Warren’s plan for regaining altitude
She’s amplifying her economic argument, sharpening her attacks on rivals and taking more questions.
MANCHESTER, N.H. — Last winter, Sen. Elizabeth Warren wowed Tom Courtney by cold-calling the former Iowa state senator and talking for a half-hour. After an event in his hometown of Burlington, she sweettalked his 8-year-old greatgranddaughter. Warren impressed him as she built an imposing political organization across Iowa.
Now he’s not so sure about her. The Massachusetts senator has suffered from attacks by her Democratic presidential rivals, and Courtney is coming back to an issue Warren has struggled to put to rest: electability.
“I don’t know if she can beat Trump,” said Courtney, the Des Moines County Democrats’ co-chair.
Having seen her political balloon lose air in recent months, Warren is trying to regain altitude with voters like Courtney by stepping up criticism of her rivals and sharpening the economic message that lifted her into the top tier of 2020 candidates last summer.
With a speech in New Hampshire last Thursday and a swing through southeastern Iowa that began Saturday, Warren is trying to hone her closing argument to voters, connecting her populist economic agenda and her crusade against corruption.
“Our problem isn’t big government,” she said at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College. “It’s a government that’s been captured by the rich and the powerful.”
In a shift away from her mostly positive campaign of the last year, the speech was riddled with criticism of her centrist Democratic rivals, especially former Vice President Joe Biden and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg. She cast both as falling short in their commitment to change. Mostly spared from barbs was progressive rival Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
“No other candidate has put out anything close to my sweeping plan to root out Washington corruption,” she said. She chided Biden — although not by name — for telling a group of donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he becomes president and for having the “naive hope” that Republicans would be easier to work with after President Trump leaves office.
Warren, who has sparred with Buttigieg over campaign finance transparency, suggested he “brags” about his big-donor network and “offers them regular phone calls and special access.”
Buttigieg’s campaign responded with a statement that 98% of its donations were under $200.
“Sen. Warren’s idea of how to defeat Donald Trump is to tell people who don’t support her that they are unwelcome in the fight and that those who disagree with her belong in the other party,” said Buttigieg spokeswoman Lis Smith.
Biden responded at a Palo Alto fundraiser: “I read a speech by ... one of my opponents, saying that, ‘You know, Biden says we’re going to have to work with Republicans to get stuff passed.’ I thought, ‘Well, OK, how are you going to do it? By executive order?’ ”
Going negative is risky for Warren, who has prided herself on taking the high road. Yet some of her supporters in the New Hampshire audience were glad to see more of a fighting spirit and said it might allay some concerns about her ability to take on Trump.
Despite her lost ground after steadily rising in polls, allies see such shifts as inevitable in a race with no commanding front-runner, producing a fluid competition among the favorites — Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg and Warren — that will keep them trading places.
She began drawing fire this fall as she came to be seen as the front-runner. As Buttigieg has risen into the top tier, he has joined her on the firing line. Last week he bowed to criticism from her, announcing he would open his fundraisers to the media and disclosing the names of the clients he worked for as a corporate consultant.
The increasingly combative tone among candidates is a sign that the long primary campaign is entering a new phase: With contests to begin in under two months in Iowa and New Hampshire, candidates are under increasing pressure to hone their message and distinguish themselves.
“It’s starting to get time to pick your candidate,” said Esther Dickinson, a Concord, N.H., lawyer who recently endorsed Warren. “Contrast can help with that.”
The time for hands-on campaigning in Iowa may be cut short for Warren and other senators running for president, because much of January could be consumed by Trump’s impeachment trial. Face time with Iowa voters is especially important to Warren, supporters say, because of her skill at making personal connections.
“If they see her and hear her, that’s going to make a difference,” said Twyla Peacock, Democratic Party chairwoman and a Warren backer in Van Buren County.
For months, Warren’s economic message has been shadowed by rivals’ attacks on her healthcare policy and questions about her electability, raising doubts about her among Democratic primary voters on the two issues most important to many of them.
Those attacks have taken a significant toll in Iowa, where Buttigieg has risen to the top of most polls. The two are ideologically very different, but they are competing for a group that holds great sway in Iowa: collegeeducated whites.
Their rivalry has been simmering since the October debate, when he attacked her for not saying how she would pay for her “Medicare for all” plan.
When she put out a detailed plan designed to show that it could be financed without raising taxes on the middle class, it was criticized from the right for being too expensive and unrealistic. Thrown on the defensive, she released a follow-up plan that called for phasing in Medicare for all, which drew criticism from the left.
The episode was offbrand for a candidate who made her name as a surefooted policy wonk. The attacks spooked many voters about Medicare for all by playing to their fears that it would leave them with worse health coverage than they have now, said Peter Leo, a Warren supporter who is Carroll County Democratic chairman in Iowa.
“They used scaremongering tactics like what the insurance industry would use. It depressed people,” Leo said. “The smart thing for her to do now — and she is doing it — is to focus on her core message.”
That is the goal of her tour of southeastern Iowa. Warren plans to underscore how her policies would help individuals and the economy.
She also has taken to tweaking her town hall format to give a shorter speech and take more questions, which her advisors hope will also show her warmer, accessible side.
Courtney said Warren is smart to change things because many Iowans have seen her and are overwhelmed with candidates flooding into the state.
“We’re oversaturated here,” he said. “‘I got a plan for that’ was neat at first. But it’s getting a little old.”