Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is holding events around her state in areas that support President Donald Trump in hopes of winning back working-class voters who abandoned the Democratic Party, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.
Her message is that Trump, despite his rhetoric to the contrary, is about "to deliver the knockout blow" to the middle class with his attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare, roll back the previous administration's financial regulation and increasingly burden new college graduates with student debts.
Warren's aides say her outreach tour is intended to listen to the concerns of Massachusetts residents and is not meant to garner support for her bid next year to retain her seat in the Senate, as she is not expected to face a serious challenge for re-election.
The senator said she was frustrated at Democratic losses in four special elections, but cautioned the solution was not to waste time infighting, the Boston Globe reported.
"The one thing we've got to do is we've got to keep in mind that we can't be spending our energy shouting at each other," said Warren, insisting that "now more than ever we have got to keep our eye on what the Republican majority in the House and Senate and Donald Trump in the White House will do to America."
However, she stressed Democrats would perform better if they campaigned on a progressive platform that proudly supports raising the minimum wage, expanding Social Security, forgiving student loan debt and instituting tougher federal regulations on the financial services industry rather the blurring the lines with Republican policies, according to The Journal.
"The progressive agenda is America's agenda," she said. "It's not like we're trying to sell stuff that people don't want… We haven't gotten up there and been as clear about our values as we should be, or as clear and concrete about how we're going to get there."