What Elizabeth Warren Has to Say About Primary Loss

'Maybe I just wasn't good enough to reassure the voters,' she writes in new book
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted May 3, 2021 3:00 AM CDT
Elizabeth Warren: 'Maybe I Just Wasn't Good Enough'
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, March 1, 2021, to unveil a proposed Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act.   (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Elizabeth Warren's third book, Persist, is out Tuesday, and in it, the Massachusetts senator muses on her loss in the 2020 presidential primary. Per the New York Times, she thinks the lack of an explanation for how her health care plan would be funded is partially to blame; Joe Biden's name recognition and Bernie Sanders' large following likely also played a role, she suspects. But "There’s always another possibility, a much more painful one,” she writes. “In this moment, against this president, in this field of candidates, maybe I just wasn’t good enough to reassure the voters, to bring along the doubters, to embolden the hopeful." And then, per Business Insider, there were the concerns over her gender. "I had to run against the shadows of Martha [Coakley] and Hillary [Clinton]," who lost their respective races for Senate and the presidency, she writes.

She also remembers a question at an event in April 2019 about the "safety of a white male candidate." "We all knew the fear she was talking about,” Warren writes of the questioner. "Could we—should we—support a woman?" Most of the book, however, is focused on the policies that are close to her heart ("It’s a book about the fight that lies ahead," she writes), which she believes will help middle class America, CNN reports. She also discusses racial justice in the US, and comments on her "bad mistake" of identifying as Native American earlier in her career. And she criticizes Michael Bloomberg, saying he attempted to undermine democracy by trying to use his personal fortune to win the nomination. There's little indication in the book whether Warren plans another presidential run, the Washington Post notes. (More Elizabeth Warren stories.)

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