The 2020 presidential campaign of Elizabeth Warren was a campaign from the senior United States senator from Massachusetts. It began with Warren's formal announcement on February 9, 2019, at a rally in Lawrence, Massachusetts, at the site of the 1912 Bread and Roses Strike. The announcement followed widespread speculation that she would run after supporters urged her to run in the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries. In 2018, Warren had been considered a top contender for the 2020 Democratic nomination for President.
Warren is generally considered a progressive within the Democratic Party. Her political positions include an end to lobbying, a wealth tax and $15 hourly minimum wage within the context of a capitalist economy, single-payer healthcare, canceling student loan debt, and support for the Green New Deal. Polls showed Warren in second or third place, and she briefly challenged Biden and Sanders for frontrunner status in the race.
After a disappointing finish on Super Tuesday, including a third-place result in her home state of Massachusetts, she suspended her campaign on March 5, 2020. Political commentators have attributed her inability to win primary races to the primaries' focus on "electability" in a race against Donald Trump, her popularity peaking too early in the race, and her inability to position herself between progressive and more moderate voters.
Background
During the run-up to the 2016 presidential elections, Warren was widely believed by political commentators to be planning a run for the Democratic primaries and she was seen as one of the favorites to win the Democratic nomination, due to her popularity among the progressive wing of the party. However, she decided not to enter the race, claiming she "wanted to stay buckled down and keep doing [her] job" in the Senate. Despite this, Warren later stated in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek on July 25, 2019 that she would have accepted a role on the 2016 Democratic presidential ticket as vice president if nominee Hillary Clinton had offered it to her.
Speculation continued even after she explicitly denied plans to join the Democratic fray, with headlines such as "Should we believe Elizabeth Warren when she says she won't run for president?" appearing in the press. She stopped short of claiming that she would "never" run for the office of President, paving the way for a future attempt at the White House.
Warren vigorously campaigned for Hillary Clinton and took an active role in the 2016 presidential election. She remarked that Donald Trump, the Republican presumptive nominee, was dishonest, uncaring, and "a loser". A Clinton campaign memo obtained by Bloomberg Businessweek confirmed that Warren was one of the people under consideration to be Clinton's choice for vice president, though this ultimately went to Virginia Senator Tim Kaine. In December 2016, Warren gained a seat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, termed by The Boston Globe to be "a high-profile perch on one of the chamber's most powerful committees" which will "fuel speculation about a possible 2020 bid for president".
The media speculation regarding her campaign further increased her profile and widened the appeal of her platform among voters, leading CNBC to claim that she was "the real winner of the 2016 election".
Warren was named as part of the "Hell-No Caucus" by Politico in 2018, along with Senators Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, and Bernie Sanders, given she voted "overwhelmingly to thwart his [Trump's] nominees for administration jobs", such as with Rex Tillerson, Betsy DeVos, and Mike Pompeo; all of the Senators in this group were considered potential 2020 presidential contenders at this point in time. At a town hall meeting in Holyoke, Massachusetts on September 29, 2018, Warren said that "[a]fter November 6, I will take a hard look at running for president", referencing the date of the 2018 United States elections.
Campaign
Exploratory committee
Warren is regarded as the first major Democrat to announce the formation of an exploratory committee, which she did in a video on December 30, 2018. In this video, she says that "America's middle class is under attack" in explaining her populist economic agenda, indirectly referring to her recently proposed Accountable Capitalism Act.