WATCH: Elizabeth Warren Tells 10 Year-Old Girl Why She Decided To Run For President
Massachusetts Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren took an excellent question from a 10-year-old girl named Natalie, who asked “Why did you decide to run for, to become president?”
At a campaign event in Exeter, NH Monday, Warren took the first of her customary three questions from Natalie — who cannily asked a question that famously tripped up another Massachusetts senator forty years ago.
“Natalie, would you be insulted if I asked how old you are?” Warren asked.
“No, I’m 10!” Natalie answered enthusiastically.
“Woah!” Warren said. “All right Natalie, 10 and ready to do a little democracy, okay! My kind of gal!”
“Why did you decide to run for, to become president?” Natalie asked.
“Whoa, good question Natalie,” Warren said, then repeated the question for the audience.
“So she’s asking why I decided to run for president. You know Natalie, I’ll tell you why. ‘Cause I see what’s broken, I spent a big part of my life studying what’s happening to families all across this country, and I’ve watched as people who work really hard, it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse,” Warren said.
“The minimum wage didn’t grow, and the wages on top of that don’t grow, so basically it’s been a whole generation, and wages adjusted for inflation just stayed flat,” Warren continued. “But wow families get squeezed because a ton of costs keep going up.”
“So the cost of sending your kids to daycare, the cost of healthcare, the cost of housing, the cost of trying to get your kids educated, have all just gone through the roof. And it means that people who work hard in America just keep getting squeezed, and I just kept working on this and working on this about why is this happening?” Warren said. “Because to me in a democracy this shouldn’t happen. This shouldn’t happen.”
“And the answer is our government’s just been captured by a handful of folks who got lots of money to spend, and they make the government year after year after year work a little better for them,” Warren said. “They make the taxes work a little better for them, they don’t have to invest in our public so they just make it all work a little better for them.”
“And so I decided, that that’s how I ended up in the Senate race, I never thought I’d run for public office, but I saw the fight, and I saw how many people in Washington were there, you know, to say the right things but when it came down to it to fight for the folks that already had a lot.”
“And I felt deeply grateful for all that’s been given to me, and so when this presidency, you know, coming into 2020, I decided you know what? I’m going to stand up and fight for what I believe in, and what I believe in is that we could be an America that doesn’t just work for some people, but that we could be an America that works for everyone,” Warren said, then concluded by adding “And to me that was a good reason to get in the fight, it’s a good reason to stay in the fight, and it’s a good reason to ask you at a whole bunch of other people to join me in that fight. So that’s why I’m here.”
In 1979, CBS News’ Roger Mudd asked then-Senator Ted Kennedy “Why do you want to be president?” and received a disastrous word salad in response that hobbled Kennedy’s effort to unseat incumbent Democratic president Jimmy Carter.
Watch the clip above, via KABB Fox 29.
