Warren's campaign began with enormous promise. Last summer, she drew tens of thousands of supporters to Manhattan's Washington Square Park, a scene that was repeated in places like Washington state and Minnesota.
She had a compelling message, calling for “structural change” to the American political system to reorder the nation's economy in the name of fairness. She had a signature populist proposal for a 2% wealth tax she wanted to impose on households worth more than $50 million that prompted chants of “Two cents! Two cents!" at rallies across the country.
Warren hit her stride as she hammered the idea that more moderate Democratic candidates, including Biden, weren’t ambitious enough to roll back President Trump's policies and were too reliant on political consultants and fickle polling. And she drew strength in the #MeToo era, especially after a wave of female candidates helped Democrats take control of the U.S. House in 2018.
But there was also tumult, notably after she released a DNA test in response to goading by Trump to prove she had Native American ancestry. Instead of quieting critics who had questioned her claims, however, the test offended many tribal leaders who rejected undergoing the genetic test as culturally insensitive, and it didn’t stop Trump and other Republicans from gleefully deriding her as “Pocahontas."
Warren couldn't consolidate the support of the Democratic Party’s most liberal wing against Sanders.
Both supported universal, government-sponsored health care under a “Medicare for All” program, tuition-free public college, aggressive measures to fight climate change as part of the “Green New Deal,” and forgoing big fundraisers in favor of small donations fueled by the internet.
Warren's poll numbers began to slip after a series of debates in which she repeatedly refused to answer direct questions about whether she would raise taxes on the middle class to pay for Medicare for All.
When Warren finally moved to correct the problem, her support eroded further. She moved away from a full endorsement of Medicare for All, announcing that she'd work with Congress to transition the country to the program over three years. In the meantime, she said, many Americans could “choose” to remain with their current, private health insurance plans, which most people have through their employers. Biden and other rivals pounced, calling Warren a flip-flopper, and her standing with progressives sagged.
Sanders, meanwhile, wasted little time capitalizing on the contrast by boasting that he would ship a full Medicare for All program for congressional approval during his first week in the White House. After long avoiding direct conflict, Warren and Sanders clashed in January after she said Sanders had suggested during a private meeting in 2018 that a woman couldn’t win the White House. Sanders denied that, and Warren refused to shake his outstretched hand after a debate in Iowa.
Warren got a foil for all of her opposition to powerful billionaires when former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg entered the race. During a debate in Las Vegas just before Nevada's caucus, Warren hammered Bloomberg, and the ex-mayor's lackluster response touched off events that ended with him leaving the race on Wednesday.
For Warren, that led to a sharp rise in fundraising but didn't translate to electoral success. She tried to stress her ability to unite the fractured Democratic party, but that message fell flat.
By South Carolina, an outside political group began pouring more than $11 million into TV advertising on Warren's behalf, forcing her to say that, although she rejected super PACs, she'd accept their help as long as other candidates did.
Still the longer Warren stayed in the race, the more questions she faced about why she was doing so with little hope of winning — and she started to sound like a candidate who was slowly coming to terms with that.