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Warren slams Bloomberg, says Democrats will lose in 2020 if they offer ‘business as usual’

Riley Snyder
Riley Snyder
Election 2020
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Warren speaking on stage

Massachusets Sen. Elizabeth Warren took aim Tuesday at some of her 2020 presidential opponents for “nibbling” around the edges of major political problems and for either using their wealth or “sucking up to billionaires.”

Speaking to reporters after an hour-long town hall attended by 650 people at the Truckee Meadows Community College, Warren — who has generally avoided attacking her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination — said she was “glad” that South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg had released the list of his former McKinsey & Company clients amid criticism from candidates, including Warren, about an alleged lack of transparency (a squabble that also led to Warren disclosing nearly $2 million in income from corporations and financial firms over the last three decades).

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks during a town hall event at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno on Dec. 10, 2019 (David Calvert/The Nevada Independent)

But Warren saved her sharpest words for former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who entered the presidential contest late but has already spent millions of his own money on a massive advertising campaign — outspending the rest of the Democratic field and eclipsing the $100 million mark on Tuesday.

Warren, who on Monday fielded questions at a Culinary Union Local 226 town hall in Las Vegas, said that Bloomberg was attempting to “buy the election” and that he was attempting to “skip the democracy part” of elections by relying on massive amounts of advertising. 

“If that is how a Democratic primary is going to work, if the only people who have a chance to be nominated are either billionaires themselves or spend their time sucking up to billionaires, then we’re going to have a democracy that just works better and better for billionaires and doesn’t work for anybody else,” she said.

The campaign stop was Warren’s fourth visit to Northern Nevada in 2019, following an October town hall in Carson City, an event in Reno in July and an April rally at a Reno high school. 

Elizabeth Warren greets a man at her town hall rally
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren shakes hands with a voter during a town hall event at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno on Dec. 10, 2019 (David Calvert/The Nevada Independent)

Although Warren was tied with fellow progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders for second-place in a poll conducted by The Nevada Independent of likely caucus-goers last month, her in-person efforts in Nevada and other early primary states could hit a snag if the impeachment process into President Donald Trump — initiated over the president’s threat to withhold funding to Ukraine unless the country opened an investigation into the son of former Vice President Joe Biden — ends up in the Senate early next year. The House unveiled two articles of impeachment on Tuesday.

Warren, addressing a question on that topic, said, “There are some things more important than politics. I took an oath of office to uphold the constitution of the United States.”

The candidate also took questions on a wide variety of topics, including how her Medicare-for-all proposal would affect lower-level workers in the health care industry and a promise to sign an executive order banning mining and oil drilling on federally owned land.

Elizabeth Warren speaks to reporters
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks to reporters after a town hall event at Truckee Meadows Community College in Reno on Dec. 10, 2019 (David Calvert/The Nevada Independent)

But many of Warren’s answers revolved around two points — that many of the policies promised by her and other candidates would only come about if candidates took on the political power of the wealthy, and that Democrats could only win the 2020 presidential election if they ran on substantive change and not just a return to normalcy.

“This country is in a crisis. And people in Washington don’t want to admit it. Party insiders don’t want to admit it. They think that somehow that running a vague campaign that nibbles around the edges of these huge problems is a safe strategy,” she said. “If the best that Democrats can offer is business as usual after Donald Trump then Democrats will lose. We win when we have ideas big enough to meet the problems in people’s lives.”

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