BOSTON — Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned this week that Democrats can’t rebuild after 2024 by succumbing to political pressure from billionaires, urging a “big tent” rooted in bold affordability and economic populism.
During an address at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Warren said Democrats were “wiped out in 2024” and can only win by committing to an aggressive affordability agenda and breaking with what she described as an increasingly powerful faction of billionaire donors pressing the party toward deregulation and caution.
Warren attributed rising costs to Republican governance under President Donald Trump, citing tariffs, health care cuts and attacks on the Federal Reserve. But she also pivoted inward, arguing Democrats’ defeat in 2024 sparked a flawed postmortem driven by elite voices wrongly insisting the party had become “too progressive.”
According to Warren, “too progressive” has become shorthand for opposing any agenda that meaningfully shifts resources toward working people. She said wealthy donors and party influencers are urging Democrats to water down policies on affordability and regulation in exchange for financial support, a strategy she warned would alienate voters rather than attract them.
Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman argues that Democrats have alienated key sectors like Silicon Valley by attacking crypto and imposing heavy regulations, urging the party to adopt more innovation-friendly, business-oriented policies — lessons, he says, drawn from Republican-led states.
Warren singled out Hoffman in her speech, saying he’s trying to influence Democrats to “stand with the billionaires for higher costs.”
“Revising our economic agenda to tiptoe around that conclusion might appeal to the wealthy, but it will not help Democrats build a bigger tent, and it definitely will not help Democrats win elections,” Warren said. “A Democratic Party that worries more about offending big donors than delivering for working people is a party that is doomed to fail — in 2026, 2028, and beyond.”
She added: “What does it mean to focus our agenda on an aggressive economic vision? At its core, the goal is simple and easy to measure. It means boosting pay and making life more affordable for working people, building more affordable homes and cracking down on corporate landlords, increasing the size of Social Security checks, providing universal child care, passing price gouging laws with real teeth, guaranteeing the right to repair your own cars, machines and business equipment, strengthening unions, building universal health care, taxing the wealthy and giant corporations, increasing the minimum wage. We are not short on good ideas, and to win, every Democrat should be proposing concrete plans for lowering costs.”
Warren ran for president in 2020, dropping out of the Democratic primary after losing across the map on Super Tuesday, including coming in third in her home state of Massachusetts with 21% of the vote.
Warren said some affluent donors support higher taxes, stronger regulation and social investment, but said many use their influence to slow-walk popular policies, weaken enforcement and protect profits.
Those donors, she said, exert power through super PACs, lobbying, media ownership and emerging industries like artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency.
Warren placed special emphasis on the party’s internal debate over “abundance,” a policy framework popularized by a book by the same name by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson that emphasizes boosting supply — housing, infrastructure, clean energy and technology — by reducing regulatory and bureaucratic barriers. Supporters say it could revitalize the Democratic Party and make government more effective, while some progressives worry it glosses over environmental and labor protections in the rush to streamline projects.
Warren warned that the concept is increasingly being used to launder corporate-friendly arguments under the guise of reform.
“Abundance has become a rallying cry,” she said, not just for policy reformers, but for wealthy donors seeking to steer Democrats toward “making Democrats more favorable to big businesses.”
Warren pointed to Hoffman as a case study. Citing reporting, she said Hoffman donated $7 million to support Vice President Kamala Harris while publicly pressuring her campaign to fire Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, who had made aggressive antitrust enforcement central to the administration’s affordability push.
“Lina Khan is…a person who is not helping America,” Hoffman told CNN in July 2024, “I would hope that Vice President Harris would replace her.” He said Khan had been operating “outside the scope” of her job at the FTC. “Antitrust is fine…Waging war is not.”
Warren said Khan enjoyed broad support from Democratic lawmakers, while Hoffman has ties to companies under FTC scrutiny, including Microsoft and Facebook. Although Harris did not promise to fire Khan, Warren said the campaign later narrowed its affordability proposals after pressure from corporate allies — a retreat that she said preceded Democrats’ loss to Trump, who campaigned relentlessly on lowering costs.
Citing reporting from Axios, Warren said Hoffman is now promoting the abundance framework and backing candidates aligned with it, including arguments against regulations that could slow data center construction, even as families face rising utility costs.
Warren also used the speech to revisit past Democratic failures that have fueled voter skepticism, such as the party’s inability to raise the federal minimum wage despite controlling Washington.
Democrats, Warren said, must choose between “politely nibbl[ing] around the edges of change” or throwing themselves fully into a fight over making working class people’s lives more affordable.
In a question-and-answer session after the speech, Warren sidestepped a question about whether Democrats should compromise on social issues, such as abortion or gun rights, to broaden their coalition. She brought the conversation back to affordability as people’s primary concern. “I want to be where the American people are right now,” she said.
Warren’s team released a statement Monday afternoon that Trump called her after she delivered the speech.
“I delivered this same message on affordability to him directly. I told him that Congress can pass legislation to cap credit card rates if he will actually fight for it. I also urged him to get House Republicans to pass the bipartisan ROAD to Housing Act, which passed the Senate with unanimous support and would build more housing and lower costs,” she said in the statement.