Pay Attention to — Stat.” He points out that, not only is her polling underwhelming, but that her performance in her 2o18 re-election bid was uninspiring, too.

CNN has her at the top of their Power Rankings for the Democrats in 2020. She gets more media attention than any of the other likely candidates — with the possible exception of Stormy Daniels’ attorney Michael Avenatti (though he’s getting the sort of coverage most candidates would rather avoid.)

But in her home state of Massachusetts, there’s a quiet conversation among Democrats: Is Sen. Elizabeth Warren ready for POTUS prime time?

“I love Liz Warren, love her to pieces—but I really hope she doesn’t run,” a Bay State Democratic consultant told InsideSources. Like nearly every Democrat we spoke to, this consultant was adamant about not going on the record.  And they all had a similar story to tell: Massachusetts Democrats are dubious about Liz Warren as a 2020 presidential campaign, and her performance the the past few weeks have only increased those doubts.

“A number of Democrats have told me they hope that she’s not running for president, just making some noise to distract Trump,” a longtime Massachusetts progressive activist tells InsideSources.

“What is Liz Warren talking about?”

That was the reaction among TV viewers when, during her first debate with her GOP opponent, Warren accused state senator Geoff Diehl of attending “a rally organized by the largest anti-Muslim hate group in America.”

Sen. Diehl, clearly confused, asked Warren to explain what she talking about. And that’s when it got interesting:

“It was a rally in Bern, orga-ed, uh, uh, uh, by, uh, Act for America, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated as a hate group, and described as the largest anti-Muslim group in America. It was on April 22nd of this year. You were there.”

Uh, uh, uh—what?  What “rally?” What “Muslims?” And where the heck is “Bern?”

When the debate ended, nobody knew what rally Sen. Warren was talking about. Rather than answer questions afterwards, Sen. Warren skipped the post-debate presser entirely.  So what was this “rally?”  Here’s a photo:

If that looks a lot more like a pro-cop gathering than an anti-Muslim one, you’re right.  Sen. Liz Warren was attacking her GOP opponent for attending a “Back the Blue” event supporting a local police officer killed in the line of duty.  “Support Our Police,” one sign read. “Blue Lives Matter,” said another, according to reporting by the Cape Cod Times.  “My sign says, ‘cops are heroes,’ and I truly believe that,” said local resident Marian de la Cour.

It literally had nothing to do with Muslims or Islam. Or “Bern.”

The rally was held in Bourne, Massachusetts, as in “Jason.” It’s the home of the “Bourne Bridge” and “Bourne Rotary” (both key features in Cape Cod holiday traffic) and one of the most well-known communities in the state. And nobody calls it “Bern.”

Except, apparently, to Sen. Liz Warren.

“She Thinks 1/1024 Percent Native American is a Win.”

It was a small gaffe, but coming on the heels of the DNA fiasco, it was a telling one.  What’s most disconcerting for Democratic operatives watching Warren is that she appears to believe that her release of her DNA data regarding her alleged Native American heritage was a win.

“She should have known she can’t beat Trump on that issue. He’s going to go after her no matter what,” a Massachusetts Democratic strategist told NHJournal. “All she did with the DNA test was raise questions, not answer them.”

Caitlin Flanagan, a feminist author at the Atlantic, shared a similar sentiment in an article entitled “Elizabeth Warren Has Lost Her Way.”

“Putting one’s genetic information into the public conversation about one’s fitness for office is a bizarre idea. Moreover, her insistence that it would offer definitive proof of something her supporters believe in was tone-deaf,” Flanagan wrote.

And, once again, the only person who doesn’t appear to grasp that fact is Liz Warren, who is still trumpeting her 0.09 Native American gene match as a political victory.  By doing so, she’s feeding fears that she’s not ready for POTUS prime time that previously existed.

In September Suffolk University released a Massachusetts poll that found (unsurprisingly) that Sen. Elizabeth Warren had a huge 30-point lead over her Republican opponent and an approval rating of 57 percent. But 58 percent of those same voters also said that they didn’t want Warren to run for president.  Only 32 percent want her in the race.

“These are people who like her, who will vote for her, and they’re split on whether they want her to run for the White House,” Suffolk University Director of Polling David Paleologos told InsideSources.  “It’s not that they didn’t like her, they just don’t want her to run.”

Paleologos believes that Sen. Warren is actually performing well in her debates, though he agrees that the Native American issue continues to hurt her. But he says a bigger challenge for her White House ambitions may be fellow Massachusetts pol, former governor Deval Patrick. “They both have the same audiences in the early states—except South Carolina. Warren is unlikely to play well there, while the large African-American vote would benefit Patrick.”  South Carolina Democratic strategist Dick Harpootlian agrees, telling CNN Warren “will likely not sell well” down South.

On paper, Warren remains formidable. She has a huge war chest, with $15 million cash on hand, more money than the Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York. She’s placed operatives on the ground in key early states like Iowa and New Hampshire, and claims to have helped candidates in 150 races covering all 50 states.  And she’s got a clear brand as an economic populist ready to declare war on the “millionaires and billionaires” of America.  And it certainly doesn’t hurt her popularity in Democratic circles that she’s Donald Trump’s favorite Democratic foil.

The question is whether she’s prepared to handle those attacks? Is she up for the tough job of running for president against a candidate like Donald Trump?  Liz Warren certainly thinks she is.  Democrats, on the other hand, still have their doubts.

The “Politics and Eggs” breakfast at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics is one of the compulsory events in Granite State politics for anyone considering a presidential run.  Conservative journalist and national leader of the #NeverTrump movement, Bill Kristol, will be making an appearance–and firing up the 2020 rumor mill–on Wednesday, May 23rd.

NHJournal’s Michael Graham caught up with Kristol at one of his Harvard Yard haunts on the eve of his speech for a quick Q&A:

MG: My first question for you is this: Is Bill Kristol coming to “Politics and Eggs” to formally announce his candidacy in the 2020 presidential race?

BK:  It’s tempting, it’s tempting. But then I’d be laughed out of New Hampshire and I’d be slipping back across the border to Massachusetts in about 12 minutes. So I think I won’t do that.

I’m just talking about my analysis of the political situation. It’s always great to be in New Hampshire because people here are so interested in national politics, and they follow it much more closely than almost any other state because they’re so conscious of their “First in the Nation” primary. And I do think the fact that independents can vote in either primary–and so many New Hampshire voters are independents–means they tend to follow both parties. In some states the Republicans follow Republican stories, and the Democrats have the Democratic stories. In New Hampshire, everyone follows everything.

MG: Which potential 2020 candidate best matches the mood of the Democratic electorate?

BK:  I think there are several moods going at once, which is why it’s complicated. There’s obviously a ‘We hate, loathe and despise Trump and we will reward the person who hates, loathes and despises him the most’ [mood].  There’s also a ‘Look, we’ve got a win’ [mood], with Democrats saying ‘We cannot afford to lose to this guy and, incidentally, we lost because we were out of touch with parts of middle America. Some of those concerns were legitimate, and some of those concerns are traditional Democratic concerns–stagnant wages and stuff like that–and so we need somebody who can speak to them.’

That leads you in two pretty different directions.

The conventional wisdom among Republicans in Washington is the Left has all the energy. Everything’s going Left. The empirical evidence so far in the primaries is a little mixed, I would say. Some moderates have won primaries. Some Lefties have won some primaries, and some have just been extremely close like the Nebraska [NE-2] primary. So I’m sort of open-minded about that debate on the Democratic side.

MG: What about Republicans?  Trump’s approval is back in the upper 80s, approaching 90 percent among Republicans. Of those Republicans who are dissatisfied–maybe they’re reluctant Trump supporters, whatever. Are they angry at Trump, or do the just want their party to go in a different direction?

BK:  I think Trump supporters–let’s just say it’s 80, 85 percent of the Republicans–are split into two categories: Half of them, some 40 percent of the Republican Party, are Trump loyalists. They believe in him. They are proud to have voted for Him. They hate his enemies and they like the fact that he’s shaking things up.  But about half of Trump supporters are reluctant Trump supporters. They voted for someone else in the primary–Bush or Cruz or Rubio.  They mostly voted for Trump in the general election because of Hillary and judges and so forth.

They support some of the things Trump has done, but they’re not Trump loyalists and I think they’re open to the following argument, one which you can’t really make now, you have to make it the day after the midterms:

It goes like this: ‘You voted for Trump. We’re not gonna criticize that. You support a lot of things he does. You think a lot of the criticisms of him are unfair. We’re not going to quarrel with that.  But–do you really want to do this for another four years?

It’s a little crazy. It’s a little chaotic. He comes with some downside risks. In foreign policy and and other things, maybe you could just like pocket the gains and get a more normal, so to speak,  Republican or Conservative.’

I think that message would have–could have– more appeal after Election Day this year. Right now it sounds like, ‘Well, you’re just anti-Trump. We’ve got to rally to Trump, we’ve got to defeat the Democrats.’  But I think November 7th [the day after the midterms], everything changes.  Because the question becomes not a retrospective question of were you right to vote for trump or his critics, or ‘what about Hillary?’ It becomes a prospective question. What do you want going forward?

MG: Last question: The Democratic ticket that you think Republicans should be the most afraid of in 2020?

BK: That’s a good question. These things are actually harder to predict.  I’m inclined to give the conventional answer, which I think is right, which is the more moderate the candidate Democrats nominate, the easier it is to win back some Republican voters and independents.  I guess I have the kind of conventional view that that’s the most dangerous thing for the Republicans.

But you know, sometimes history fools you.  Everyone thought Reagan would be easier to defeat than a more moderate Republican.  Take Elizabeth Warren. [Republicans think] That’d be great. We can demonize her. She’s scary. She’s left wing.

Well, I don’t know.  Maybe she could run a campaign that was pretty intelligent and get the best of both worlds: The Hillary Clinton appeal, first woman president; And some of the Sanders energy. Look, she’s a Harvard law professor. She’s not crazy.

It could be like Obama. [Independent voters saying] ‘She’s a little more liberal that I like, but she comes from modest origins.’ So I think [my fellow conservatives] may underrate Warren a little bit.

She says she’s not running.

He’s in the middle of a “pay-offs to porn stars” story that would kill any conventional politician.

And yet the (very) early tea leaves from the “First in the Nation” primary state already point to the match-up many pundits dream of:

President Donald Trump vs. Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2020.

Let’s take a moment to insert all the standard disclaimers: We haven’t even gotten to the midterms yet, two years is a political eternity, Sen. Warren could (theoretically) lose her re-election bid in November, President Trump could (less theoretically) be unable to seek re-election due to incarceration, etc.  The fact remains that the new poll from Suffolk University aligns with the emerging conventional wisdom:  Democrats want Liz Warren and the GOP is going to stick with Donald Trump.

In his analysis of the numbers. Suffolk University’s David Paleologos notes how Sen. Warren’s strength draws from virtually every other major Democratic candidate.

“When we first asked likely Democratic primary voters in New Hampshire who they would prefer—and we left Liz Warren’s name off the list— we got the expected results:  Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders well ahead of the pack of list seven possibilities:

Biden 30%

Sanders 25%

Booker 10%

Patrick 8%

Harris 6%

Gillibrand 3%

McAuliffe 2%

“Then we introduced Sen. Warren’s name to the mix,” Paleologos told NHJournal, “and she cleared the field:

Warren 26%

Biden 20%

Sanders 13%

Booker 8%

Harris 4%

Patrick 4%

Gillibrand 2%

McAuliffe 2%

According to Paleologos, what makes Liz Warren’s position so strong is that “looking at the cross tabs, what we see is that all of the candidates lose something to Elizabeth Warren. Most of the candidates lose about one in five core supporters between scenario one without Warren and scenario two. And [former Massachusetts governor) Deval Patrick and Bernie Sanders lose a very big share of their voters.”

If Warren were merely strong in New Hampshire because of geography, the implications would be as significant. Instead, her strength is ideological–she’s the first choice (by far) of the voters looking for a nominee on the left end of the Democrats’ spectrum.  Plus, the fact that a third of Biden voters would jump on her bandwagon shows she’s strong with more old-school Democrats as well.

“On the progressive side, it appears voters are saying ‘Sanders had his chance,'” Paleologos suggests. “Elizabeth Warren is a little bit younger, a woman who has been carrying the challenge to big business, big dollars in politics.  And you may have some Hillary Clinton supporters who, if given the choice, either gravitate to Biden or to Warren, but not to Sanders.”

And that’s how Sen. Warren wins the nomination: Progressive voters, a few establishment voters, and some Hillary voters still smarting from the Bernie vs. Hillary fallout.  What about President Trump?

Two months ago, a New Hampshire poll gave him a narrow six-point lead over Gov. John Kasich. In the new Suffolk poll, he’s crushing all comers:

Trump beats Kasich 68-23 percent;

Trump beats Sen Jeff Flake 72-15 percent;

Trump beats Sen. Marco Rubio 65-23 percent;

Trump beats Mitt Romney 63-28 percent.

Trump lost New Hampshire, though narrowly, to Hillary Clinton in 2016. It’s a state more known for it’s moderation than it’s bombast, where candidates with names like Bush, McCain and Romney tend to do well. For Trump to be dominating like this, Paleologos notes, is a sign that he’s in no real danger within his party.

Once again: It’s early, it’s politics and it’s Trump.  But if you are hoping for a Trump vs. Warren throwdown in 2020, we are well on our way.

There are 19 groups in New Hampshire that have signed on to completely resist President Donald Trump, and they’re trying to take a page out of the Tea Party’s playbook.

A new national organization called “Indivisible” is going back to the basics: push back against Trump from the grassroots level. The group published a manifesto, essentially a manual on how to resist the Trump agenda, written by former Democratic congressional staffers.

“We examine lessons from the Tea Party’s rise and recommend two key strategic components: A local strategy targeting individual members of Congress; a defensive approach purely focused on stopping Trump from implementing an agenda built on racism, authoritarianism, and corruption,” they wrote.

Indivisible, which has more than 2,400 local groups registered with them, is advising voters to assemble at the local level and have members focus on their respective elected senators and representatives by speaking out at town hall meetings, asking their elected officials questions at local photo-ops and ceremonies, showing up at their district offices for meetings, and overwhelming their phone lines with coordinated calls.

“We can all learn from their [the Tea Party] success in influencing the national debate and the behavior of national policymakers,” the group wrote. “To their credit, they thought thoroughly about advocacy tactics.”

Many progressives are trying to recreate the circumstances that led to a wave of Republican victories in Congress and state legislatures in the 2010 midterm elections. Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, gained more seats in the Senate, and flipped several state legislative seats, mostly campaigning on conservative ideals and anti-President Barack Obama rhetoric. But liberals could find it difficult to implement a similar strategy and might find more success if they work with Trump when possible.

The Democratic Party enters the Trump presidency completely shut out of power, with Republicans in control of the White House, House, Senate, and even most state governments. And they’re already divided amongst themselves with progressives versus moderates, and whether they should oppose Trump or work with him on common interests.

Just after his first week in office, it looks like many Democrats and progressive activists want to resist him at every step. The American Civil Liberties Union already filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s executive order that temporarily bars entry to refugees from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen due to terrorism concerns. A federal judge granted an emergency stay Saturday to stop deportation of people with valid visas who landed in the United States.

But if they continue that mentality, they might run into some trouble in the 2018 midterm elections and even the 2020 presidential election. Even though the party in charge usually doesn’t do well in midterm elections, many House seats will still favor Republican control due to gerrymandering. And Democrats have to defend 10 Senate seats in Republican-controlled states. The political terrain isn’t favorable for them right now.

By refusing to compromise, Democrats may be unable to influence policy even when the president’s agenda aligns with traditional Democratic interests. It’s true that rejecting compromise can reveal internal differences and struggles within the president’s own party, such as with the ongoing Republican debate on repealing Obamacare. More damage could be done by working with Trump and exposing the internal divide in the Republican Party that’s been there since the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009.

An area some Democrats and Trump could work on together is infrastructure spending, albeit with some disagreements on how to fund it. Trump will almost need Senate Democrats to help get it through Congress. Some of his ideas resemble the “big-government conservatism” of George W. Bush that upset many Tea Partiers. Working out a few deals with Trump could anger some Republicans, and it might do more damage to the president than being vehemently opposed to everything he does.

If the Democrats could unify around that message, they could be in much better shape to retake Congress and the presidency, and ultimately be able to govern themselves and the country better than before.

Uncompromising Democratic opposition is essentially saying the party wants to be more like the Republican Party, by trying to emulate what the Republicans did in 2009. But while the Republicans were “unified” by being anti-Obama anything, they didn’t take the time to rebuild as a party and create a clear message for the base. That was evident by the loss of Mitt Romney in 2012. And now, look at them. They ended up nominating a candidate who barely aligns with their platform. They have full control over the federal government, but they still are struggling to be unified over how to run it, as exhibited by disagreement over many of Trump’s policies.

While it’s understandable that Democrats and progressive activists would want to go about rebuilding their party the same way the Republicans did in 2009, it’s better for their party to engage with Trump in policy debates because those issues are ones they can build a campaign on, and not just on partisan rhetoric.

The Democrats have a prime opportunity to genuinely build their party from the grassroots level up. If the loss of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election taught them anything, it’s that they need to listen to the working class in Middle America again and create a message that appeals not only to their base, but also to disenfranchised voters who feel left out of the system.

It’ll prove to be difficult for them to do that though, especially with some major players on the national stage that see the party going in a different, more radical direction.

Just look at the confirmation hearing battles. Several Democratic senators who are looking to run for president in 2020 won’t vote for anything put forward by Trump out of fear from attacks to their left. John Kelly was confirmed as secretary for homeland security by a vote of 88-11. Some of those “no” votes came from Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). The more moderate Democrats might feel pressure to vote a certain way in order to follow suit, and especially when the media reports that former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, Warren, and Booker voted one way, it could make it seem like the Democrats who don’t fall in line aren’t supportive of the party.

An unpopular Trump could win another four years if the next Democratic presidential leader is too far outside of the political spectrum.

And speaking of leaders, the race for the next chair of the Democratic National Committee is revealing to show how anti-Trump and against compromise the Democratic Party could be. While members of their party were participating in the Women’s March earlier this month, most of the 10 candidates for DNC chair were at a private fundraising conference held by liberal political operative David Brock. The message that could send to grassroots leaders is that the Democratic Party hasn’t learned its lesson from its recent defeat and instead, continues to listen to big money rather than voters.

The latest forums between the candidates have also shown that there aren’t many disagreements between them; they don’t have many new ideas to jumpstart the party, and they all have zero desire to work with Trump.

“That’s a question that’s absolutely ridiculous,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman Ray Buckley at one of the forums, when he was asked about working with Trump.

If the Democrats try to imitate the Tea Party movement, don’t create a unifying message for its voters, and resist Trump at every turn, then they’re in for a long eight years.

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