Joe Scarborough caught a lot of flak from the left earlier this week, as here, for suggesting that Elizabeth Warren should drop out of the race. Just wait till Lieawatha loyalists get hold of what Scarborough & Co. said this morning about Warren’s sustained attacks on Mike Bloomberg during last night’s debate.
The panel variously described Liz’s arrows [ahem!] against poor Bloomie as “extreme, uncomfortable, bizarre, absurd.”
John Heilemann put in the final dagger, saying that if Warren comes in fourth again, there will be “very little rationale to continue her candidacy,” putting her in “a very, very, very precarious situation, with a lot of pressure on her to drop out of the race.”
If there is one person pleased by Morning Joe‘s war on Warren, it could be that loyal Fidel fan, Bernie Sanders. If and when Liz says sayonara, Sanders presumably figures that many Fauxcahontas followers will move into his column.
Here’s the transcript.
MSNBC
Morning Joe
2/26/20
6:17 am ETJOE SCARBOROUGH: Elizabeth Warren started, her first approach, measured, actually went after the guy [Sanders] who has the best shot of winning this thing. And then turned to Bloomberg —
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Ooooh —
SCARBOROUGH: — a guy who I think was hurting himself with anybody else’s help, and kept this focus in a really extreme focus —
MIKA: — It was uncomfortable.
SCARBOROUGH: — on Mike Bloomberg.
. . .
She did this in Nevada, and got a lot of praise and made some money, got a good fundraising raise, had a good poll, a national poll. And then scored in the single digits. The strategy didn’t work for her there. She repeated that strategy . . . Again, it just seemed sort of bizarre.
. . .
JOHN HEILEMANN: And the idea that that set of attacks are going to help Elizabeth Warren here in South Carolina with African-American—average, ordinary African-American voters here—strikes me as absurd and misguided.
And I think if she comes up with another performance on Saturday where she comes in fourth or fifth place, she is going to be back where she was before the Vegas debate. Which is to say, with very little rationale to continue her candidacy, and with her money situation very rapidly becoming precarious again.
She talks all the time about how she has 1,000 staffers in 21 states. That is a show of force if you are winning and the money is coming in. If you are losing, and the money is drying up, 1,000 people in 21 states is a giant problem in terms of your cash burn.
And you can see Elizabeth Warren come out of this state in a very, very, very precarious situation, with a lot of pressure on her to drop out of the race.