Sen. Elizabeth Warren is spending her last day of 2018 looking to the future. She’s officially announced, via video, that she will be launching an exploratory committee for president, becoming the first prominent Democrat to take formal action for an expected 2020 campaign.
In the video, Warren talks about her own path to politics, explaining that when she was growing up, her dad had a heart attack and later went back to work as a janitor.
“But he raised a daughter who got to be a public school teacher, a lawyer, and a senator,” she says. “We got a real opportunity to build something. Working families today face a lot tougher path than my family did, and families of color face a path that is steeper and rockier, a path made even harder by the impact of generations of discrimination. I’ve spent my career getting to the bottom of why America’s promise works for some families, but other who work just as hard slip through the cracks into disaster, and what I’ve found is terrifying.”
Warren goes on to talk about how big corporations, banks, billionaires, and politicians have put the middle class “under attack.” She says, “Politicians look the other way while big insurance companies deny patients life-saving coverage, while big banks rip off consumers, and while big oil companies destroy this planet.”
As CNN reports, in launching an exploratory committee, Warren can start raising money for her campaign, though she has already said she won’t accept corporate PAC money. Observers noted that New Year’s Eve is one of the biggest individual giving days of the year, and as Warren is relying on small donations to build her campaign, that could be why she chose to launch her exploratory committee today.
CNN also reports that since she was re-elected to her Senate position in November, she’s “made hundreds of calls to political grassroots leaders in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.” Her staff is also reportedly searching for a campaign office space in the Boston area.
Warren rose to prominence due to her work after the 2008 financial crisis; she then ran for a Senate seat in Massachusetts in 2012, becoming the first female senator from the state.
She’s recently received some backlash after she took a DNA test to prove she had Native American ancestry, something President Trump had long questioned. However, once she released the results, the reception was lukewarm, with Cherokee Nation saying she had undermined tribal interests.
According to a CNN/Des Moines Register/Mediacom survey from early December of potential Iowa caucusgoers, Warren polled eight percent support, trailing behind former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, and exiting Rep. Beto O’Rourke.
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