Elizabeth Warren: a radical upends the Democratic race
The party likes her bold agenda, but moving too far left could be a risk in the battle against Trump
Demetri Sevastopulo in Cedar Falls, Iowa / FT / Nov 5 2019
ft.com
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.”
Athena Sade-Whiteside, 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 © Demetri Sevastopulo/FT
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.
“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.
29.1%
Real Clear Politics’ average national polling for Joe Biden in the Democratic presidential nomination. Elizabeth Warren is second on 20.6%; Bernie Sanders is third with 16.6%
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”.
She sometimes contacts small donors to thank them for their support, which her campaign promotes on social media. Andrea Phillips, vice-chair of the Iowa Democratic party, says voters like her personal touch. “People love the selfie thing that she’s doing.”
One pledge that has drawn attention is the “wealth tax” of two cents she wants to put on each dollar of assets a person owns above $50m. She says it is like a property tax. “When you’re above $50m?.?.?.?it’s not only about the real estate. It’s about your stock portfolio, the diamonds, the Rembrandt and the yacht.”
Critics say it is an example of the kind of ultra-progressive policies that would make it tough for Democrats to win back moderates who abandoned them for Mr Trump in 2016. But polls show that a majority of Americans, including Republicans, are supportive.
The policy that has sparked the most controversy is healthcare — the issue Democrats tell pollsters they care most about, and one that has sparked the biggest rifts among the contenders.
Ms Warren supports “Medicare for All”, the kind of single-payer system used in Canada and the UK that has been championed by Mr Sanders. She had come under fire because her campaign had not explained how she would pay for a programme that Mr Sanders says will require higher taxes.
Releasing her plan last week, however, she said it would require $20.5tn over 10 years. But most experts say her claim that only billionaires would see their taxes rise is inaccurate.
A potentially bigger problem is that it would strip private health insurance plans from millions of Americans, including union members who have negotiated valuable healthcare benefits over the years.
Debbie Feldman, 60, who attended rallies for Ms Warren and Mr Buttigieg, says she is worried that the senator has tacked too much to the left on healthcare. As a result she has been leaning towards the Buttigieg campaign.
“Warren is so far left that people perceive her as a socialist, and that’s really frightening to even a lot of Democrats,” says Ms Feldman. “What about all the folks who are part of unions that have wonderful healthcare [plans]?.?.?.?and now you’re going to ask then to give that up? I think that’s an issue for her.”
Heidi Heitkamp, a former North Dakota senator who served with Ms Warren, says the Democrats backing Medicare for All had “overestimated” the extent to which people disliked the current system. “Lots of people like their health insurance.”
Ms Heitkamp says Ms Warren could end up pivoting to a more moderate position: “She thinks she can sell it. But at the end of the day, she’s a pretty pragmatic politician, she’ll cut a deal.”
For now, Ms Warren is sticking with her mantra — that big change comes with bold ideas. Recalling how she ignored advice to “smile more girl” and not propose wonky plans in her senate race, at rallies she can hit a feverish crescendo.
“What do you think they said just a little over 100 years ago to the suffragettes? Too hard, quit now,” Ms Warren said at New Hampshire’s Dartmouth College. “What did they say?.?.?.?to the LGBTQ+ organisers who wanted equal marriage? Too hard, quit now. But they didn’t quit. They got organised?.?.?.?and they changed the course of American history. This is our moment?.?.?.?to dream big, to fight hard and to win.”
Ms Warren has the financial resources to keep up the fight. But there remains a long way to the nomination. J Ann Selzer, the best known Iowa pollster, says Ms Warren probably has more upside potential given how many voters name her as their second choice. But she cautioned that her last poll for the Des Moines Register in September found that only 20 per cent of voters had made up their minds.
Mr Cook says she faces “real challenges” because of concerns about her healthcare proposal and a sense that her taxes on billionaires would not be enough to fund her ambitious domestic policy programme.
Another problem is that her support among African Americans — a key part of the Democratic base, particularly as the race heads to southern states — lags her popularity among white voters.
Two-thirds of US voters say Trump hasn't made them better off
In South Carolina, the first of the southern states where black voters are critical, Mr Biden leads her by 30 points to 19, according to the latest poll. But among African-American voters, the gap widened to 39-12.
In Waterloo, Iowa, Ms Warren visited small African-American businesses in an effort to cut that gap. After posing with kids at a hardware store, she went to a barber shop and an ice cream parlour where she explained her plan to woo black voters to the Financial Times.
“Show up and talk to people. That is what I am doing all across Iowa and all across this entire country,” Ms Warren says. “It’s important to get out and talk to people about why I am running.”?
Moderates see Medicare plans as an electoral risk
Democrats are unified in their desire to oust Donald Trump in the 2020 election, but the presidential contenders are divided over the one issue that Democratic voters say is their biggest concern: healthcare costs.
Healthcare has sparked the most contentious arguments between the contenders at the party’s debates. All the candidates have plans to cut the huge cost of medical care that broadly fall into two categories.
“Medicare for All”, which is backed by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, creates a government-funded system that would largely eliminate private insurance. The other category, which Pete Buttigieg calls “Medicare for all who want it”, would expand the public system but let people keep private plans.
Medicare for All is popular with the party’s progressive wing, which is influential in the primaries. But moderates view it as a gift to Mr Trump, who is looking for ways to label his eventual opponent as a “socialist”, and to opponents of higher taxes.
While Ms Warren and Mr Sanders call for bold structural reform, others worry that it would be too radical to pass Congress, and therefore an unnecessary risk given that it could end up helping to re-elect Mr Trump.
Mr Sanders concedes that Medicare for All would require higher taxes, but says people would pay less overall, because there would be no premiums or co-payments to service providers. Ms Warren says she would pay for her plan by taxing billionaires, but her proposal also includes measures that would hit the middle class. |
