Elizabeth Warren goes all in on electability in the final sprint to Iowa

Elizabeth Warren ended her town hall at a middle school gymnasium in Muscatine, Iowa, Saturday evening with a new closing message: “Fight back.”

“There are a lot of people around the country who are afraid,” Warren said. “And the danger is real. We have to decide whether to give into the fear, or whether to fight back. Me? I’m fighting back.”

Warren would repeat that sentiment multiple times over the course of the weekend, as the Massachusetts Democrat crammed in a flurry of campaign events before returning to Washington, DC, to serve as a juror on President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate.

It was an unmistakable sign that with the Iowa caucuses just days away, Warren was making a hard pivot to a message aimed at winning over and reassuring voters across the state who are not entirely convinced that she can win — the so-called “electability” concern that has been front and center in the 2020 Democratic primary.

In her remarks in Muscatine, Warren, who has made the term “big structural change” a key theme of her presidential campaign, also pleaded that “this is no time to think small.”

“This is no time to look back. This is no time for a vague campaign that nibbles around the edges of big problems,” she said. “This is no time to look sideways, away from bigotry and racism.”

And the senator’s final words there came in the form of a request to the voters seated around her: “If you believe in that America and you believe that America is worth fighting for, I’m asking you tonight to commit to caucus for me, because this is our moment in history.”

Warren’s campaign also began running a new TV ad in Iowa Monday that directly pit Warren against Trump — a 30-second spot that could have easily been mistaken for a general election ad. As images of the President and Warren’s childhood family photos flash across the screen, author Roxane Gay — who has endorsed Warren — describes the two candidates as fundamentally different.

“He grew up in a mansion in New York City. She grew up here in Oklahoma. He got millions from his dad’s real estate empire. Her dad ended up a janitor,” Gay narrates. “He scammed students at his for-profit school. She got debt forgiven for students who were scammed.”

The ad goes on to say: “When someone shows you who they are, believe them. Trump’s life taught him how to get rich on the backs of others. Elizabeth Warren will be a president who works for you.”

After steadily building political momentum over the last year, Warren has seen her stock fall in recent months, while her progressive rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, has surged in the polls. Conversations with voters in the early-voting states, including at Warren campaign events, have consistently demonstrated that a top and urgent priority for Democratic voters this campaign cycle is electing a nominee who can eventually defeat Trump in November. And some have also expressed concern that a female candidate could find it more challenging than her male counterpart to win broad support.

At a town hall in Davenport Sunday morning, one woman stood up to voice that very concern directly to Warren. She asked the senator what she would say to voters who believe that a more “moderate” candidate would be more “electable” than Warren is.

The senator began by conceding that victory is, in fact, key: “We gotta win. That’s what this is all about, right? You don’t get to do good things if you don’t win.”

Warren insisted that she was a fighter with a record of winning, billing herself “the only person in this race who has beaten an incumbent Republican any time in the past 30 years” — the same point she had made at a recent CNN presidential debate. She then leaned into her gender.

“Women win,” Warren said. “We all know that women candidates have been outperforming men candidates since Donald Trump was elected in competitive elections.”

By the next morning, with Warren back in Washington for Trump’s impeachment trial, her campaign was promoting the minutes-long exchange with the voter on social media.

Whether this closing message built around electability and gender can secure Warren a strong finish in Iowa will depend in no small part on voters like Sheilia Burrage, a 72-year-old African-American voter from Davenport.

In an interview at Warren’s Davenport event on Sunday , she shared that she was interested in Sanders, Warren and former Vice President Joe Biden. Asked to name her top choice, Burrage — after much hesitation — settled on Biden.

She said she was not sure that the country was ready to elect a female president. “They would love to, but they’re scared,” she said. “They would love to.”