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Warren Says She Will Take ‘A Hard Look’ at Running for President

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., declared on Saturday that she would “take a hard look” at running for the White House in 2020 once the midterm elections are over, and called on the country to elect a female president to fix the “broken government” in Washington.

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By
Alexander Burns
, New York Times

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., declared on Saturday that she would “take a hard look” at running for the White House in 2020 once the midterm elections are over, and called on the country to elect a female president to fix the “broken government” in Washington.

Warren made the announcement during a town-hall meeting in Holyoke, Massachusetts, where she was decrying President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans for digging in behind Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the embattled Supreme Court nominee who has been accused of sexual assault. She described the hearings as a spectacle of “powerful men helping a powerful man make it to an even more powerful position.”

“I watched that and I thought: Time’s up,” Warren said, according to a transcript and video of her remarks provided by an aide. “It’s time for women to go to Washington and fix our broken government, and that includes a woman at the top.”

She continued, “So here’s what I promise: After Nov. 6, I will take a hard look at running for president.”

“I think we can turn this country around,” Warren said.

The comments are Warren’s clearest and most public confirmation yet that she is preparing to seek the presidency. She has been traveling the country extensively in recent months and has already been reaching out to Democratic leaders in crucial presidential primary states, leaving little doubt about her interest in the race.

Warren, 69, is running for re-election in Massachusetts this year, but she faces only weak Republican opposition and is expected to win easily. A liberal former Harvard Law School professor, she is one of her party’s fiercest critics of Trump; he, in turn, regularly mocks her with demeaning language.

Warren’s comments in Holyoke captured two strains of her political identity that could make her a formidable contender for the Democratic nomination: a muscular message of economic populism, and an intensely personal connection with the urgent feminism of the Trump era.

“Working people have taken one punch to the gut after another,” Warren said, before addressing Kavanaugh’s nomination. “And I am worried down to my bones about what Donald Trump is doing to our democracy.”

Warren took aim at the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has an all-male membership on the Republican side, for defending Kavanaugh and enlisting a female prosecutor to question Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who says he attempted to rape her.

“I watched 11 men who were too chicken to ask a woman a single question,” said Warren. “I watched as Brett Kavanaugh acted like he was entitled to that position and angry at anyone who would question him.”

Warren is one of several Democrats in the Senate who have forcefully denounced Kavanaugh as they consider challenging Trump in 2020. Two of her potential rivals for the Democratic nomination, Sens. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., sit on the Judiciary Committee, and questioned both Kavanaugh and Blasey on Thursday.

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