TAKING A STAND
SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN, WHO HAS TAKEN A STRONG LINE AGAINST TRUMP, IS THE FIRST PERSON TO ANNOUNCE A PRESIDENTIAL RUN IN THE 2020 US ELECTION AFTER BEGINNING HER CAMPAIGN A WEEK AGO ANSWERING QUESTIONS ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND INCOME INEQUALITY
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren began her presidential election campaign a week ago by hosting a Democratic Party primary event in southwestern Iowa where she answered questions on her programme for more than an hour. A progressive, Warren focused on climate change and income inequality. To an overflowing hall, she stated, “This is how (the race) starts, person to person, town to town, across Iowa and then across America.”
She chose Iowa for her initial rally because the state’s primaries in February 2020 kick off the presidential campaign. South Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada also stage early primary contests.
It was a brave start. Generally conservative Iowa voted for Donald Trump during the 2016 contest and gave him the largest margin of any Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan ran in 1980. Furthermore, as a recent poll put her a poor fourth after rivals former Vice President Joe Biden, a centrist, and progressives Bernie Sanders who sought the nomination in 2016, and ex-texas Democratic Congressman Beto O’rourke. He lost in the 2018 Senate race to Republican Ted
Cruz but is seen as an attractive new face on the political scene.
However, Warren is a Democratic Party star. She has taken a strong line against Trump, voting with him only 13 per cent of the time. This makes her the third most anti-trump senator in the last Congress. She is a committed liberal on economic and social issues although she is not as progressive as Sanders who describes himself as a “democratic socialist.” Both castigate banks and big business for dominating the country and demand reforms that would share wealth. Fiftyeight per cent of her funding comes from small donors. During last year’s Senate race she raised nearly $20 million. She has developed a grassroots campaign strategy. However, Warren, 69, is not rated highly on the national level. Many Democrats do not want to repeat Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump and see a new, young male face as their party’s preferred presidential nominee.
On this region, she has taken a stand against US intervention and evolved on Israel/palestine. In 2013 during the previous administration, she warned against US involvement in the Syrian war as this could have negative “unintended consequences.” In 2014, she voted against legislation authorising former President Barack Obama to arm and train Syrian “rebels,” arguing she did not want the US to be “drafted into another ground war in the Middle East” and urged regional powers to combat Daesh. While viewing Iran as a threat to US interests, she opposed withdrawal from the agreement providing for the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.
Adopting Congress’ traditional support for Israel, Warren went along with Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza and that November she visited Israel and the Palestinian territories and subsequently joined 79 other senators to cosponsor the Us-israel strategic partnership act. However, she has recently criticised a proposal to