Elizabeth Warren Wrapping Up Swing Through Iowa
WHITFIELD: Senator Elizabeth Warren crisscrossing Iowa, testing the waters ahead of a potential 2020 presidential run. Well., at an event earlier this weekend, the Massachusetts Democrat tried to make it clear to those in attendance she believes this country is in trouble.</s>SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, (D) MASSACHUSETTS: These are dangerous times for our country. And the direction we go will in part be set right here in Iowa. I am grateful to all of you who take this seriously, who are in this fight all the way and who are going to help us make a better country.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, joining me right now, Natasha Korecki, National Correspondent for POLITICO and Jess Bidgood, reporter for the Boston Globe. Good to see both of you and Happy New Year. All right. So Natasha, you first, you know, so how do you think this experiment, if you want to call it that went for Senator Warren?</s>NATASHA KORECKI, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, POLITICO: I think it couldn't have gone much more smoothly for Senator Warren. I think what we ended up seeing was a group of Iowa Democrats who are really excited and dying to get 2020 going, and they packed every single event she had across Iowa. And they were excited. These weren't necessarily Warren supporters per se, but they were people who came out because they want to start seeing all the different candidates what they have to offer and, you know, she by -- I think one of the big takeaways is that Warren couldn't have times this better. She was out first and she had the whole place to herself. It's going to get really busy really soon and she's out ahead. She had her message out. They go to that person for it.</s>WHITFIELD: So, Jess, you see that too as being very clever getting out there first, you know, being in the forefront. Even though it's so early ahead of 2020?</s>JESS BIDGOOD, REPORTER, BOSTON GLOBE: Yes, it is so early but I think the campaign was smart to announce her -- to announce its exploratory bid on New Year's Eve. They really had the whole week to themselves and the whole weekend to themselves. They know things are going to change soon. They know it before we know it. They're will be two, three, four more candidates in the race. But Warren largely had Iowa to herself this weekend and that allowed her to capitalize on that excitement from Democrats and that energy. It allowed her to have lines around the block and filling every event space that she had without having yet to share the spotlight with the other Democrats who will soon be descending here.</s>WHITFIELD: And then Natasha, you know, Warren, you know, guess she felt compelled and she was asked directly, you know, to address, you know, the controversy over her Native American Heritage, the whole DNA testing, all of that and this is what she had to say.</s>WARREN: I am not a person of color. I am not a citizen of a tribe. When I first ran for public office, the first time was in 2012 and the Republicans honed in on this part of my history and thought they could make a lot of hay out of it. A lot of racial slurs and a lot of ugly stuff that went on and so my decision was, I was going to put it all out there.</s>WHITFIELD: So Natasha by addressing it in that fashion, you know, has she put it to rest? Did she have the last word on this or will it keep coming up?</s>KORECKI: Well, it could keep coming up. I think the interesting takeaway here is, one, she was taking questions from the crowd. I mean she's trying to -- she's trying to show there's a different Elizabeth Warren here. She's going to be very transparent and she did answer the question. This was kind of I think at least recently, the most forthcoming she has been and straightforward with it. And I think she knew going in the Iowa, she was going to get this question and she had to have a response to it and she did.</s>WHITFIELD: And, Jess, maybe this is a page from, you know, Hillary Clinton because she seemed to really shine when she did something like this, this kind of open forum-town hall esq kind of format.</s>BIDGOOD: Yes. Warren really wants to take questions while she's here and she's been using this interesting system where they pass around tickets and people kind of pull a number and they get to ask a question. In my sense is that she's committed to continuing to ask questions from voters as she campaigns. That question that you just played was the only time anyone answered or anyone asked the question specifically about DNA. And it also, it was one of the rare times here that she actually mentioned President Trump by name. Most of her time here, she's not been talking about him directly certainly not by name.</s>WHITFIELD: And so, Natasha, you know, President Trump, you know, won Iowa in 2016. So what does a, you know, potential candidate Warren need to do to pick up Republican support there?</s>KORECKI: Well, you know, it's really interesting. She does something different than what most democrats do when they come to the state which is she started on the west side which is really a Republican stronghold. She started out there and she packed all the places. She got -- she drew people out. There's a lot of Trump-Obama voters in some of those areas. I mean, it is very Republican but there's also these swing voters and what she was doing was sort of tapping into this economic populism, her message of inequity in the system. She talked about government corruption. So she's trying to reach out to these vote potential caucus goers in that sense. Talk to them about the inequities in government, you know, she talks about that the corporations and the billionaires and how -- and then juxtaposed that to the middle class and, you know, lot of things that the average voter could kind of relate to. So I think it was really tapping into that economic message.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, quickly, Jess?</s>BIDGOOD: I think her hope is that these economic issues will transcend party lines. She is viewed as a pretty partisan figure. I mean, she gets featured in Republican attack ads and things like that but her hope, I think, is that by driving this economic message, you know, about corruption in Washington and the way the economy works for people she will be able to pick up support from both sides and from moderate voters.</s>WHITFIELD: All right, we'll leave it there for now. Thank you so much Jess Bidgood and Natasha Korecki. Good to see you both.