[OFFICIAL] Elizabeth Warren for President thread

"Elizabeth Warren Isn’t Talking Much About ‘Medicare for All’ Anymore":

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-medicare-for-all.html

Elizabeth Warren Isn’t Talking Much About ‘Medicare for All’ Anymore
There are signs her campaign is seeking to calm fears about her health care proposal, including having small meetings with rural Iowa voters to explain her financing and transition plans
By Astead W. Herndon
Jan. 1, 2020

DES MOINES — In warm-up remarks introducing Senator Elizabeth Warren at campaign rallies, young volunteers often say they are supporting her because of her plan to transform the health care system through a single-payer “Medicare for all” program. It happened in Des Moines on Saturday and Oklahoma City last week, and in western Iowa cities like Clarinda and Council Bluffs on Sunday.

But Ms. Warren herself is barely speaking of the proposal. After months of attacks from other candidates, and questions and some blowback from both liberals and moderates, the most ambitious and expensive of Ms. Warren’s many plans — and the one most likely to transform the lives of voters — is just a passing mention in her standard stump speech, rarely explored in depth unless a questioner brings it up.

“I expected her to talk more about the health care for all stuff, definitely,” said Max Goldman, 53, who attended Ms. Warren’s rally in Clarinda. Referring to her campaign, he added, “I think they know it’s controversial.”

Austin Thornton, a 32-year-old Iowan who works in film production, said he noticed Ms. Warren largely outsourced Medicare for all to another speaker. Mr. Thornton said it was a notable difference between her events and those he attended for Senator Bernie Sanders, who is vying with Ms. Warren for liberal voters in Iowa and elsewhere.

“Bernie, he’s strong on Medicare for all, and she didn’t really bring it up,” Mr. Thornton said. “She was a little more scattered on it than I expected.”

***
“I’m still with Bernie and we’re still there on Medicare for all,” Ms. Warren said in Council Bluffs. “I still think it’s the right place.”

But there are signs that her campaign is proactively seeking to calm fears about her health care proposal. Denise O’Brien, a rural community activist and prominent supporter of Ms. Warren’s from Atlantic, Iowa, said she and other supporters have been coordinating with the campaign to hold Medicare for all “listening sessions” in her town.

Ms. O’Brien said that she will soon hold her third event, and that community members have had several questions, particularly since Ms. Warren was pressed during the Democratic debate in October. The typical running order of the sessions, she said, is that a doctor who supports Medicare for all explains the health care insurance system and its pitfalls, while a campaign staff member lays out Ms. Warren’s position.

They also take questions, in an attempt to quell concerns.

“People don’t like to hear ‘free,'” Ms. O’Brien said. “And we kept getting questions, so that’s why we’re having more meetings.”
​

 

I took that to be Medicare for All

 

@gifford1967

 

@gifford1967 @FranchiseBlade @jiggyfly

"Elizabeth Warren’s Base Is Getting Anxious: Supporters at a town hall in Brooklyn say they are concerned the Massachusetts senator isn’t connecting with more moderate Democrats"

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warrens-base-is-getting-anxious-11578501680?mod=hp_listb_pos1

Elizabeth Warren’s Base Is Getting Anxious
Supporters at a town hall in Brooklyn say they are concerned the Massachusetts senator isn’t connecting with more moderate Democrats

By
Joshua Jamerson
Updated Jan. 8, 2020 1:23 pm ET

NEW YORK—Some of Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s supporters are starting to worry about her ability to appeal to a broad range of voters outside of liberal hubs, with less than a month to go before the Iowa caucuses.

Ellyn Rothstein of Brooklyn said she has been leaning toward supporting the Massachusetts Democrat in New York’s primary in late April. But she said Ms. Warren’s recent dip in national and Iowa polling—which came as the lawmaker saw a slight decline in fundraising in the last quarter—has made her concerned about the Democrat’s capacity to connect with moderate and conservative voters.

During the summer, Ms. Rothstein said, she thought Ms. Warren could stitch together a broad coalition, especially after Ms. Warren bounced back from a slog in early 2019, when she often polled in single digits.

“But then I started to realize,” said Ms. Rothstein, a retired special-education teacher, “I know a lot of people in the middle of the country who are frightened by her.” She said Ms. Warren’s plans, such as single-payer health care, are too far to the left—“even for me.”

The last time Ms. Warren held a major event in New York, in late September, more than 20,000 people flocked to Washington Square Park to cheer an ascendant presidential candidate who was outraising Bernie Sanders and threatening Joe Biden’s lead at the time in Iowa and national polls.

On Tuesday, Ms. Warren returned for a town hall in Brooklyn with more than 3,300 people, coinciding with a series of national television hits in studios across the East River in Manhattan.

Ms. Warren says on the campaign trail that her policy ideas appeal to voters outside liberal pockets of the country where Democrats do well. “Independents and Republicans like it,” she told an Iowa crowd last month about her proposed wealth tax. “Why? Because they get that they’re getting ripped off” by the wealthy, she said.

Still, a December Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll found that while Ms. Warren enjoys solid enthusiasm among self-described liberal Democrats, moderate and conservative members of the party are less excited about her. Some Democrats backing other candidates could be won over by Ms. Warren, though: a December poll from CBS/YouGov found that Ms. Warren was the second choice for a majority of Sanders supporters and for a plurality of those backing Mr. Biden and former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Looking to drum up momentum, the senator used the Brooklyn venue to formally roll out a prominent endorsement. Earlier this week, she won the backing of former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, who made his first campaign stop with the senator in Brooklyn. Though Mr. Castro had been considered a rising star during his time in the Obama administration, he was unable to find widespread support in the presidential race and ended his 2020 candidacy last week.

He told reporters before Ms. Warren’s speech that, as a candidate, he had seen the senator’s robust effort in Iowa in person. He said it would help her outlast a spat of shaky polling and a slight drop in cash flow.

“I would all the time run into people out there that we were trying to convince, you know, ‘Hey support me. I’m running for president,’” Mr. Castro said. “And so many of them would say, ‘Oh, you know, I like you, but…Elizabeth Warren is my first choice.’”

Interviews with more than a dozen attendees of the Brooklyn town hall who either plan to back Ms. Warren or are leaning toward doing so suggest Ms. Warren’s liberal base is, at this stage in the race, viewing her campaign cautiously, with many expressing unease that she has lost ground in polls so close to early-state voting.

Elaine Olaoye, a professor at New Jersey’s Brookdale Community College, said Ms. Warren’s biggest error in 2019 was tacking so closely to Mr. Sanders, the Vermont senator, citing Ms. Warren’s vigorous embrace of Medicare for All. After saying she was “with Bernie” on the subject of eliminating private insurance, Ms. Warren later introduced a plan to transition to a single-payer system that would involve extending government-sponsored insurance to more Americans. The interim step, which is similar to plans Mr. Biden, the former vice president, and Mr. Buttigieg have proposed, seemed like a walk-back, Ms. Olaoye said.

“I think she’s already adjusted to come back from being so far left,” she said.

Ms. Olaoye, who lives in New York City, said Ms. Warren seemed to have moved on from the scrutiny of her health-care plans. That prompted an interjection from Sonja Kim, a friend of Ms. Olaoye’s and a retired faculty member at Kean University in New Jersey who lives in Manhattan.

“She backtracked on that, but I almost think it’s a little too late,” Ms. Kim said. “When you give out a message, the message sticks. She’s modified her plan but people always think, ‘Medicare for All,’ ‘Medicare for All.’” Ms. Kim said she wasn’t sold on the idea in part because she thought non-Democrats would reject it.

Many Democrats throughout the 2020 campaign have said they are factoring an electability calculation into their decisions around which candidate to support. Some of Ms. Warren’s supporters and potential backers sound like cable news pundits when they talk about her candidacy. “I look at it, and I just wonder why,” Marilyn Charles, a community activist from Brooklyn, said of Ms. Warren’s slip in polling. “Maybe they’re not ready for a woman president.”

Kaitlyn O’Hagan, a Ph.D. student at New York University, said she was taken aback by Mr. Sanders’s massive $34.5 million fundraising haul in the latest quarter. Ms. Warren’s fourth-quarter fundraising came in at $21.2 million, a slight decrease from the previous quarter. “I’m still hopeful there’s another surge for her,” Ms. O’Hagan, 28, said, adding that maybe the Brooklyn rally could be a catalyst.

Yet, with the Feb. 3 caucuses looming, the New Yorkers were aware that voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina would have more impact on which candidates remain in the hunt for the Democratic nomination.

Jennie Driesen, a retired registered nurse from Manhattan, said Iowa had voted first for long enough. “New York should get to go first in the primary,” she said, telling a reporter writing a story to “put that in there.”

Write to Joshua Jamerson at joshua.jamerson@wsj.com
​