Elizabeth Warren assures She the People forum that America is ready for woman president

David Knowles
·Senior Editor
Updated ·3 min read
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Elizabeth Warren had a singular moment at Wednesday’s She the People forum that helped her stand out from the other the other Democrats seeking the support of an audience made up mostly of women of color activists.

After answering a series of questions on topics ranging from maternal mortality, affordable housing and criminal justice to bank reform and Native American tribal sovereignty, Sen. Warren, D-Mass., was asked by co-moderator Joy Reid whether voters should feel confident that America was ready for a woman to serve as commander in chief.

“We are at She the People, this wonderful organization that is empowering women and women of color, but when I talk with women of color in my own life they’ll say, Wow, that Elizabeth Warren has great plans. She’s got specific plans. She’s got great ideas, but there’s a fear a lot of people of color and a lot of women of color that say, after the experience of 2016, they don’t have the confidence in the electorate of this country to elect a woman president,” Reid said. “They want to vote one way, but their fear says that they may need to flee to the safety of a white male candidate. How do you address—”

Warren gazed out skeptically at the audience.

“I think that’s called side-eye,” She the People founder Aimee Allison said. “That’s side-eye.”

Elizabeth Warren
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren. (Photo: Rick Bowmer/AP)

“So, let me just say this about confidence,” Warren began. “This is the heart of it. It’s, how are we going to fight? Not just individually, but how are we going to fight together? Are we going to fight because we’re afraid? Are we going to show up for people that we didn’t actually believe in, but because we were too afraid to do anything else? That’s not who we are. That’s not how we’re going to do this.”

Warren’s policy proposals have received lots of attention lately. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin wrote Tuesday that she has “a zillion policy ideas,” while FiveThirtyEight has described her as a “progressive policy anchor in the 2020 Democratic field.” Yet Warren, who has been singled out for derisive criticism by President Trump, has not risen to the top of the pack. A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday found her receiving just 6 percent support, behind former Vice President Joe Biden (27 percent), Sen. Bernie Sanders (20 percent), Sen. Kamala Harris (8 percent), and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (8 percent).

“Here’s how I see this. I’ll tell you how I see it,” Warren continued, to cheers from the audience. “We got a room full of people here who weren’t given anything. We got a room full of people here who had to fight for what they believe in. We have a room full of people here who had to reach down deep, no matter how hard it was, no matter how scary it looked. They found what they needed to find and they brought it up and they took care of the people they loved.”

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