Democratic presidential contender Elizabeth Warren is looking to break out at the second primary debate this week in Detroit. But the Massachusetts senator says she has no plans to sling arrows at 2020 opponents, particularly Bernie Sanders.
That’s a marked difference from the primary’s current front-runner, former Vice President Joe Biden, who recently promised to be “less polite” to another 2020 Democratic rival, Kamala Harris. The California senator vaulted back into the spotlight after attacking Biden at the first debate in Miami last month, over the former Delaware senator’s 1970s-era opposition to school busing and boasts of working with segregationist lawmakers.
Warren pledged to not go negative — a frequently made promise by candidates that routinely gets broken in the heat of campaigns.
“I do not attack my fellow Democrats and what I try to do wherever I’m at is I try to talk about my vision and talk about the positive vision of all we can do in 2020,” Warren told an attendee at her campaign stump speech in Derry, New Hampshire Saturday afternoon, when asked how she plans to maintain a “healthy rivalry” with other Democrats, while other candidates like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders are part of the mix.
Warren was pressed by reporters afterward over what she expects on the debate stage from Sanders, a socialist, and a rival for some of the most left-leaning voters in the Democratic primary process.
Warren, a former Harvard Law School professor, deflected the question.
“Bernie and I have been friends forever” she said. “Since long before I ever got into politics.”
Warren appears to quietly be competing for voters who previously supported Sanders in 2016 around the Granite State, the second nominating primary contest in the country and the first primary, which can launch any lagging candidate to front-runner status early in the election cycle.
This past weekend, likely voters gathered at the Bow residence of Ron Abramson, a former 2016 Sanders supporter who endorsed Warren this election. Around 400 people, according to the campaign, made it to the event on the scorching Saturday afternoon to sit beneath a tent pitched in Abramson’s backyard and hear Warren deliver her campaign pitch.
Attendees flapped blue and white “I’m a Liz Warren Fan” inscribed fans as the Massachusetts senator delivered her stump speech, which included a description of her early years in Oklahoma, her call to overturn citizens united, her wealth tax plan and her anti-corruption bill.
“We’ve got a problem right now in America. It’s been growing for a long time. Giant corporations that just keeps getting bigger wipe out the competition, wipe out small corporations, treat their employees like dirt.
Treat the communities where they are with contempt. They just keep getting bigger and more powerful,” Warren said, taking a campaign cue from Sanders on the trail.
New Hampshire resident Kitty Hoke told the Washington Examiner said she’s backing Warren, 70, over Sanders, 77, who in 2016 proved a much more formidable opponent to eventual nominee Hillary Clinton than originally expected.
“I think Bernie served a great purpose and he’s been a very wonderful senator and I think Elizabeth Warren is too. But I think we need something very basic — a basic change and I think she’s speaking to that. And I believe her. I believe all those things are really important,” Hoke said.
Mark Dickson, another former Sanders voter, told the Washington Examiner he is still undecided but he likes what Warren has to say so far.
“I’m still at the point where I’m watching the debates and coming to things like this. I’m starting to want to say it, but age does become a factor at some point,” he said. “I’m a big climate change guy — I think it’s the corruption and the corporate influence that’s preventing that from being fixed and that’s what her expertise seems to be.”
