Warren Refuses to Say Where Her First Primary Win Will Be: ‘I Just Don’t Frame It That Way’
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) refused to answer an interview question on “what’s the first state you think you can win,” instead replying that her campaign is about “talking to people all across this country” as she trails in the polls heading into Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
Warren, speaking with NPR on Monday, pivoted when asked directly by host Steve Inskeep where she hopes to come out on top in the Democratic primary race.
“I just don’t frame it that way,” Warren said. Earlier in the interview, she called the race “the fight of her life.”
Warren currently sits tied for fourth in the RealClearPolitics New Hampshire polling average ahead of Tuesday’s vote. The senator told reporters Sunday that she “didn’t start by doing polls a year ago, and I still don’t do polls.”
When challenged by Inskeep over why she was not performing better in New Hampshire — which neighbors her home state of Massachusetts — Warren countered by saying she had “gotten great crowds,” but that she was not rubbing shoulders “with billionaires and corporate executives.”
“This is about repairing our democracy, really putting it down at the grassroots,” she said.
Warren then retreated when Inskeep asked her about her “wine cave” attack on former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg in December.
“Look, I’m not here to criticize other candidates,” Warren said Monday, after she accused Buttigieg of catering to wealthy donors during the Democratic debate.
Warren also explained how she had taken on staff and support from many of the former Democratic candidates, including fellow Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Kirsten Gillibrand, after they had been “squeezed out because of money.”
“I try to incorporate their ideas, incorporate their people,” she stated. “We’ve hired a lot of staffers from those campaigns and brought in a lot of volunteers because we need to be a Democratic Party that embraces ideas, and those ideas should be the ideas that help working people. That’s my life’s work, and that’s why I’m in the fight.”
