Billionaire Michael Novogratz has a message for his rich friends: Stop worrying so much about Elizabeth Warren.

“You’re not victims, you’re the richest people in the world,” said Novogratz, the former Goldman Sachs partner who’s now investing in cryptocurrency as founder of Galaxy Investment Partners. “How in God’s name do you feel like a victim?”

...“Ninety-seven percent of the people I know in my world are really, really fearful of her,” Novogratz, 54, said in an interview at a benefit for Hudson River Park Friends, of which he’s chairman. “They don’t like her, they’re worried about her, they think she’s anti-rich,” Novogratz said of the senator from Massachusetts. “It’s a little carried away.”

For Novogratz, plans to take from the rich to give to those who are struggling make sense.

“The way the country is functioning today, the bottom 60% aren’t doing well,” said Novogratz, who has supported Democrats in the past. “She’s speaking to that group. She wants to redistribute. Bernie’s a socialist, Elizabeth says she’s a capitalist, she just wants to redistribute more. And I think we’re going to have more redistribution.”

More at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-18/novogratz-says-wealthy-worried-about-warren-should-lighten-up?srnd=premium

https://twitter.com/VicStoddard/status/1102387779097354242

... After multiple media reports Tuesday night and Wednesday morning that U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, had joined Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., in endorsing U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders for president, Tlaib tapped on the brakes.

"I have not made any endorsement at this time," Tlaib said in a statement to the Free Press, adding that she is planning to bring Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont, to her Detroit-based district on Oct. 27 for a tour.

Tlaib's office also said that she is not planning to be part of a Sanders rally in New York City this weekend despite reports that she would be. Instead, she is expected to be at a rally of progressives in Lansing.

Sanders' campaign confirmed the trip to southeast Michigan, though no other details were released.

That doesn't mean Tlaib won't endorse Sanders, only that she hasn't done so at this time. Recently, Tlaib welcomed another Democratic presidential candidate — U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — and the two talked about environmental hazards in the district and filmed a Facebook piece together.

More at https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2019/10/16/rashida-tlaib-bernie-sanders-endorsement/3997815002/

On Tuesday night, 12 candidates crammed onto the stage at Ohio’s Otterbein University. It was the first time that all of the remaining Democratic presidential hopefuls have shared the same stage on one night.

But the attention was almost all focused on one candidate, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has emerged as the frontrunner after a slow and steady rise in her support, and who has crystalized her position in recent months as the party’s intellectual and ideological center of gravity. Questions were framed around her policy positions, her past statements, her agenda; other candidates staked their claim to positions almost exclusively in relation to where Warren stands. Even on the rare occasions when Warren was not speaking, not directly being spoken to, and not being spoken about, her dominance hung over the conversation, making itself known in unexpected moments. At one point, a moderator, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, addressed another contender – Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar – by Warren’s name. Klobuchar smiled and graciously deflected, but within minutes, she was bringing up Warren herself.

...She was attacked by Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg over how she plans to pay for Medicare for All. She was attacked by Andrew Yang over her plan to break up big tech and enforce a strict anti-trust agenda. She was attacked by Kamala Harris, who alleged that Warren was hypocritical for, of all things, not calling on Twitter to suspend Donald Trump’s account. She was attacked by Joe Biden for supposedly being “vague” on Medicare for All. She would have been attacked by Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard for her lack of military experience, except Gabbard was cut off by a moderator.

For the most part, Warren weathered these attacks with patience, grace, and an agility in her rhetoric that rivals that of a gymnast on a balance beam. She refused to take the bait repeatedly offered to her by moderators and other candidates, who attempted to goad her into saying that she would raise taxes to cover Medicare for All. This denied her opponents a video clip that they could use to discredit her; instead, she hammered home the larger point that total costs would go down under her plan. She refused to get mired down in the petty point of whether or not Twitter should suspend Donald Trump’s account; instead, she focused on how Big Tech companies have too much influence over our politics to go unregulated. She wouldn’t concede Andrew Yang’s dubious assertion that unregulated tech giants encourage innovation; instead, she focused on the ways that monopolies in all sectors of the economy—she cited agriculture and pharmaceuticals—need to be broken up to protect consumers.

It was a front runner’s strategy, a deflection technique meant to avoid inconvenient commitments and stymie the attack strategies of her rivals. Warren made moral cases instead of economic ones, refusing to get mired down in the kinds of specifics that can only be communicated poorly and haphazardly to voters within the confines of the contentious debate format. To make her case in a general election, she will have to become more willing to communicate the specifics of her multitudinous plans on a mass scale, more ready to get down to brass tacks on television and on the debate stage. But Tuesday’s debate was her first as the object of rivals’ ire—before tonight, her opponents had more or less held their fire against her. The discipline and poise she showed in this newly antagonistic role bodes well for her performance in a general election against the erratic and taunting Trump. He will bait her and goad her, and she will be able to calmly and convincingly remain on message.

More at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/16/elizabeth-warren-attacked-democratic-debate?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

https://twitter.com/EmmaVigeland/status/1183798607121715203

https://twitter.com/RebeccaKKatz/status/1183785014577815553

https://twitter.com/jwestin2/status/1183835819775332352

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren danced to Aretha Franklin and posed for selfies as she marched Friday night in the Las Vegas Pride parade.

The Massachusetts senator, who is gaining momentum in the crowded field of White House hopefuls, was the only candidate to appear at the parade in the early voting state.

Nevada, which holds presidential nominating caucuses on Feb. 22, is the third in line to cast votes for the Democratic nominee.

Warren, wearing a rainbow-hued feather boa, walked Friday night behind a banner with supporters and her campaign staff, cheering, raising her fists and dancing. But she frequently broke away from the marchers and ran to the sides of the parade route to give out hugs and pose for photographs. She would then sprint back to her spot behind the banner, drink a swig of coconut water, and keep going.

Warren did not make any comments or hold any other public campaign events in Nevada Friday.

Other Democratic presidential candidates sent family members on their behalf and had supporters marching carrying their signs.

More at https://kdwn.com/2019/10/12/warren-marches-in-las-vegas-pride-parade/

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Her dismissal from a job 48 years ago had been catapulted into the news by a conservative media outlet, and she herself had just ignited a fresh round of hand-wringing about her willingness to court big donors for the Democratic Party if she is the presidential nominee. So as Senator Elizabeth Warren faced a knot of reporters after a walking tour of an environmentally degraded neighborhood here on Wednesday, she had to work to keep the focus on the matter at hand. “Did anyone,” she asked pointedly, “have a question on environmental justice?”

Warren’s steady climb in the polls is drawing increasingly frequent barbs from her rivals and heightened scrutiny of her every move, opening up a new phase for a disciplined candidate that could distract voters from the core message and policy proposals that have helped propel her rise. But as the heat picked up in recent days, Warren’s strategy — as shown in her remarks in South Carolina this week — has started to emerge. While the idea of combat has long been central to Warren’s political brand — the word “fight” is in her campaign slogan and two of her book titles — she appears to be carefully picking her battles.

She has largely ignored jabs from her Democratic opponents while saving her fire for attacks more central to her political identity — an approach that seems intended to project strength and focus ahead of a potential contest with President Trump while downplaying her Democratic rivals.

Warren strongly fought back when the conservative Washington Free Beacon questioned the accuracy of a story she frequently tells on the campaign trail, turning it into a galvanizing moment for her female supporters. At the same time, she declined to respond to overt or subtle criticism from Democratic rivals like former vice president Joe Biden, South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet, even though it is something she could face more of on the debate stage Tuesday in Ohio as her opponents scramble to change the trajectory of the race.

“The clock’s running out,” said Colin Reed, a Republican strategist who worked on Scott Brown’s unsuccessful Senate race against Warren in 2012. “I don’t think she’s going to implode on her own.”

...Warren’s allies have used the incident to draw favorable comparisons between her and Biden, who responded tentatively as Trump began making unfounded claims about his son’s activities in Ukraine before he finally called for the president’s impeachment this week. “He comes out of a generation of Democratic politicians that tends to be a little more cautious,” said Mike Lux, a former staffer for Biden’s 1988 presidential campaign who supported Warren during her fight to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“Elizabeth, I think, is used to hitting back harder and faster,” Lux said, recalling the words from a sign he kept on the wall when he worked on Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign: “Speed kills.”

More at https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2019/10/10/elizabeth-warren-picks-her-battles-attacks-pick/9eXRLicIKmgFPv3MEzQezK/story.html