ORANGEBURG, SC — Warren's appearance at an environment forum in Orangeburg, South Carolina on Friday certainly wasn't her campaign's finest hour after pictures surfaced on Twitter of the presidential candidate speaking to a mostly empty auditorium.

Warren may be polling well against other Democrat candidates at the moment, but the Senator from Massachusetts, in attracting a crowd of dozens at a facility designed to hold hundreds, found herself speaking more to empty seats than actual supporters.

One really has to wonder what she and her campaign staff were thinking? Optics matter and with polls tightening and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg entering the race earlier in the week, this was clearly the wrong image to be projecting at this moment in the campaign.

Most Democrat presidential primary candidates decided to forgo Friday's event, a decision looking wiser and wiser in retrospect, with only Warren, Steyer and Booker in attendance.

ORANGEBURG — Elizabeth Warren takes the stage at an Environmental Justice forum in South Carolina before a sparse audience. Tom Steyer spoke before her; numerous rivals skipped it. pic.twitter.com/CJnoCuNheF — Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 9, 2019

"We're not just talking about climate change. We're talking about environmental justice."



Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke at the Presidential Forum on Environmental Justice in Orangeburg, SC. pic.twitter.com/eNZH75kRBo — The Hill (@thehill) November 9, 2019

And not to be outdone, it looks like Cory Booker may have actually spoken before an even smaller crowd with possibly more people on stage than in the audience!

Cory Booker is up, opening with a joke about how 2020 isn’t the year of the election, it’s the number of people running in the Democratic primary. pic.twitter.com/bfwZBeJZI7 — Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) November 9, 2019

Predictably, the ensuing Twitterstorm Friday evening was not kind to any of the candidates in attendance.