Elizabeth Warren quits presidential campaign, leaving Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders to battle it out for the Democratic nomination
Elizabeth Warren has told campaign staff that she will end her run for president. However, the big question remains will she support Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden?
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Elizabeth Warren, who electrified progressives with her “plan for everything” and strong message of economic populism, has dropped out of the Democratic presidential race, according to a person familiar with her plans.
The exit came days after the onetime front-runner couldn’t win a single Super Tuesday state, not even her own.
The Massachusetts senator hasn’t endorsed Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, the leading candidates in the race. But she has talked to both campaigns in recent days and is assessing who would best uphold her agenda, according to another person who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Senator Warren’s exit extinguished hopes that Democrats would get another try at putting a woman up against President Donald Trump.
“I refuse to let disappointment blind me - or you - to what we’ve accomplished,” Sen. Warren told her campaign staff on a call. “We didn’t reach our goal, but what we have done together - what you have done - has made a lasting difference. It’s not the scale of the difference we wanted to make, but it matters.”
Outside her Cambridge, Massachusetts, home, Sen. Warren said she wasn’t going to endorse anyone right away.
“I need some space and I need a little time right now,” she said, standing next to her husband, Bruce Mann, and golden retriever, Bailey.
Sen. Warren’s voice cracked when she talked about meeting so many little girls while campaigning around the country for the past year and knowing they “are going to have to wait four more years,” at least, to see a woman in the White House.
For much of the past year, her campaign had all the markers of success, robust poll numbers, impressive fundraising and a sprawling political infrastructure that featured staffers on the ground across the country.
She was squeezed out, though, by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had an immovable base of voters she needed to advance.
Senator Warren never finished higher than third in the first four states and was routed on Super Tuesday, failing to win any of the 14 states voting and placing an embarrassing third in Massachusetts, behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Sanders.
Her exit from the race following Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s departure leaves the Democratic field with just one female candidate: Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who has collected only one delegate toward the nomination.
BIDEN INCREASES LEAD OVER SANDERS
It came as Mr Biden increased his lead over far-left candidate Mr Sanders after another victory in the Super Tuesday primaries.
The centrist former US vice president was declared the winner in the Maine Democratic primary, giving him 10 victories out of the 14 battleground states that voted yesterday.
Mr Biden was projected to have won the northeast state’s primary with 34 per cent of the vote over 32.9 per cent for the leftist Sanders, based on 83 per cent of precincts reporting.
Elizabeth Warren, whose politics align more closely with Mr Sanders, came in third with 15.9 per cent.
The late result further confirmed that Biden has regained the upper hand in the race for the Democratic nomination to face President Donald Trump in November.
Sanders won just three of the Super Tuesday states in a disappointing showing, although the 14th state, California, the biggest prize in the Democratic contest, remained undecided on Wednesday afternoon.
BLOOMBERG QUITS PRESIDENTIAL RACE
Billionaire Mike Bloomberg ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination and has endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden.
It was a stunning collapse for the former New York City mayor, who had his 2020 hopes on the Super Tuesday states and pumped more than $A700 million of his own fortune into the campaign.
“I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it,” he said. “After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American, Joe Biden. I’ve known Joe for a very long time. I know his decency, his honesty, and his commitment to the issues that are so important to our country – including gun safety, health care, climate change, and good jobs.
“Today I am glad to endorse him – and I will work to make him the next President of the United States,” he said.
Mr Bloomberg announced his departure from the race after a disappointing finish on Super Tuesday in the slate of states that account for almost one-third of the total delegates available in the Democratic nominating contest.
He won only the territory of American Samoa and picked up several dozen delegates elsewhere.
Donald Trump couldn’t help but comment on Mr Bloomberg’s humiliating defeat.
Mini Mike, “Three months ago I entered the race for President to defeat Donald Trump, (and I failed miserably!).
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2020
Mini Mike Bloomberg will now FIRE Tim O’Brien, and all of the fools and truly dumb people who got him into this MESS. This has been the worst, and most embarrassing, experience of his life...and now on to Sleepy Joe!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2020
Mini Mike Bloomberg just “quit†the race for President. I could have told him long ago that he didn’t have what it takes, and he would have saved himself a billion dollars, the real cost. Now he will pour money into Sleepy Joe’s campaign, hoping to save face. It won’t work!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2020
Mr Biden, meanwhile, won big in Southern states where Mr Bloomberg had poured tens of millions of dollars and even cautiously hoped for a victory.
Two of his former Democratic rivals, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, dropped out of the race and endorsed Mr Biden as the moderate alternative to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders just the day before Super Tuesday.
Mr Bloomberg ran an unprecedented campaign from the start.
His late entrance into the race in November prompted him to skip campaigning in the first four voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
He hung his success on Super Tuesday, spending at least $US180 million on advertising in those states, but had planned to continue deep into the primary calendar, already spending millions on advertising in states like Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
BIDEN’S CAMPAIGN BACK FROM THE DEAD
Former vice-president Joe Biden was considered an also-ran only a few days ago but he mounted a remarkable comeback on Super Tuesday, winning primaries in nine states across the country, including the key battleground state of Texas.
“They don’t call it Super Tuesday for nothing,” Biden said to supporters in Los Angeles.
“For those who have been knocked down, counted out, left behind, this is your campaign … I’m here to report, we are very much alive!”
In his third run for the presidential nomination in a lifelong political career, Mr Biden took sweeping victories in Super Tuesday states where he was written off just days ago.
On top of Texas, Mr Biden has won Arkansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee.
But the race to be the Democrat who takes on US President Donald Trump is by no means over, with socialist candidate Bernie Sanders winning California.
As well as California, Mr Sanders has also won Utah, Colorado and his home state of Vermont.
“Tonight I tell you with absolute confidence we are gonna win the Democratic nomination, and we are going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country,” Sanders told supporters in Burlington, Vermont. “It is our campaign, our movement which is best positioned to defeat Trump. You cannot beat Trump with the same-old, same-old kind of politics.”
Tens of millions of Americans in 14 states turned out for the Super Tuesday primaries, the biggest 2020 election date so far, where a third of potential delegates, which decide who will be the party’s nominee, were to be awarded.
Mr Biden’s victories were powered by Democratic voters who broke his way just days before casting their ballots – a wave of late momentum that scrambled the race in a matter of hours. In some states, the late-deciders made up roughly half of all voters, according to AP VoteCast, surveys of voters in several state primaries. He drew support from a broad coalition of moderates and conservatives, and voters older than 45.
His candidacy also received a monumental boost last weekend with the popular former Obama administration vice president’s decisive victory in the South Carolina primary.
Propelled in South Carolina by an endorsement from prominent black leader Jim Clyburn, Mr Biden on Tuesday rode a wave of African-American support, winning southern states including North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama and Tennessee.
The last minute endorsement from his former moderate challengers, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, also helped cement his victory in the widest states of Minnesota and Oklahoma.
He also won Massachusetts, the home state of progressive candidate Elizabeth Warren, who was on track to come third to Mr Sanders.
Mr Biden’s resurgence was embraced by establishment Democrats, who had been spooked by the apparently unstoppable race to take on US President Donald Trump by the Mr Sanders.
Mr Sanders last night told supporters at a rally in his home state of Vermont that he had no doubt his “movement” would continue.
“I tell you with absolute certainly that we are going to win the Democratic nomination and we are going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country,” Mr Sanders said.
Mr Sanders is a socialist and plans to shut down fossil fuel use and immediately ban fracking, to cancel student debt and offer government funded healthcare to all Americans.
He has established a huge grassroots, youth-heavy following, but has not been able to calm widespread concern about how he will pay for his radical agenda.
“You cannot beat Trump with the same old, same old, kind of politics,” he said in Vermont.
“What we need is a new politics that brings working class people into our political movement, which brings young people into our political movement and which in November will create the highest voter turnout in American political history.”
A jubilant Mr Biden said: “It’s a good night, and it sees to be getting even better. They don’t call it Super Tuesday for nothing.
“It’s still early but things are looking awful, awful good,” he said.
“For those who’ve been knocked down, counted out, left behind, this is your campaign.
“Just a few days ago the press and the pundits had declared the campaign dead.
“We were told when it got to Super Tuesday it would all be over. Well, it may be over for the other guy.”
Soon after he commenced his speech, two protesters brandishing a “Let Dairy Die” sign rushed on stage before they were promptly removed.
Mr Biden thanked his former rivals for their support, saying it made him “incredibly proud”.
“Our campaign reflects the diversity of this party and this nation,” he said.
“And that’s how it should be, because we need to bring everybody along.”
The Trump 2020 campaign said the close result meant more “chaos” for the Democratic party.
“The media is hyperventilating about Joe Biden but everyone should remember that he is just as terrible a candidate right now as he was a few days ago,” campaign manager Brad Parscale said.
“At the same time, establishment Democrats have ganged up to try to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination, which is causing even more mayhem. Even if Bernie is not on November’s ballot, his big government socialist ideas will be because they have become mainstream in today’s Democrat Party.
“President Trump will wipe the floor with whatever Democrat is unlucky enough to be the nominee.”
HOW THE US REPORTED SUPER TUESDAY
Mr Biden’s political campaign rising from the ashes was how many of the US newspapers summarised Super Tuesday with some entertaining front pages.
Wednesday's front page: Joe Biden's campaign made a shocking rise from the dead on Super Tuesday, The Post's Michael Goodwin writes https://t.co/mgjfIKkGhA pic.twitter.com/WYs4U9nqh1
— New York Post (@nypost) March 4, 2020
Take an early look at the front page of The Wall Street Journal https://t.co/tYlS5nL0Dm pic.twitter.com/myYFtV7ctd
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) March 4, 2020
HOT-BUTTON ISSUES FOR VOTERS
Voters in Super Tuesday Democratic presidential primaries named healthcare as their top political issue, with more than half backing a Medicare for All plan championed by candidate Senator Bernie Sanders, exit polling shows.
Voters in five of the bigger states holding primary elections on Tuesday also said the coronavirus outbreak was a factor in their decision, the Edison Research poll said.
The political and economic crisis over the outbreak, which has infected some 90,000 people worldwide and killed more than 3000, is escalating.
Edison, which compiles voter polls and live election results for media organisations including ABC News, CBS News, CNN, NBC News and Reuters, also found that voters would back whoever the party ultimately picks to challenge President Donald Trump in the November 3 general election.
The poll was based on interviews with people who voted on Tuesday in 12 of the 14 Super Tuesday states, including Texas, California, Massachusetts and Virginia.
It found a large majority of Democratic voters said they would support the party’s nominee regardless of who it is, including nine out of 10 primary voters in California, eight of 10 in Virginia, eight of 10 in Massachusetts, and eight of 10 in North Carolina.
Late deciders varied in significance from state to state: two of 10 of Texas and California Democratic primary voters say they made up their minds in the last few days, compared with five of 10 in Massachusetts and Virginia. Less than two of 10 voters in the Super Tuesday primaries are first-time primary voters, the poll found.
Super Tuesday voters named healthcare as their top issue, and more than half support a government-run single-payer system, as promoted by Sanders. At least seven out of 10 voters in California, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee said that the recent coronavirus was a factor in their decision.