March 5, 2020

Without Missing a Beat, Elizabeth Warren Vows to Take on Gender Politics

The Massachusetts senator ends her campaign with her trademark vow to keep fighting.

Steven Senne/AP

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As her dog Bailey watched curiously from the window, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Thursday greeted reporters outside her home in Cambridge to confirm the inevitable: The former Harvard law professor and brief Democratic 2020 presidential frontrunner was suspending her campaign.

It was a decision that had become all but certain following her disappointing performances in the early voting states, and the victory of former Vice President Joe Biden in her home state. By Super Tuesday, the countdown to her announcement quickly morphed into a media waiting game. But on Thursday, as she made the news official, Warren managed to transform that foregone conclusion into a deeply personal reflection on her campaign:

“I stood in that voting booth, and I looked down and I saw my name on the ballot, and I thought, ‘Wow, kiddo, you’re not in Oklahoma anymore,'” Warren told reporters, who had been staking her out in the driveway of her home. “That it really was a moment of thinking about how my mother and dad, if they were still here, would feel about this…For that moment, standing in the booth—I miss  my mommy and my daddy.” 

The heartbreak in her voice was palpable. But then, true to form, Warren quickly and with her signature precision, responded to a key question at play in her candidacy: Had sexism played a role in her loss?
 
“Gender in this race? You know, that’s the trap question for everyone,” she said. “If you say, ‘Yeah, there was sexism in this race,’ everyone says, ‘Whiner!’ If you say there was no sexism, about a bazillion women think, ‘What planet do you live on?'”
 
In what became her trademark during her year-long presidential run, Warren then revealed that she intended to come up with a plan to tackle the issue head-on. “I promise you this,” she said. “I’ll have a lot more to say on that subject later on.” 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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