A12 eZ re THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAy, MARCH 7 , 2020
election 2020
BY ANNIE LINSKEYCAMBRIDGE, MAss. — As Sen.
Elizabeth Warren unwinds her
presidential campaign, she faces
one more decision that will shape
the role she will play in coming
months and years: Will she en-
dorse one of the major Democrats
still running for president, and if
so, which?
The choice at hand — between
former vice president Joe Biden
and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) —
is in a sense the latest version of a
choice Warren has confronted
throughout her political career,
whether to align with the estab-
lishment and its leaders or join
forces with the outsiders.
Warren has long resisted mak-
ing this kind of decision, or even
accepting the conventional no-
tion of insiders vs. outsiders. But
the pressure to endorse will only
grow stronger as Biden tries to
cement his lead and Sanders at-
tempts a comeback.
Warren ended her campaign
Thursday after disappointing
election results, but her year-long
effort won her throngs of sup-
porters, especially among girls
and women, burnished her policy
credentials and made her a
household name. The Biden and
Sanders camps have been court-
ing her team assiduously.
Backing Sanders is the clearer
ideological choice and would fur-
ther secure her role as a leader of
the left. But it carries risks, since
Sanders’s path to the nomination
has narrowed and Warren has
made it clear she is uncomfort-
able with the online vitriol un-
leashed by some of his support-
ers. Moreover, many players in
Warren’s orbit harbor deep reser-
vations about Sanders’s capacity
to effectively lead the govern-
ment.
Supporting Biden, who is surg-
ing at the moment, could allow
Warren to push her agenda from
inside the Democratic Party and
possibly a Biden White House.
But his political philosophy de-
parts significantly from hers on
key issues like trade and health
care.
Another option is to embrace
neither candidate until one be-
comes the nominee.
“She’s created her own brand
and she’s achieved something
that very few people in politics
achieve, which is to be on the
inside but be the most effective
force for those on the outside,”
said former housing secretary Ju-
lián Castro, who endorsed War-
ren after ending his own presi-
dential bid.
“I’m not quite sure what she’s
going to do,” said Castro, who last
spoke with her Wednesday as she
was weighing whether to contin-
ue her campaign.
Warren sat on the sidelines for
most of the 2016 campaign, refus-
ing to back either Sanders or
eventual nominee Hillary Clinton
despite considerable pressure
from both sides. She was the only
Democratic female senator to
skip a big endorsement event for
Clinton, making headlines for her
absence.
But once it was clear that Clin-
ton would emerge as the nomi-
nee, Warren endorsed her and
pushed to become her running
mate. When she was passed over
in favor of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.),
Warren kept pushing from the
inside, for example preparing
li sts of liberals that she hoped the
Clinton team would use to staff
the new administration.
Some of Sanders’s supporters
started the 2020 campaign still
angry that Warren had not enthu-
siastically backed Sanders, her
ideological ally in the party’s lib-
eral wing. Warren moved further
to the left after the 2016 cam-
paign — co-sponsoring Sanders’s
Medicare-for-all bill and backing
his choice to lead the Democratic
National Committee — in part to
make amends to him and his
backers, according to a person
familiar with her thinking who
spoke on the condition of ano-
nymity because the person was
not authorized to discuss internal
deliberations.Warren has been both a team
player and an outside critic dur-
ing her career. After the financial
crisis of 2008, as a Harvard law
professor, she worked closely
with Democratic members of
Congress to create the Consumer
Financial Protection Bureau, an
agency aimed at r eining in banks.
But she also has blasted fellow
Democrats for supporting bank-
ing bills she thought were too
friendly to Wall Street.
People close to Warren say she
will now be guided by a determi-
nation of how best to push her
agenda, which involves providing
government support and protec-
tion for middle- and working-
class Americans.
“She’s going to make whatever
moves she thinks best advances
the policy ball for her, and she’s
going to show just how creative
she can be with this,” said Adam
Levitin, a Georgetown Law pro-
fessor who is close with Warren
and helped formulate some of her
policies. “Because the presidency,
for her, was a means not an end,
there are other ways she can
pursue the policy outcomes.”When Warren was new to
Washington, she had a well-docu-
mented dinner with Larry Sum-
mers, one of then-President Ba-
rack Obama’s top economic ad-
visers, at the Bombay Club, an
Indian restaurant near the White
House. Their discussion included
what Warren, in her book “A
Fighting Chance,” described as a
warning: She had to choose be-
tween being an insider or an
outsider.
The outsider gets to say what
she wants publicly, but nobody
listens internally, Summers said,
according to Warren. The insider
gets access and a voice in the
important rooms but must be
careful about what she says pub-
licly — particularly about fellow
insiders.
Warren instead wanted the
benefits of both.
“That’s maybe part of why she
didn’t endorse anyone, because
she really still wants to be both,”
said one person familiar with
how Warren approaches Wash-
ington, who s poke on the condi-
tion of anonymity to be candid
about the matter.“A nd she hasn’t wanted to
choose,” the person said. “Maybe
she will choose or maybe she will
try to be a part of bringing the
party together after a choice has
been made by the people.”
Warren frequently discussed
the “insider” vs. “outsider” roles
on the campaign trail, saying she
wanted to build a movement that
would be an outside force sup-
porting her administration’s at-
tempts to make “big, structural
change.”
But now that her campaign is
over, Warren faces the prospect of
taking on a different role. During
her run, she won praise for her
well-organized campaign opera-
tion, verbal and intellectual deft-
ness, and detailed policy propos-
als. She built a following among
many voters across the country,
giving her additional clout.
That raises the stakes for her
endorsement and beyond. War-
ren provided hints about her
views of Biden and Sanders in a
lengthy interview Thursday with
MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow.
Though she is typically laser-
focused on policy, Warren putthat aside and instead discussed
the character of the candidates
and their campaigns.
When it came to Biden, Warren
acknowledged their fights from
the 1990s. “We go b ack a long way.
We were in the bankruptcy wars
against each other,” Warren said,
referring to a defining legislative
battle when she was a law profes-
sor.
But she said that fight does not
define her views of Biden. “He’s a
decent guy, and it comes through
in pretty much everything he
does,” she said.
When Maddow noted that the
two differ on many policies, War-
ren agreed but also said they have
“agreements on a number of core
policy issues.” She added, “My
whole life has been about work-
ing families, and more, about how
government should be there to be
on their side. I believe that the
vice president has the same goal.”
When asked about Sanders,
Warren cited their long friend-
ship and reminisced about the
time her husband, Bruce Mann,
drove her to Vermont to partici-
pate in town halls with Sanders.
But her tone changed when
discussing his campaign. “There’s
a real problem with this online
bullying and sort of organized
nastiness,” Warren said. “I’m talk-
ing about some really ugly stuff
that went on.”
She noted that several women
from groups that disagreed with
Sanders’s positions were physi-
cally threatened. Sanders has dis-
avowed such incidents while say-
ing that the vast majority of his
supporters are decent and that
his backers, too, have been sub-
ject to taunts.
“We are responsible for the
people who claim to be our sup-
porters and do really threaten,
ugly, dangerous things,” Warren
said, adding that she does not
want to “follow the same kind of
politics of division that Donald
Trump follows.”
Warren added: “It’s not who I
want to be as a Democrat. It’s not
who I want to be as an American.”
[email protected]scott Clement and emily guskin
contributed to this report.Warren’s next big decision: Whom, if anyone, to endorse
Choice revisits one she’s
long resisted: Align with
insiders or outsiders?MelInA MArA/THe WAsHIngTon PosT
Sen. Elizabeth Warren visits a caucus site Feb. 2 2 in Henderson, Nev. Now Bernie Sanders and Joe
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