Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) responded to critics characterizing her presidential campaign as “angry” by saying they’re right.
“Over and over, we are told that women are not allowed to be angry,” she said in a campaign fundraising email sent Friday. “It makes us unattractive to powerful men who want us to be quiet.”
The 2020 hopeful appeared to be hitting back at one of her Democratic opponents, former Vice President Joe Biden, who asserted in a recent Medium post that Warren is emblematic of “an angry unyielding viewpoint that has crept into our politics.”
“Well, I am angry and I own it,” Warren wrote. “I’m angry on behalf of everyone who is hurt by Trump’s government, our rigged economy, and business as usual.”
The skirmish began at the start of the month when Warren said in Iowa that Biden was “running in the wrong presidential primary.” The remark was spurred by his skepticism of her more than $20 trillion “Medicare for All” plan.
In Biden’s essay published online Tuesday, he did not name Warren, but made clear he was responding to her remark.
“Some call it the ‘my way or the highway’ approach to politics,” he wrote. “But it’s worse than that. It’s condescending to the millions of Democrats who have a different view.”
Biden, who has proposed expanding the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, went on to make his case for the plan, stating it is among “the most progressive, transformational ideas in this campaign ― and I can get them done.”
“My health care plan expands coverage, lowers costs, lowers drug costs, allows people to keep their private insurance and won’t raise taxes on the middle class,” he added. “I think it’s the best plan.”
When his plan was unveiled in July, Biden noted that it would cover “more than an estimated 97 percent of Americans,” meaning roughly 10 million people could end up without insurance.
Warren says her universal coverage proposal would be funded through hiking taxes on businesses and the rich, though its enormous price tag has raised doubts over her assurance that it won’t impact the middle class. Biden’s campaign has dismissed the plan as a work of “mathematical gymnastics.”