politics

Elizabeth Warren Says the System Is Rigged Against Women and People of Color

Senator Elizabeth Warren gave a speech on Saturday that stoked rumors she’ll run for president in 2020. Photo: Astrid Riecken/Getty Images

Elizabeth Warren’s name was being thrown around as a 2020 presidential candidate even before Mitch McConnell unwittingly gave her a slogan, and this weekend she gave a speech at the 2017 Netroots Nation conference that reinforced the rumors. Speaking to a supportive crowd in Atlanta, Georgia, Warren decried the idea that Democrats need to return to centrist politics and celebrated progressives’ lasting influence on the party.

“We are not the gate-crashers of today’s Democratic Party,” she said. “We are not a wing of today’s Democratic Party. We are the heart and soul of today’s Democratic Party.”

“If we’re going to be the people who lead the Democratic Party back from the wilderness, then we can’t waste energy arguing about whose issue matters most,” she added. She described how “the system is rigged” against any number of marginalized groups, including women, LGBTQ people, and African-Americans:

When women aren’t invited to the debate over our own health care and health insurance must cover Viagra but not birth control.


When we’re almost two decades into the 21st century and we still don’t have equal pay for equal work.


When a man running for President of the United States can get caught on tape bragging about sexual assault and Republican party leaders turn a blind eye.


Yeah, the system is rigged.

And while a significant portion of her speech focused on jobs and the economy, she also made it clear that she supported abortion access — something Democrats have seemingly wavered on since Trump took the White House.

In other words, if and when Warren’s platform emerges, it won’t be a return to the ‘90s-era policies that worked so well for Bill Clinton. “The Democratic Party isn’t going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill,” she said, citing measures Clinton signed into law. Instead, it will be built around what matters to the liberal left because, as she put it, “when we’re bold enough to stand up for our values, when we’re bold enough to stand up for our fellow Americans, that’s when we are powerful.”

Elizabeth Warren Says the System Is Rigged Against Women