When you hated Hillary Clinton, you didn’t really have to explain yourself. Everyone understood why someone would hate Hillary Clinton, the worst Pizzagate warmonger in human history who was so evil that she spent her First Lady years trying to get Americans universal healthcare. Ugh.
But it was hard to reach the same conclusion with Elizabeth Warren. At least, it was hard at first. When we were introduced to her, she was fiercely taking on the big banks and lobbyists to create the CFPB, which returned $12 billion to consumers and students who had been defrauded.
After that, we got to know Warren better as an advocate for requiring banks to admit wrongdoing and pay fines, as an opponent to big pharma and health-industry corruption, and as a champion of the progressive agenda. If anti-corruption took human form, it would definitely look like a 70-year-old professor in a Nina McLemore tailored jacket.
But then something changed. It’s hard to pin down just when, but if pressed, I’d have to say the turning point was when Elizabeth Warren gained momentum in the presidential race, and then made a mistake. That’s when I knew she wasn’t an ideal candidate, but instead was a demonic creature who must be stopped before she destroyed our country.
For some, Warren’s ruinous mistake was her Medicare for All plan, which would have brought Americans universal healthcare. That would have been amazing, but when Chris Matthews made it sound so inconvenient because of an increased tax rate, we all understood that Warren was unfit to serve. In contrast, any vagaries surrounding Bernie’e Medicare for All plan were just details to be hammered out at a later date.
For others, her big error was the DNA test. When she apologized for it, Warren proved that she’s irredeemable and untrustworthy. Every time the most lying President in American history called her “Pocahontas,” we were reminded anew of how terrible she was.
But for those who are more forgiving, Elizabeth Warren became unsupportable only once we found out how she didn’t vote the exact right way in the Senate. Did you know that she voted for a bill to increase military spending, which means she actually KILLED INNOCENT PEOPLE? That’s a real thing people and bots wrote on Twitter, so it must be logical. Her moral purity was forever tarnished, whereas the stain of any questionable vote or actions taken by the other candidates could be easily washed away by Pete’s intelligence, Joe’s likeability, Mike’s money, and Bernie’s Bernieness.
Still, none of Elizabeth Warren’s blunders were as bad as the worst crime of all, which is that she stayed in the presidential race. This was unforgivable. Once Warren’s poll numbers started to go down, the writing was on the wall, but she was too much of a crazed megalomaniacal she-devil to read it. If other candidates slumped in the polls, it was a sign that they should shift tactics, but for Warren, that absolutely meant she should step aside. Her optimism and hope, and the way she inspired her supporters, wasn’t important at all. It was just coronavirus poison in disguise.
A few months ago, when I was hating Kamala Harris, I couldn’t have imagined a candidate eliciting the same kind of strong negative emotion, but man I was wrong. And because Warren stayed in the race through Super Tuesday, the consequences will be catastrophic. Thanks to her, other candidates didn’t get the votes they should have received, and now we’ll never have universal healthcare and climate change will destroy the planet. If only she had dropped out sooner, or never ran in the first place, none of these misfortunes would have happened. But now we are doomed. When Donald Trump is reelected, we can lay all the blame on Elizabeth Warren, and that will feel so good.
I don’t hate women candidates — those snake emojis were symbols of love and respect for them — I just hated Hillary Clinton, and now I hate Elizabeth Warren. As I decide between the spry, fresh faces of Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, I will tell my daughter that girls can do anything, that the sky’s the limit, and that she can even be president of the United States one day — just as long as she doesn’t make any mistakes or get in any man’s way.