She didn’t name names.
But it was clear presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren was taking aim at moderate Democratic rivals Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg on Thursday, as the populist lawmaker from Massachusetts gave a major address in the state that holds the first primary in the race for the White House.
“No other candidate has put out anything close to my sweeping plan to root out Washington corruption,” Warren emphasized at a speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College.
Without naming the former vice president, Warren said Biden’s promise that he can work with Republicans to reach compromise is a fantasy.
“Unlike some candidates for the Democratic nomination, I’m not counting on Republican politicians having an epiphany and suddenly supporting the kinds of tax increases on the rich or big business accountability that they have opposed under Democratic presidents for a generation,” she said.
Warren – who’s eschewed fundraisers with top-dollar donors during her presidential bid as she instead focuses nearly entirely on small-dollar grassroots contributions – once again criticized Biden and Buttigieg for mingling with wealthy donors.
“They are spending their time in fundraisers with high-dollar donors, selling access to their time for money. Some of them have spent months blocking reporters from entering those fancy, closed-door affairs,” she said.
And pointing to Buttigieg without naming him, she said the South Bend, Ind., mayor “calls the people who raise a quarter-million dollars for him his ‘National Investors Circle,’ and he offers them regular phone calls and special access. When a candidate brags about how beholden he feels to a group of wealthy investors, our democracy is in serious trouble.”
Warren was asked after her speech if she’s the only Democratic White House hopeful who can fix what she says is a broken system of government.
“We know how bad the problems are right now,” she said. “No one is proposing the kinds of solutions that address those problems.”
The increased aggressiveness in going after her top-tier rivals appears to be part of Warren’s shake-up of her routine, which also includes altering her format on the campaign trail to include more interaction with voters. The moves come as the one-time co-front-runner in the Democratic nomination race has seen her poll numbers deteriorate the past month in national surveys and, more importantly, in polls in New Hampshire and Iowa, the state that kicks off the primary and caucus presidential nominating calendar.
The Buttigieg campaign returned fire after Warren’s speech.
“Senator 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. We need to move beyond the politics and divisiveness that is tearing this country apart and holding us back,” Buttigieg senior advisor Lis Smith said in a statement.
Biden’s campaign declined to respond to Warren’s criticisms.
Presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker acknowledges he won’t qualify for next week’s sixth round Democratic nomination debate.
But the senator from New Jersey – in an email to supporters on Thursday morning – vowed to fight on.
“I’m in this race to win it, and our path forward is clear,” he said.
Booker made the stage at the first five debates – but while he’s reached the fundraising donor threshold for the Dec. 19 showdown, he remains far short of reaching the polling criteria by the end of Thursday’s qualifying deadline.
Seven candidates have qualified for the debate, which will be held in Los Angeles. They are Biden, Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Warren, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Buttigieg, billionaire environmental and progressive advocate and organizer Tom Steyer, and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang. Sen. Kamala Harris of California had qualified for the debate, but she dropped out of the presidential race last week.
“I may not be on the debate stage next Thursday, but thanks to the outpouring of support from this community over the past few weeks, we know there’s a path to victory and we no longer need the December debate stage to get there,” Booker emphasized in his email.
In a conference call with reporters, Booker campaign manager Addisu Demissie announced that Booker raised $3 million in three weeks following the last debate.
The campaign is hoping the late deciding voters in Iowa – which kicks off the presidential primary and caucus nominating calendar — and the Granite State, give Booker a boost.
“I think Iowa voters and New Hampshire voters could deliver a surprise for us,” Demissie said.
Booker returns to New Hampshire on Friday for his twelfth trip to the state since declaring his candidacy in February.
“New Hampshire is still important to us,” Demissie emphasized. “We’re going to keep coming as much as we can.”
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont returns to New Hampshire on Friday. And he’ll be accompanied on the Granite State campaign trail with Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
The progressive freshman firebrand congresswoman – who endorsed Sanders last month – has repeatedly created controversy during her brief tenure in Congress – courtesy of comments about Israel and Jewish Americans that many considered anti-Semitic.
Sanders and Omar will host a town hall meeting at Southern New Hampshire University, give keynote remarks at the New Hampshire Young Democrats’ Granite Slate Awards and hold a rally at Nashua Community College.
With two months to go until the Feb. 11 primary, there’s no clear front-runner in the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
An average of the three live telephone operator polls conducted since the most recent debate – which was held on Nov. 21 – indicates Sanders at 19% support among those likely to vote in New Hampshire’s Democratic presidential primary, with Buttigieg at 18%. Biden stands at 14%, with Warren one percentage point back.
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii registers at 6% in the average of the surveys, with tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang at 5%, billionaire environmental and progressive advocate and organizer Tom Steyer at 3%, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota at 2%. Everyone else in the still large field of roughly 15 Democratic White House hopefuls were at one percent or less.