WASHINGTON – Rushing into President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial on Thursday, Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren said, “I do think that women candidates have to attack the question of whether a woman can win head on.”

After a tangle with rival Sen. Bernie Sanders last month over whether the nation is ready to elect its first female president, Warren said the time is now ripe to talk about how a woman can win.

Warren talked to several reporters on the first floor of the Capitol as she was heading to the Senate chamber.

“It’s just, there’s no point in knowing that it’s in people’s minds and trying to talk about it through proxy or hint, hint or wink, nod. We just have to talk about it. Because when we talk about it, then it starts to shift. You know me, I start with the numbers, women win.”

Warren said she didn’t jump on the gender question right away because “It wasn’t time. ….I had to have a lot of time to be able to talk about why I’m in this race, who I’m fighting for and what my plans are to make real change. We’re down at the end. I think people like all the things I’m talking about. They’re there with me. We’re together heart to heart. But people around this country say we’ve got to beat Donald Trump.”

Warren, from Massachusetts, is one of four Democratic 2020 hopefuls strapped down in Trump’s impeachment trial before the Monday first-in-the-nation Iowa presidential vote. The other presidential Democratic hopeful senators are Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota; Sanders from Vermont and Michael Bennet from Colorado.