CINCINNATI (CBS News) – Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren joined Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail for the first time on Monday, and proved herself to be a fiery force for her party’s presumptive nominee.
“I’m here today because I’m with her,” Warren proclaimed. When she took the stage with Clinton, the two women clasped hands and raised them high in the air, smiling and waving to the crowd gathered at the Cincinnati Museum Terminal at Union Terminal.
“Hillary Clinton is the granddaughter of a factory worker who’s going to make it all the way to the White House,” she said.
Clinton’s campaign is hoping that Warren, a revered figure among progressives, will lend important credibility to Clinton’s economic agenda. In a CBS News poll released late last month, more than eight in ten Ohio voters said they were worried about the economy’s direction and, though voters in the state said Clinton is more prepared to be commander-in-chief, 69 percent said Trump would “bring change to Washington.”
Warren withheld her endorsement until after Clinton clinched the nomination earlier this month, but as Britain’s vote to leave the European Union renews questions about whether Clinton’s candidacy is suited to the country’s mood, their first appearance together comes at a fortuitous moment. In response to the vote, Clinton has tried to reassure Americans that she understands their frustrations and that her first priority is their pocketbooks.
“We want to make the point together that we must have an economy that works for everyone again, not just those at the top,” Clinton said. “It shouldn’t be complicated, but there are too many politicians and corporations that don’t agree. They don’t even seem to get it. But you do. And we do.”
Warren drove that point home in Cincinnati and together, they cast the alternative, Donald Trump, as a selfish “money grubber” who “will crush you into the dirt to get whatever he wants.”
“When Donald Trump says ‘great,’ I ask, ‘great for who, exactly?'” Warren said, as the crowd roared. “For families that don’t fly to Scotland to play golf? When Donald Trump says he’ll make America great, he means making it even greater for rich guys just like Donald Trump.”
“Donald Trump proves every day he’s not in it for the American people,” Clinton said. “Elizabeth reminds us of that every chance she gets…she exposes him for what he is: temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be president of the United States.”
Clinton’s and Warren’s coordinated attack on the presumptive Republican nominee Monday comes as speculation about who Clinton will choose as her running mate runs rampant. A recent Bloomberg Politics poll showed that Warren is more popular with Clinton supporters than other rumored short-listers, like Sen. Cory Booker and Secretary Julian Castro, who have both campaigned with Clinton over the past year.
But when asked between handshakes and selfies with supporters on the rope line, Clinton wouldn’t say whether or not she’s considering Warren. Warren snuck away from the crowd early, but not before finding Clinton, and giving her a big hug.
