What's Elizabeth Warren's endgame?

After finishing third in her home state on Super Tuesday, it's difficult to see why her campaign should continue

Warren
(Image credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Please don't tell the hall monitor, but I am about to stop using my inside voice. I realize that if anyone says anything that isn't nice about Elizabeth Warren, she feels the need to tattle, so I will confine my remarks to the bland observation that after finishing third in her home state of Massachusetts on Tuesday there is no serious reason for her to remain in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

That doesn't mean there are no reasons at all, of course. I can think of only two. The first is that she recognizes what everyone who has spent five minutes doing bar napkin math or messing around with one of those online calculators already knows: namely, that there is still a very good chance that none of the candidates will secure the 1991 delegates necessary to win on the first ballot. Some reports suggest that she envisions a scenario in which party elites decide that she represents the closest thing to a viable medium between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, a moderate-progressive consensus candidate who can unite the party and the nation. This is lunacy, of course, but candidates every bit as much as journalists need fantasies of this kind to make these contests interesting.

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.