Elizabeth Warren thinks big in battle to face Donald Trump

Democrats like her bold agenda, but moving too far from the centre could be a risk for the party

After the Democratic presidential contenders gathered in Des Moines on Friday for a dinner that often sets the tone for Iowa’s crucial February caucus, many of the headlines were dominated by an incautious remark by Pete Buttigieg.

The 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, one of the surprise packages in the Democratic primaries who has been quickly gaining momentum in Iowa, suggested that the race was now a contest between himself and Elizabeth Warren.

“This is getting to be a two-way,” Mr Buttigieg told The Circus, a Showtime programme about the 2020 election.

Some dismissed his comment as hubris. But it highlighted an indisputable fact: over the past two months, Ms Warren has climbed in the polls to the point where rivals now single out the Massachusetts senator as the biggest threat.

While Ms Warren, 70, trails Joe Biden in national polls, she has led the former vice-president since September in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states that vote first in the primary process and where polls are often viewed as more reliable at this point given voters’ exposure to the candidates.

Her rise to frontrunner status in the early races has come as a surprise to many in the party who once saw her as a wonky bankruptcy law expert. But over the past 10 months, she has presented a very different image by describing her ordinary upbringing in Oklahoma and her struggle as a single mother to establish a career that took her from public school teacher to renowned Harvard University law professor.

The surge in support for a candidate who wants to radically restructure aspects of the US economy has also crystallised the anguished debate within the party about how best to challenge Donald Trump. While moderates warn against moving too far from the centre, others want to channel the energy on the left of the party and point out that some “radical” ideas such as wealth taxes are actually genuinely popular.

Charlie Cook, a political commentator, reflects the concerns aired by many moderate Democrats. “It comes down to risk tolerance, how much risk will Democrats be willing to take in order to nominate someone with an agenda that many are sympathetic to but may make it more difficult to beat Trump.”

Ms Warren is unapologetic in her insistence that the Democrats offer voters bold change. During a three-day visit to Iowa and New Hampshire the week before the dinner in Des Moines, she drew large, passionate crowds at rallies where she vowed to take on big finance, big pharma, big tech and billionaires.

Her panoply of plans include making college free, cancelling student debt and a host of other progressive ideas that Mr Trump will label as “socialist” giveaways. Her pitch is that she wants to help Americans who’ve been pushed to the “ragged edge of the middle class” by corrupt business and government.

“When I was a girl, a full- time minimum wage job in America would support a family of three . . . Today, a full-time minimum wage job will not keep a momma and a baby out of poverty,” she told a packed hall at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. “That is wrong and that is why I am in this fight.”

At rallies from Ames in Iowa to Dartmouth in New Hampshire, she was introduced by young women whose lives had echoes of the hurdles she once faced. When she was young in Oklahoma, her family fell on hard times, and later as a divorced, single mother she once lost a teaching job when she showed up visibly pregnant for a new term.

Athena Sade-whiteside, a young black woman who ran away from home at 16 and is studying to be an opera singer, says Ms Warren has appeal because she has experienced the struggles of ordinary Americans. “She’s a real American,” she says. “What we need in the White House is not someone who has had everything handed to them but someone who has had to work for it.”

Ms Warren has built up a compelling narrative that — combined with a very well organised campaign — has resurrected a once-faltering presidential bid.

“It’s never a good sign when you have to number your husbands,” Ms Warren joked in Cedar Falls, using a self-deprecating line that she sometimes employs as her second husband Bruce Mann watches from the sidelines with their dog Bailey.

In Iowa, she has 22 per cent support against 16 per cent for Mr Biden, who has fallen into third behind Mr Buttigieg. In New Hampshire, she leads Mr Biden 25-21 per cent. And in California, which has become more important after moving its vote forward from June to March, she leads Mr Biden by one percentage point.

When I was a girl, a full-time minimum wage job in America would support a family of three . . . Today, a full-time minimum wage job will not keep a momma and a baby out of poverty,” she told a packed hall at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls

“Warren is a very effective campaigner, weaving together her personal life story into her policy agenda, it makes for a very effective narrative that is going over well . . . in early primary and caucus states,” says Mr Cook.

In Iowa, the strength of her organisation was clear. On a rainy night in Ames, she drew 1,200 people to a rally at Iowa State University where her staff signed up volunteers as she posed for selfies.

“Warren has a fantastic campaign organisation in Iowa,” says Suzanne Zilber, a psychologist who was at the event and who said it was the best operation she had seen since moving to the state 29 years ago. “She invested her financial resources in having organisers in Iowa earlier than any of the other candidates.”

Many party insiders questioned her decision in the spring to eschew fundraisers with big donors. Her finance director quit as a result and her mediocre $6m fundraising that quarter prompted concerns over her viability. But donations have since surged. She raised $24m in the third quarter, coming just behind Bernie Sanders, the Socialist Vermont senator, and hauling in $9m more than Mr Biden.

The clearest sign that Ms Warren has become the candidate to beat came in October’s Democratic presidential debate. She displaced Mr Biden, whose son’s business ties in Ukraine form the backdrop to impeachment proceedings against Mr Trump, as the recipient of most of the attacks on the stage.

As the criticism grows, she has kept a disciplined focus on her “I have a plan” message. She has introduced so many plans — 108 on her campaign website — that Ashley Nicole Black, a comedian, asked on Twitter if she had “a plan to fix my love life”. Ms Warren responded: “DM me and let’s figure this out”.

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FT