Steve Bannon has issues with Elizabeth Warren’s campaign strategy
"You're not going to beat Trump with policies."
Steve Bannon, the former 2016 campaign manager for President Donald Trump, thinks Sen. Elizabeth Warren is going about her presidential campaign all wrong, even if he has been somewhat complimentary of her proposals.
“You’re not going to beat Trump with policies,” Bannon told Politico in an interview published Thursday morning.
“Elizabeth Warren has an incredibly detailed and probably the most well thought-through set of policy prescriptions, and they keep coming every day,” said the Republican polticial strategist.
Indeed, the Massachusetts senator and former Harvard professor has put forward more specific policy proposals than anyone else during the first few months of the Democratic primary race — on everything from the housing crisis to taxing the rich to universal child care to breaking up the tech giants. And while the first primaries are still 10 months away, early polls have generally shown her trailing at least three or four other candidates.
“She’s at, what, 7%, 8%?” Bannon said.
A supporter of right-wing populism, Bannon has acknowledged that he agrees with Warren, a vanguard of progressive populism, on certain economic issues, such as breaking up Big Tech and reigning in corporate power — even if they’re deeply divided on other subjects.
“I think some of the stuff she’s been saying has been very smart,” he told CNN last month. “In fact, I kind of say she’s lifting from our playbook.
“But what’s most amazing to me is she’s now at 8 percent, and even President Trump said the other day, ‘Hey, maybe I moved to quickly. She would have been a weak candidate,'” Bannon continued, referring to Trump’s repeated personal attacks on Warren’s claims of Native American ancestry, which some worry have hurt her campaign.
“I think it’s his direct involvement [that] has really brought Elizabeth Warren under 10 percent and she’s really having a tough time getting that muzzle velocity, that traction you need to get going,” he said.
Trump isn’t the only one; several conservative groups have also waged years-long efforts to undercut Warren, who had been viewed as one of the Democratic frontrunners for the 2020 nomination. As one writer put it, Warren has been getting “Hillary-ed.”
Despite the fact that the majority of early — again, emphasis on early — hypothetical 2020 general election polls show the Democratic nominee running ahead of the historically unpopular president, Bannon has repeatedly said he doesn’t think any of the current candidates can beat Trump head-to-head. That includes Warren.
“I don’t think she has a chance of beating Trump,” he told the Boston Herald last fall.
Bannon’s thoughts about the Democratic candidates running for president have otherwise been varied.
While he dubiously predicted that former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and lawyer Michael Avenatti (both of whom eventually decided not to run) would be competitive in the 2020 race, Bannon has more recently said that California Sen. Kamala Harris, with former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke as her running mate, would be Democrats’ best chance. He also isn’t counting out Hillary Clinton.
“If they don’t think that they’ve got somebody that can beat him, the vampire is going to be in the bullpen,” he said of the 2016 nominee. “She did get 63 million votes.”
