Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on Monday let fly a wide-ranging attack on business-friendly Democrats and their billionaire supporters, warning that her party risked cozying up too much to corporate interests as it tries to shed perceptions that it has drifted too far to the left.
“I understand the temptation — in this moment of national crisis — to sand down our edges to avoid offending anyone, especially the rich and powerful who might finance our candidates,” she said in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington. “But we can’t win unless we rebuild trust” with the working class.
Her speech sought to stake out a progressive economic vision for the Democratic Party as some of its leaders work to pull the party to the center in an effort to make it more competitive nationally. As an attempt to get attention, it worked in one way: Ms. Warren said on Monday afternoon that President Trump had called her after her speech and they had discussed affordability.
Now 76 and unlikely to run for president again in 2028, Ms. Warren has mostly taken a back seat as younger Democratic politicians jockey for the next presidential contest. She remains a prominent voice on the party’s left, however, and her remarks signaled worry among progressives that they may not have much of a say in Democrats’ future economic message.
Here are five takeaways from her remarks.
Warren wants to fight over what a ‘big tent’ means.
As Democrats have won a string of elections since Mr. Trump took office a year ago, many of the party’s leaders have called for a “big tent” politics that can include both moderates and progressives.
Yet Ms. Warren argued on Monday that the party cannot afford to give billionaires too much room inside the tent.
“There are two versions for what a big tent means,” Ms. Warren said. “The Democratic Party cannot pursue both visions at the same time. Either we politely nibble around the edges of change, or we throw ourselves into the fight.”
Ms. Warren is trying to instigate this fight, she said during a question-and-answer session after her speech, so that she can build influence in Democratic primary races and help her favored candidates before this fall’s midterm elections.
“I’m trying to lay the foundation for how Democrats run in 2026, and I think we do that on a solid foundation that is based on our economics,” she said. “And this is the place where we are most at risk for the billionaires sweeping in and saying, ‘Dial that down.’”
She is still mad at Reid Hoffman.
Ms. Warren resurfaced a 2024 episode in which Reid Hoffman, the billionaire investor and one of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors, led an unsuccessful effort to push Vice President Kamala Harris to remove Lina Khan as the Federal Trade Commission chair if Ms. Harris became president.
Ms. Warren argued that Ms. Khan, a pro-regulation progressive favorite, had been doing more to address prices than anyone else while Joseph R. Biden Jr. was president.
“There was Reid Hoffman, a man with close ties to two of the biggest corporations under fire from the F.T.C., Microsoft and Facebook, hectoring Harris to promise she would fire the F.T.C. chair,” Ms. Warren said. “To her credit, the vice president didn’t promise to fire Lina Khan. But she didn’t promise not to fire her, either.”
Mr. Hoffman has become a lightning rod in Democratic politics. His support became contentious in the election to lead the Democratic National Committee a year ago. But he is hardly a familiar name to voters.
After Ms. Warren’s speech, Mr. Hoffman posted a response to social media.
“Her politics shrinks the tent,” he wrote. “We need a bigger, smarter coalition that can beat Trump and deliver.”
Warren is skeptical of ‘Abundance’ politics.
Before the Democratic Party adopted “affordability” as a mantra last year, a certain class of party leaders and thinkers evangelized about “Abundance,” the book published last March by Ezra Klein, a New York Times columnist, and the journalist Derek Thompson.
Ms. Warren suggested that the book’s thesis — that government regulations impede development — had been co-opted by elites at the potential expense of working people.
“‘Abundance’ has become a rallying cry — not just for a few policy nerds worried about zoning, but for wealthy donors and other corporate-aligned Democrats who are putting big-time muscle behind making Democrats more favorable to big businesses,” Ms. Warren said.
She thinks Kamala Harris messed up.
Ms. Warren also expressed disappointment that Ms. Harris had largely backed away from economic populism in the closing stages of her 2024 campaign.
In particular, Ms. Warren lamented that Ms. Harris abandoned a price-gouging proposal after complaints from Wall Street donors.
The senator contrasted Ms. Harris’s economic policy with the message of Mr. Trump, who she said “loudly, day after day after day, promised that he would lower costs for families on Day 1.” Ms. Harris’s spokeswoman declined to comment.
Warren’s critics already have thoughts.
Ms. Warren’s speech largely skated over her influential role in the Biden administration — which presided over the inflation and other economic conditions that Mr. Trump capitalized on in 2024.
She pushed for her allies, like Ms. Khan, to be appointed to key administration posts, and the White House largely adopted her theories on economic policy and government spending.
“Senator Warren and her allies led the inflation-denial wing of the party, and we are still paying the price,” said Matt Bennett, a co-founder of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. “Going forward, Democrats must be obsessively focused on making life affordable. That includes increasing supply to bring down the costs of things like health care, energy and housing. It does not mean fighting old battles that Democrats lost in a rout last time.”
Ms. Warren, in brief remarks with reporters after her speech, declined to address her role advising Mr. Biden.
Reid J. Epstein is a Times reporter covering campaigns and elections from Washington.
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