In late April, Elizabeth Warren embraced a new catch-phrase. Sidelining “nevertheless, she persisted” (co-opted from a Mitch McConnell insult), the campaign began describing the Massachusetts Senator as the candidate who’s “got a plan for that” (borrowed from the headline on a New Yorker online post). It was magnificent branding—not just the slogan, but leaning into her wonky reputation...Yet it was gone Thursday night, as the ten leading Democratic Presidential candidates debated on national network television. Warren never said “a plan for that” during the debate. In fact, over the course of nearly three hours, she didn’t once utter the word “plan” at all.

It didn’t seem like merely a rhetorical omission. Warren’s strategically chosen opening and final remarks pulled from her personal tale of overcoming odds to get educated and become successful. In between, she repeatedly elided opportunities to lay out policy details, opting instead for more emotional-level connections.

On health care reform, as Sanders and Joe Biden argued vociferously, Warren emphasized the image of families struggling with their budgets—even seeming to downplay differences in approach by saying that “the only question here in terms of difference is where to send the bill.”

To be sure, Warren’s campaign rhetoric all summer mixed the “plans for that” with personal history, emotional connection, wide-view assessments, and colloquial humor. This is probably more a shift in balance and emphasis than a total change. But, to the extent that it is the start of a somewhat different selling of the candidate, it might be a savvy, and well-timed shift..., voters ultimately tend to put faith in a candidate for more abstract, character-based reasons than their laundry list of specific policy points.

The branding campaign of the past five months has ensured that Democratic primary voters head to the polls next year confident in Warren’s stockpile of plans.

Now, she needs to work on convincing them of the rest of the Presidential package. Thursday’s debate performance was a solid preview of that effort; a new catch-phrase might not be far behind.

https://www.wgbh.org/news/commentary/2019/09/13/elizabeth-warren-is-evolving-youre-forgiven-if-you-didnt-notice

Ahead of the release, the Warren campaign also solicited what officials described as an independent analysis of the plan by Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics, who estimated that the plan would cut the senior poverty rate by 68% and work over a period of 10 years to reduce the nation’s deficit by $1.1 trillion.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rubycramer/elizabeth-warren-social-security-plan

Elizabeth Warren is on the rise among Democratic voters, but she and other Democrats are less popular with the overall electorate, raising concerns about a bruising primary that could go on for the better part of the next year, a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll finds.

...Warren finds herself in a strong position with Democratic voters ahead of Thursday's Democratic presidential debate.

Seventy-five percent of Democratic voters now say they have a favorable impression of Warren — that's up from 53% in January, the last time the poll asked the favorability of candidates or potential candidates. That's a whopping 22-point jump.

What's more, those saying they have a negative impression has gone down from 17% to 11%.

"Elizabeth Warren seems to be on the verge of starting to make significant and serious inroads into this contest," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, which conducts the poll. He added, "Heading into the debate, she's very well positioned."

Former Vice President Joe Biden, who leads in most national polls of the Democratic contest, is also well liked, but he's seen a decline since January — 71% of Democrats say they have a positive impression of Biden, a 5-point drop, and 22% don't, an 11-point increase in his negative rating. "One of the initial senses of what Joe Biden presented was that he seemed to be less of a risk," Miringoff said, "but his performance so far has not been gaffe-proof, and, as a result, people are not as comfortable, and that opened up the door for others, and particularly Warren."

More at https://www.wbur.org/npr/759574033/poll-democrats-most-like-warren-but-voters-overall-are-lukewarm-on-democrats-tru

Be not afraid. Elizabeth Warren can win the White House.

Forget she’s a woman of a certain vintage, a senator from the very blue state of Massachusetts, and before that, a Harvard Law professor identified by her employer as Native American — a cultural misappropriation for which she now apologizes. Think of her, instead, as a young girl from Oklahoma, who grew up in a family living paycheck to paycheck, and who dropped out of school at 19 to get married. Holding on “for dear life,” she managed to live her dream and become a special-needs teacher. And today, that little girl from Oklahoma dreams of becoming president.

...Yes, Warren still must win the confidence of risk-averse Democrats who are afraid of picking a loser. President Trump has so played with their heads that enough of them believe a flub-prone, 76-year-old former vice president with a lifetime of problematic votes and policy positions is their best hope. If Joe Biden could defend his record with conviction and eloquence and articulate an inspirational vision for the future, that thinking might hold up. So far, he hasn’t been able to do it.

Warren, meanwhile, has rebranded herself — from Harvard elitist who checked a box she didn’t deserve to check, to Okie dreamer. If she wins the nomination, Republicans will do their best to resurrect the old identity. But unlike Biden, she shows formidable skill as a politician and self-advocate. And unlike Hillary Clinton, she trusts her own instincts.

In the context of a vast left-tilting Democratic primary field, Warren is now wisely carving out space as a passionate progressive who’s not a Sanders socialist. That was a key part of Saturday’s mission. As she told New Hampshire Democrats, “I get that in America there are gonna be people who are richer and people who are not so rich. And the rich are gonna own more shoes and they’re gonna own more cars and they may even own more houses. But they shouldn’t own more of our democracy.”

As Warren walks the line of separating herself from Sanders’ pure socialism while trying not to alienate his fervent believers, she’s also making the case that choosing a candidate out of fear is no way to win a presidential election. “I get it. I get it,” she said in her speech. “There is a lot at stake, and people are scared. But we can’t choose a candidate we don’t believe in because we’re scared. And we can’t ask other people to vote for someone we don’t believe in.” Clearly, she was referring to Biden, considered the leading candidate because of his stubborn hold on that bible of political punditry, the polls...

More at https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2019/09/09/fear-not-elizabeth-warren-electable/Uq3mkajffwNRfqyJH0cATO/story.html

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia's Stacey Abrams dove headlong Monday into Democrats' debate over how to win in 2020, urging her party's leaders and presidential candidates to treat her diversifying state as a key battleground and replicate nationwide her 2018 effort to bring new minority and young voters to the polls rather than chasing white voters the party lost long ago.

Abrams, who lost the Georgia governor's race by 1.4 percentage points but set a state record for Democratic votes, made her case Monday in a letter and strategy memo obtained by The Associated Press and sent to top Democratic presidential candidates, national party committees and key strategists and groups on the left.

“Democrats, let's do better and go big," Abrams wrote, arguing that her historic bid to be the first black female governor in U.S. history wasn't the sole driver of her near-win. "I am not the only candidate who can create a coalition and a strategy to win this state," she wrote, adding that "any decision less than full investment in Georgia would amount to strategic malpractice" and arguing that her 2018 coalition of nonwhites and whites from the cities and suburbs is the blueprint "to compete in the changing landscape of the Sun Belt."

The assertions from Abrams and her campaign manager, Lauren Groh-Wargo, highlight a fault line for Democrats. Some party leaders want to focus on flipping white voters who helped Trump flip Great Lakes states including Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Others want to drive turnout across Democrats' growing base of minority voters and college-educated whites in the suburbs and cities, constituencies that could put states like Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona in play, while also helping in the Upper Midwest.

..."Democratic committees, consultants and the media do not factor unlikely voters into their polling, strategy and prognostications, effectively making their analyses by re-litigating the prior election as if nothing had changed in the electorate since," she wrote.

Abrams herself added a bottom line: "We can win Georgia, and we can win across the nation in 2020."

More at https://tucson.com/news/national/abrams-to-democrats-go-after-unlikely-voters/article_e671202b-ca61-5c50-a683-9e1096def733.html

Elizabeth Warren was on stage in Houston in April when a woman asked her what she would do to address the fact that for black women, the risk of death due to pregnancy-related causes is three to four times higher than it is for white women. Warren pointed out that this holds true for well-educated and wealthy African-American women. "And the best studies that I've seen put it down to just one thing: prejudice, that doctors and nurses don't hear African-American women's medical issues the same way that they hear the same things from white women," she said.

Warren's answer may have a long-lasting impact. Recent polls have suggested that Warren has struggled so far in her presidential run to gain widespread support among black voters. But in the audience at the She the People gathering were politically active women of color from across the country. "[Warren] was able to respond to issues with a level of depth and sincerity on that stage that I think has reverberated 'til today," said Aimee Allison, who organized the event. "She talked really heart to heart with this group, and she impressed 2,000 organizers from swing states across the South and Southwest, and people sang from the rooftops." Warren was one of eight presidential candidates at the forum — including minority candidates Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Julián Castro — but according to several people present, it was Warren who made the strongest impression.

...Warren shows up several times a year at Roxbury's 12th Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. preached when he was a student at Boston University's divinity school. Last year, during a service commemorating King's assassination, Warren read from her grandmother's King James Bible. She chose a reading from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus tells his disciples: "Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of My brethren, you did it to Me." And then she tied that message to the situation in America. "It's tough for a lot of people out there," Warren said, "and what that says to me is that we have a bigger obligation than ever, a responsibility to act for these, the least of thy brethren, and to do it to honor Dr. King, and to do it to honor the Lord."

Segun Idowu, executive director of the Black Economic Council of Massachusetts, was there that night, and said Warren was "received ecstatically."..Miniard Culpepper, senior pastor at Pleasant Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Roxbury, also supports Warren's presidential bid. He says as his relationship with Warren grew, so did the congregation's. "She also demonstrated to the community how much she cared for the issues that folks in the community were dealing with," he said. "Whether it was housing, whether it was education, whether it was employment, whether it was gentrification, she understood and articulated the same issues that the African-American people in the community felt good about, so it was a natural fit."

Warren polls well among nonwhite voters in progressive Massachusetts. In the last WBUR poll before her Senate re-election last fall, 68% of nonwhite voters had a favorable view of her. (The poll didn't measure favorability among black voters specifically.)...One likely asset: the diversity of her campaign staff. Monica Cannon-Grant was invited to a meeting of Massachusetts black leaders at Warren's campaign headquarters in Boston. "I remember walking in and looking around at her staff and I go: 'Oh, okay. This is amazing.' " She added: "Regardless of how much we want to downplay it, representation matters. The amount of diversity on her campaign is truly amazing."

More at https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/09/09/elizabeth-warren-african-american-support