Elizabeth Warren is optimistic there will be a woman president soon: 'We persist'

(Image credit: Screenshot/MSNBC)

last updated 6 March 2020

It might not happen in 2020, but Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says that one day — in the very near future, she hopes — a woman will be elected president of the United States.

Warren announced on Thursday morning that she was ending her bid to be the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee. During an interview later with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Warren said one of the hardest parts about ending her campaign was thinking about the "pinky promises" she made to young girls on the trail. Warren would look at them and say, "My name is Elizabeth and I'm running for president, because that's what girls do." She would then lock her pinky finger with theirs and ask the girl to promise to remember this.

Maddow told Warren that many women, even those who did not support her as their candidate of choice, felt that Warren dropping out might be the "death knell" of having a woman president any time soon. "Please no," Warren said. "That can't be right." This is not the end, she declared, and "we can't lose hope because the only way we make change is we get back up tomorrow and we get back in the fight. We persist. That is how we make change, and it feels like we're never gonna make change until we make change."

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People said there would never be a Catholic president until John F. Kennedy was elected, Warren pointed out, and the same thing was said about a black president before Barack Obama. "We're going to do this, it's just going to be a little longer before we're able to have a woman in the White House," she said. "It doesn't mean it's not gonna happen. It doesn't mean it's not gonna happen soon." She knew going into the race it wasn't going to be easy, "but you get in the fight because you've just gotta keep beating at it until you finally break the thing. We'll know that we can have a woman in the White House when we finally have a woman in the White House." Catherine Garcia

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.