Elizabeth Warren bet everything on grass roots finding while making a show of rejecting big donors. But live by the ActBlue zombie swarm, die by it.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s campaign told supporters in an email on Friday that, so far, it has raised just over $17 million in the fourth quarter, a significant drop from her fundraising haul during the third quarter.

The memo asks backers to step up giving to the campaign.

“So far this quarter, we’ve raised a little over $17 million. That’s a good chunk behind where we were at this time last quarter,” it says.

That’s a 30% drop. And it looks more like Kamala’s numbers.

Kamala had to drop out after raising only $12 million in her third quarter, then cutting campaign operations, setting off a bloody battle between her sister Maya, her campaign boss, gambling everything on Iowa, and then pulling out entirely when the polling numbers weren’t there.

That’s the sort of thing that happens when candidates see their funding shrink.

Warren has a more aggressive campaign operation than Kamala did and that $17 million is not fatal, but it’s bad news. It shows that interest in her campaign is shrinking. Bernie is grabbing the grass roots while Warren has seen her polling and donations both drop off.

That leaves her with 3 options.

1. Trim operations and hope to pull off a few miracles and turn things around

2. Aggressively fundraise with the base while sending a panicked message

3. Dump your fake principles and hoover in the cash wherever you can get it

Option 1 is the risky gamble that failing campaigns usually embark on. So is option 2. But then again, so is option 3. It’s a choice of three evils, in order of greater to lesser evil.

But don’t worry, Liz. You didn’t build that.