Elizabeth Warren Drops Out Of Presidential Race After Failing To Win In Early Primary Elections

Elizabeth Warren is exiting the race for president. After a round of disappointing finishes on Super Tuesday, the former front-runner is reportedly ready to tell her staff that her campaign will end, though she hasn’t indicated which of the remaining candidates she will endorse.

According to The New York Times, who broke the story early Thursday morning, Warren ran a campaign centered on pushing the Democratic Party in a more progressive direction, but she was unable to rally the support necessary to secure the number of delegates required to clinch the party’s nomination. She even lost her home state of Massachusetts to her rival, former Vice President Joe Biden.

Warren has long railed against big money and pledged to refuse donations from large donors. Her campaign, along with Senator Bernie Sanders’, was largely funded by small donations. She made her name on the political scene by calling out Wall Street and capitalism and rallying for better oversight after the 2008 recession.

By 2016, progressives began pushing Warren to make a bid for president, though she chose not to compete in that race. In the 2020 election, however, she jumped in to challenge Donald Trump in his bid for re-election.

While Warren has had success on the debate stage, including a dramatic debate in Las Vegas where she attacked New York billionaire Michael Bloomberg, her numbers continued to drop. In early voting, she took third place in Iowa, dropped to fourth place in New Hampshire and Nevada, and slipped to fifth in South Carolina.

With Warren’s withdrawal, the contest for the Democratic presidential nominee is now between Biden and Sanders. The former vice president is running a campaign aimed at moderate voters, while the Vermont senator is targeting progressive-leaning citizens.

“Ms. Warren’s exit also clears the party’s left lane for Mr. Sanders, who had a more muted showing on Super Tuesday than polls had predicted. The Sanders campaign will now aim to attract enough of Ms. Warren’s ideologically progressive supporters to put him over the top in a closely contested primary,” the Times noted.

Analysts pointed out that Warren was likely harmed by pervasive questions about whether a woman could defeat Trump, something she noted herself after her Super Tuesday defeat.

“Ms. Warren’s allies and supporters said the question of electability — who would be the surest bet to defeat the president — disproportionately hurt all the women who ran for president this cycle. Voters, they argue, were swayed by a media narrative that a woman would have a more difficult time defeating Mr. Trump,” the Times wrote.

They attributed this belief as coming from Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016, which some have attributed to her gender.