Former San Antonio mayor, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and, most recently, former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Julian Castro endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for president in a video released early Monday.
Castro, who dropped out of the presidential race just last week after suffering through a miserable fourth quarter and never getting above 2% in most national and early primary state polls, gave his blessing to the Massachusetts senator, claiming that Warren is the “one candidate I see who’s unafraid to fight like hell to make sure America’s promise will be there for everyone.”
She will, Castro continues, “will make sure that no matter where you live in America or where your family came from in the world, you have a path to opportunity too. That’s why I’m proud to endorse Elizabeth Warren for President.”
Today I'm proud to endorse @ewarren for president.
Elizabeth and I share a vision of America where everyone counts. An America where people—not the wealthy or well-connected—are put first. I'm proud to join her in the fight for big, structural change. pic.twitter.com/xDvMEKqpF3
— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) January 6, 2020
The video also sees Castro lauding “strong women,” as though Warren’s gender identity is a unique qualification.
“My story wouldn’t be possible without the strong women who came before me. My grandmother, Victoria, came to the United States at 7 years old. She taught her family the value of hard work as she cleaned houses and worked as a maid,” Castro says in the video. “She passed on those values of hard work and perseverance to my mother, a single mom to myself and my twin brother, Joaquin.”
Castro will join Warren on the campaign trail for a stop in Brooklyn, New York, later this week, and he will, presumably, act as a liason between Warren and the Hispanic community, helping Warren build bridges among potential voters in states like Nevada, where they are a growing and influential bloc.
In a sense, the two campaigns fit together well, though Castro went beyond Warren on some issues, occasionally suggesting that America decriminalize border jumping, and putting his preferred pronouns on campaign literature as a way of appealing to the very woke. Several of Castro’s top aides have since jumped ship to join Warren’s campaign.
Warren, though, hasn’t been far behind in desperately appealing to the progressive left, championing far-left political priorities like “Medicare for All,” a full student loan bailout, and a significant “billionaires tax,” ostensibly to alleviate “wealth inequality” and fund a massive expansion of the Federal government.
Castro’s pandering didn’t earn him any significant support from the far-left or progressives, however, and the same seems to be increasingly true for Warren. Warren’s polling has been on a downward trend since mid-November, after she was unable to articulate precisely how her billionaire tax would pay for her “Medicare for All” plan — a plan she has since abandoned. She’s now below Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in most early primary states and well behind Sanders nationally.
The Hill also reports that Warren is now tied with businessman and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, a late entrant into the race. In just the last week, Bloomberg picked up six percentage points in The Hill’s tracking poll while Warren lost two points. Warren is also struggling with fundraising. Most Democratic candidates saw a significant uptick in the amount of money coming into their respective campaigns in the fourth quarter but Warren saw a 10% skid.
Warren’s only hope now is to win Nevada, but its not clear Castro is up to the job.