Our country is in the middle of a Senate impeachment trial. My generation has been thrown into chaos with gun violence and college debt. The inevitable destruction stemming from climate change is even more menacing. We need a plan.

The caucuses are in a week, and Iowa City is going to have a front-row seat. We are going to be the first in a series of decisions where the personal choice becomes the political future. Between debates, interviews, and meeting several of the Democratic candidates  in person, I have exposed myself to as much as I can to decide which name I want to support on Feb. 3.

I’ve decided I want U.S. Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren as the Democratic presidential nominee.

I met Warren about a year ago on day one of her 2020 campaign. She was at the IMU to hold her first rally as a presidential candidate. I was in a room filled with around 20 people, pacing and chattering away. Before her rally began, Warren had promised the University of Iowa Democrats she would meet personally with them.

When she came into the room, her arm reached out in that on-brand movement of hers. Warren was warm and spoke naturally with intentional eye contact. As her eyes met each person in the room, she shook their hands and I recognized her humanity.

It was early in the campaign season when she announced her run for president as a Democrat. It was that early. So when she looked at me, nodding away at her plans, Warren become “the” Democrat to me. At that time, it was just her.

Every idea and belief she had aligned with mine. Her progressive rhetoric reminded me very much of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., whom I had caucused for in the 2016 election. As we listened, Warren spoke of being a mechanic in the machine of Washington. She was hyper-focused on restoring the middle-class, particularly college students.

My yes to her as a candidate for the Democratic Party is not a declaration of her perfection, or her faultlessness. Her old connections with the Republican Party — as well as her efforts to build new relationships with the Native American communities, people of color, low-income families, and the younger LGBTQ generation — are promising. Warren’s political career gives her the chance to give all of us hope.

She is a message of: “This is why I changed. Change for the better is possible, and it can be done.”

I have confidence in Warren’s energy for the presidency. I trust that she is a progressive human mechanic who can redesign the mechanisms of our current government. I believe in her plans for legislation that upholds civil rights.

I also believe that her identity as a woman from a middle-class family, where education and law were her passions, is what the next president should embody.

That’s not to say she has my vote simply because she is a woman. It’s to say that because Warren and I share the political and social experiences of womanhood, and supporting the campaign matters all the more.

I as a voter cannot dismiss our shared identity.

My personal endorsement for Warren is my push toward progress in this country. I want the same things so many of my Democratic peers want, and we cannot afford to villainize each other for seeing that progress in different candidates.

But I know what I see. I see Warren earning a nomination for the Democratic Party. I see her as Madam President. I see our country putting plan into action and saying, “it worked.”

Columns reflect the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Editorial Board, The Daily Iowan, or other organizations in which the author may be involved.

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