INDIANOLA, Iowa — With members of her family and her dog Bailey in tow, Sen. Elizabeth Warren kicked off her final day of campaigning before the caucuses by calling for “real change” and emphasizing the party must unite against President Trump when the 2020 primary race is over.
The top contenders in the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination race are barnstorming Iowa as part of their final get-out-the-vote efforts before the caucuses on Monday night.
“We may have had some different ideas, we may have had some different ways of going about it, but in the end we all have one goal and we have to come together to meet that goal: we are going to beat Donald Trump,” Ms. Warren said at a campaign rally at Simpson College.
All eyes will be on the caucus results.
They will set the table for New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary on Feb. 11 and provide Democratic voters and donors with a better sense of the strengths of their campaigns.
Ms. Warren could have more riding on the outcome than any of the top contenders.
She’s slipped in the polls since October, triggering concerns among her supporters that a poor showing here could mark the beginning of the end for her once high-flying campaign.
The latest polls show Sen. Bernard Sanders leading the pack, followed by former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Ms. Warren.
The surveys have raised the expectations for Mr. Sanders, who wants to show his near-victory here four years ago was no fluke and the polls are reliable barometers of public opinion.
Mr. Biden wants to show that voters are buying into his argument that he is the best candidate to defeat Mr. Trump, and Mr. Buttigieg wants to show that a gay, millennial, former mayor of a small Midwest city can be a serious contender for the White House.
Meanwhile, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, former non-profit executive Andrew Yang and billionaire Tom Steyer made their final push, hoping to exceed expectations.
Speaking to voters here on Sunday, Ms. Warren rattled off her vision, vowing to push to “save our planet,” provide universal health care, pass a “wealth tax,” beef up school funding and overhaul the criminal justice system.
“Now we’ve got the chance to do the things we need to do to build an America that doesn’t just work for those at the top, but that works for everyone — that is why I’m in this race,” Ms. Warren said at the event, which attracted 1,100 people, according to the campaign.
Ms. Warren had another stop penciled in at Iowa State University. Mr. Biden started his day in the northeastern part of the state, stopping at Clarke University in Dubuque, and planned to end it at a middle school in Des Moines.
Mr. Buttigieg had a pair of rallies on tap.
Mr. Sanders, meanwhile, was planning to drop in on campaign field offices with former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner and cap the day with a Super Bowl watch party with Reps. Ro Khanna of California and Mark Pocan of Wisconsin, co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Ms. Warren also called in reinforcements.
She deployed Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Deb Haaland of Mexico, as well as former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, to various get out the vote events across the state.
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