Ready for Warren? Senator Says She's Not Ready to Run - East Idaho News
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Ready for Warren? Senator Says She’s Not Ready to Run

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ABC 72314 ElizabethWarren?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1406129117452ABC News(WASHINGTON) — Are you ready for Warren?

That’s the question supporters of Sen. Elizabeth Warren are asking with the recent formation of a Ready for Warren Super PAC, which is taking a page from Ready for Hillary in laying the groundwork for a presidential campaign should the Massachusetts Democrat decide to run in 2016.

Though many of her fans are cheering “Run, Liz, Run,” Warren is putting the brakes on such enthusiasm.

“I am not running,” Warren told ABC News when asked if she’s mulling the idea of a presidential bid. It’s the same answer she always gives — in the present tense. She doesn’t rule out whether she would ever run.

“I am focused on the 2014 elections,” she said. “We’ve got an election coming up … just a few months away — that’s what we need to work on.”

As for her admirers calling for her to get in the race, Warren is keeping her distance.

“I do not support this,” she said.

To make clear that her focus is on the 2014 midterm elections, Warren has been crisscrossing the nation in recent months, campaigning on behalf of Democratic candidates who wish to align themselves with her populist message calling for economic reforms on behalf of the middle class.

The Massachusetts Democrat has ventured into some deeply conservative states, including West Virginia and Kentucky. But Warren dismisses the suggestion that her message fires up only liberals.

“The kinds of economic issues that I’m talking about, it’s not Republican or Democrat,” she said. “People are getting hammered everywhere, and they care about these central ways that we can rebuild America’s middle class: equal pay for equal work, reduce the interest rate on student loans, raise the minimum wage. … And I love being in Kentucky to talk about this and to be in West Virginia, standing up with great candidates like Natalie Tennant and Alison Lundergan Grimes.“

Though Warren has been an outspoken critic of the way business is done in Washington — even ways that are critical of her own party — she denies that her tough talk is causing tensions within the Democratic Party.

“I’ll tell you where the tensions are, the tensions are with the Republicans,” Warren said. “We want working people to earn more, we want to reduce the interest rate on student loans, we want to stitch up the loop holes that let millionaires and billionaires pay at lower tax rates than their secretaries; that’s the stuff we’re working on, and Republicans have filibustered every single piece of it.”


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