Democrat Warren confronts 2020 electability question head-on in Ohio
At a veterans hall in the mostly white, working-class town of Chillicothe, Ohio, US Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke to about 200 people on Friday about her plans to fight the opioid epidemic, Washington corruption and economic inequality.
Warren’s decision to campaign in Ohio — a state President Donald Trump won by eight percentage points in 2016 — so soon in the Democratic presidential nominating battle is telling.
Ohio does not host one of next year’s early nominating contests. Yet there is growing consensus among Democrats that a nominee’s ability to beat Trump in November 2020 is the number one priority — and Warren aims to convince voters there and elsewhere that she has broad enough appeal to do it.
“I believe that if you’re running for president of the United States you ought to be running for president of all the people and not just spend your time in a handful of so-called battleground states,” Warren told reporters at an earlier stop on Friday in Kermit, West Virginia, a solidly Republican state. Party strategists and voters are divided over what type of candidate is best positioned to take on the president.
Some believe it is critical to have a nominee who can win back the working-class, white voters who supported Barack Obama but then handed Trump victories in formerly blue states in the Midwest like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Others say a candidate who can drive turnout by appealing to young, minority and first-time voters is the best path to the White House.
Ed Rendell, a former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, thinks moderate candidates like former Vice President Joe Biden or US Senator Amy Klobuchar would be best at wooing back working-class voters in the non-urban areas of his state.
Warren’s progressive policies — she backs free college tuition, a wealth tax and Medicare-for-all healthcare — make her an ‘easy target’ for Trump to accuse her of being a socialist, Rendell said.
But he agrees with other Democrats who say where candidates stand on the issues may not be the deciding factor for voters.
“I’ve never seen voters more single-minded than on the issue of beating Donald Trump,” Rendell said, adding he would work to win Pennsylvania for whoever emerges as the nominee. — Reuters