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Senator Elizabeth Warren has made a name for herself in Washington as a progressive firebrand who rails against corruption and money in politics. The second term senator identified money in politics as corrupting on her 2020 campaign website saying “With money comes time, access, and the corruption of our representative democracy. Enough is enough. It’s time to get big money out of politics.” Now it seems that after positioning herself as the anti-corruption candidate, the senator has decided to not disavow a super-PAC spending money on her behalf. After saying “My campaign is and will continue to be a grassroots campaign – funded by working people chipping in a few bucks here or there,” she allowed Persist PAC, a super-Pac, to spend $9 million to support her campaign in super Tuesday states.
Senator Warren used gender as her reasoning for switching positions, telling reporters “We reached the point a few weeks ago where all of the men who were on the debate stage all had either super PACs or they were multi-billionaires who could rummage around in their sock drawers and find enough money to be able to fund a campaign, and the only people who didn’t have them were the two women,” she said.”
Her statement was not fully accurate however; like Senator Warren, Senator Bernie Sanders does have grass-roots PAC support from the United Nurses Union and The Sunrise Movement but does not have corporate PAC support. Senator Sanders, Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg, and Billionaire Tom Steyer are the only remaining candidates without super-PAC support who qualified for the South Carolina Debate after the Massachusetts Senator embraced super-PAC’s.
Super-PAC support was not the only position Senator Warren has flip flopped on in the last month. Almost a year ago, the Massachusetts Senator posted to her 2020 Presidential campaign website “Everyone’s vote should count equally — in every election — no matter where they live.” For the past year the Senator used a variation of this line on the campaign trail, but it seems she is not practicing what she preached. During the Nevada debate on Feb 19, 2020 she was one of five candidates who declared that the person with the most votes in the Democratic primary should not “necessarily” become the nominee.
The Senator changed her positions on some of the signature policies of her campaign. Senator Warren started her campaign saying “I’m with Bernie” when questioned on her position on healthcare and private insurance. After being attacked by “moderate” Democrats on “kicking 160 million people off of their insurance plans” the Massachusetts Senator flip flopped on her position. After co-sponsoring “Medicare for All” in the Senate and endorsing it on the debate stage, Warren changed her position to a “Public Option” with the “Medicare for All” fight postponed for three years. Senator Warren consistently gained in polls to the point where she was the national leader in the Real Clear Politics average in early October, however, after she announced her plan to fund “Medicare for All” and her two part healthcare fight, she dipped 12 points in the polling in less than two months.
Written By Jaylen Conwell. Edited by Kimberley Spinney.
Sources:
elizabethwarren.com: Plans/campaign finance reform
BuzzFeed News: Elizabeth Warren Has Reversed On Super PAC Support: “That’s How It Has To Be”
RealClearPolitics: National Polling
Featured and Top Image Courtesy of Gage Skidmore’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License