Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, is expected to endorse Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren for president at a rally Saturday night in Houston, according to a source familiar with the endorsement.

Weingarten is backing Warren in her personal capacity. The 1.7 million-member AFT has encouraged local unions and members to support either Warren, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or former Vice President Joe Biden.

The endorsement could provide a jolt of support for Warren ahead of Super Tuesday, when voters will decided how to award roughly one-third of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

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Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), offered an argument in a Wednesday interview on SiriusXM Radio why Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who his group is supporting, would be a more effective president than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

...He offered an anecdote about interactions Green and his group had with Sanders in 2015, when Sanders was backing an infrastructure funding proposal but ended up introducing a bill with little political support. "On January 21, 2015, myself and my co-founder, Stephanie Taylor, and some folks from our legislative team met with Bernie Sanders ... and we showed him some polling that we had done, the Big Ideas Poll, showing that so many big, progressive ideas were popular," Green said. He noted that one of the questions in the poll related to infrastructure reform, which led Sanders to inform him that that he was introducing a "trillion dollar infrastructure bill" (Rebuild America Act of 2015) the following week.

"After the meeting we begged his office, 'Can you please delay this for a couple weeks? Let us help you lobby for co-sponsors. Let us help you get other grassroots groups on board.'" Green continued. "But he was insistent. He must introduce his bill on Tuesday. And sure enough, at the press conference he had one co-sponsor, he had one main endorsing group, the engineers," Green said. "That was January 2015 and the entire Congress of 2015 and 2016, there were zero other co-sponsors that got on board and almost no movement around the bill."

Green then shifted to the accomplishments of Warren, saying "when I think about that versus what Elizabeth Warren did with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where she had an idea, she did the hard work of organizing it on the inside of Congress."

More at https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/484978-progressive-group-leader-describes-why-warren-would-be-better-than-sanders

...”With everyone who's dropped out that I've spoken with — which I think is close to 100 percent of them — it's been in part to thank them for running and to say, as only another candidate can, I know it's hard," she added.

On the campaign trail, Warren goes out of her way to mention incorporating the signature policy issues of "Cory" (Booker) or "Julián" (Castro). It's a nod to the people she sees less often these days, but it's also a tactic to bolster her pitch that she can build coalitions from the constituencies of the candidates who've dropped out while also drawing a subtle contrast with front-runner Bernie Sanders' more strident brand of progressivism.

Sanders says he has little tolerance for what he sees as frivolous pleasantries. "If you have your birthday, I'm not going to call you up to congratulate you," he told The New York Times editorial board.

And while it's common for candidates to reach out to opponents who drop out and offer gracious platitudes, Warren's conversations with some former candidates have gone deeper.

Former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland sparred frequently with Warren over health care before he dropped out days before the Iowa caucuses. One debate back-and-forth between the two even got so tense that Delaney's "cause of death" on Wikipedia was changed to "Senator Elizabeth Warren." Still, when he dropped out, his phone was ringing — from everyone, but memorably from Warren.

"Everyone was very nice. It was just that the call with her was quite lengthy and quite in-depth," he said. "That demonstrated to me that she has a trait that you don't always find in politicians, which is that she's not entirely self-absorbed. She actually listens."

More at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/loneliness-elizabeth-warren-i-feel-i-m-living-movie-n1142181

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