Senator Warren launches her 2020 White House bid
DEMOCRATIC Senator Elizabeth Warren made her bid for the presidency official on Saturday in this working-class city, grounding her 2020 campaign in a populist call to fight economic inequality and build “an America that works for everyone”.
Warren delivered a sharp call for change at her presidential kick off, decrying a “middle-class squeeze” that has left Americans crunched with “too little accountability for the rich, too little opportunity for everyone else”. She and her backers hope that message can distinguish her in a crowded Democratic field and help her move past the controversy surrounding her past claims to Native American heritage.
Weaving specific policy prescriptions into her remarks, from Medicare for All to the elimination of Washington “lobbying as we know it”, Warren avoided taking direct jabs at President Donald Trump.
Warren enters the race as one of the party’s most recognisable figures. She has spent the past decade in the national spotlight, first emerging as a consumer activist during the financial crisis.
She later led the congressional panel that oversaw the 2008 financial industry bailout. After Republicans blocked her from running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she helped create, she ran for the Senate in 2012 and unseated a GOP incumbent.
She has $11 million (R149m) left over from her commanding 2018 Senate re-election victory that can be used on her presidential run.
And Warren’s launch comes at a challenging moment for the 69-yearold senator.
She’s apologised twice over the past two weeks for claiming Native American identity early in her career. That claim could overshadow her campaign.
On Saturday, Trump’s re-election campaign manager was quick to respond to her candidacy and called her “a fraud”.
After proposing an “ultra-millionaire tax” that would hit the wealthiest 75 000 households in America, Warren told Bloomberg News last week that she continues to “believe in capitalism” but wants to see stricter rules to prevent gaming the system – a marked contrast with the self-described democratic socialism of Bernie Sanders.