I Really Wanted You to Love Warren
Elizabeth Warren’s outgoing words to her staffers evoked the image of a boxing ring: “We left plenty of blood and teeth on the floor,” she told them. Her voice didn’t crack from sorrow, but just from making itself heard through whatever was left of her vocal cords.
She went down a fighter, exhausted but not beaten. Exiting the primary race as the last plausible female nominee, she knew she didn’t have the luxury of tears, not if she wanted pundits to cover her words instead of her emotions.
[Read: America punished Elizabeth Warren for her competence]
My Warren-supporting female friends around the country, however, freed from the expectations of political reporters, cried a lot. And while we’re all pretty in touch with our emotions, none of us is new enough to politics to take disappointment too personally. Usually. My group text of Warren fans (“Dog Moms for Bailey,” if you must know) was populated with crying emoji and at least one selfie featuring red eyes and tear streaks. There were subdued admissions: “I teared up.” “So sad. I’m just so sad.”
When I mentioned the intensity of the reactions I saw to a female acquaintance, someone I didn’t even know supported Warren, she replied, “Oh, I cried, too.” A friend who had canvassed for Bernie Sanders told me, “I didn’t expect to feel as much as I did.”
The Warren campaignSo I didn’t think I’d wind up in one of those selfie lines—then order a framed copy of the photo. I didn’t expect to buy a Warren hoodie—then constantly refresh the UPS website, urging the package to arrive at my home in time for the South Carolina debate. I certainly never expected that I would start knocking on strangers’ doors to talk about her. I didn’t expect to feel the grief I feel right now. Going into the primary, my only expectation about the Warren campaign was that I was pretty sure she was going to lose.
