Warren considers running for presidency

WASHINGTON: Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Saturday that she plans to “take a hard look” at running for president in 2020 after the midterm elections in October, her most explicit acknowledgement yet of her national ambitions.

Warren made the statement in response to a question about a possible presidential run at a town hall event in Massachusetts.

She explicitly put her deliberations in the context of the searing drama playing out in Washington around the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

“This week, I watched 11 men who were too chicken to ask a woman a single question,” she said in a video posted by Warren’s Senate campaign.

“I watched as Brett Kavanaugh acted like he was entitled to that position and angry at anyone who would question him.”

“I watched powerful men helping a powerful man make it to an even more powerful position. I watched that, and I thought: Time’s up.”

“It’s time for women to go to Washington and ix our broken government, and that includes a woman at the top. So here’s what I promise: After 6 November, I will take a hard look at running for president.”

Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor whose academic and advocacy work helped pave the way for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has emerged as a ierce and persistent critic of President Donald Trump - one who has shown a special ability to win Trump’s withering attention.

Since the middle of his presidential campaign in 2016, Trump has frequently called Warren “Pocahontas,” a mocking reference to Warren’s disputed claims of Native American ancestry. He did so again at a rally in Wheeling, West Virginia, on Saturday night.

In a speech widely interpreted as a prelude to a presidential run, Warren addressed the “Pocahontas” controversy head-on in a February speech where she delved into her family history and defended her claims of Native American ancestry while acknowledging she is not an oficial member of any tribe.

The Boston Globe published an investigation earlier this month that found no evidence that those claims played a role in her rise to prominence at Harvard or her hiring at other law schools where she taught.