Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was supposed to be the smart one.
Yet here she is, skulking around in the 2020 Democratic primary with her cratered polling and fundraising numbers, embracing increasingly absurd positions, now including a call for the impeachment of Attorney General William Barr.
At least previous 2020 candidates such as Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke had the good sense to know when to quit.
Warren’s latest act of desperation involves a nakedly cynical attempt to cash in on the Democratic base’s anger over the Justice Department’s recent reversal on Roger Stone’s sentence.
“You know,” the Massachusetts senator told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Wednesday after dismissing questions about her flailing campaign, “right in front of our eyes, we are watching a descent into authoritarianism. And this just seems like a moment to me everybody should be speaking up.”
She added: “Understand, right now, we should all be calling for the attorney general to resign. What Barr has done should mean that we are demanding a resignation, and if that guy won’t resign, then the House should start impeachment proceedings against him.”
For the record, Democrats and their allies in the press have been calling for Barr to be impeached since April 2019, just two months after he was sworn in as attorney general.
Never mind that the rules about impeaching the attorney general are, at best, gray. Never mind that no one has investigated whether the Justice Department’s Stone reversal is even an impeachable offense. Never mind all that. Warren, a legal professional who should know better, has blown past those minor details, going straight to the “resign or be impeached” phase because, well, she is trying to win a presidential primary.
That is not her only act of desperation this week. Warren also reiterated her promise Wednesday that she would assemble a task force to investigate and prosecute President Trump and his cohort when they are out of office.
“I am the only candidate to propose an independent DOJ task force to investigate crimes by Trump administration officials,” she announced on social media. “Every Democratic candidate must commit to it – so Trump officials know they will be held accountable by career prosecutors once he is out of office.”
She added: “Congress must act immediately to rein in our lawless attorney general. Barr should resign or face impeachment. And Congress should use spending power to defund the AG’s authority to interfere with anything that affects Trump, his friends, or his elections.”
These are not serious proposals. These are obvious attempts by a once-top-tier candidate, whose polling and fundraising numbers have collapsed, to gin up excitement and enthusiasm where there is none. Warren bombed in Iowa and New Hampshire, and there is nothing to suggest she will have strong showings in Nevada or South Carolina. She needs something, anything, to breathe life into her failed 2020 candidacy, so she has hit on the idea of playing up anti-Trump “resistance” fantasies.
It is funny: Warren’s many, many fans in the press assured everyone at the outset of the Democratic primary that she was, by far, the smartest, most cerebral candidate available.
A cerebral candidate would know by now that her candidacy is toast.
