Elizabeth Warren formally launches 2020 White House bid
FILE - In this Oct. 24, 2016, file photo, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. speaks at a rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. The defeat of Clinton, an experienced Washington politician who sought common ground with Republicans, could make it more likely that the party will turn to its liberal wing as it grapples with its future. That’s best represented by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whom Clinton defeated in a long primary, and Warren, a pull-no-punches progressive darling. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, file)
US Senator Elizabeth Warren has formally launched her bid to stand for
the White House in 2020 with a speech in which she promised to tackle
economic inequality.
She is the latest Democrat to launch a campaign to become the party’s presidential candidate.
Even before she had taken to the stage, President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign team had responded calling her a fraud.
It is the first such intervention to target a possible Trump contender.
“The American people will reject her dishonest campaign and socialist
ideas like the Green New Deal, that will raise taxes, kill jobs and
crush America’s middle-class,” Mr Trump’s campaign manager Brad Pascale
wrote.
He also accused her of “impersonating and disrespecting” Native
Americans “to advance her professional career,” referring to a DNA test
she took to prove her Cherokee ancestry. Mr Trump had long been calling
her “fake Pocahontas”.
Ms Warren has apologised for taking the test.
In her speech on Saturday in Lawrence, in her home state of
Massachusetts, Ms Warren called Mr Trump “the latest and most extreme
symptom of what’s gone wrong in America, a product of a rigged system
that props up the rich and powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else”.
She added: “This is the fight of our lives, the fight to build an
America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone.”
A star in the progressive left
In the shadow of long-unused smoke stacks, at the site of a famous
factory strike more than a century ago, Elizabeth Warren formally
launched her presidential bid.
She used the backdrop to highlight what she sees as the plight of an
American working class that has been left behind by rapacious big
business and indifferent government.
Despite sub-zero temperatures and a blustery wind, an estimated crowd
of several thousand turned out to hear the Massachusetts senator pledge
to fight corruption in Washington, level the economic playing field and
reform the US democratic process.
Warren enters a crowded presidential field, as Democrats tell pollsters
they want to find the candidate most able to beat Donald Trump.
There were some in Ms Warren’s campaign kick-off crowd who expressed
concern that her struggles to explain her past claims of Native American
heritage could make her vulnerable to attack.
Ms Warren has long been a star in the progressive left, however, and
she has already built a formidable nationwide campaign. She has just
under a year to make her case, before voters start rendering their
judgement.
