Elizabeth Warren: our next best hope?
She’s in: Elizabeth Warren is running for the Senate. Now we’ll see how she does as a pol. I have no idea about that, which is why I’m only cautiously hopeful. What we need, of course, is a real populist Democrat in the halls of power; what we need is a rising star; what we need, ultimately, is somebody who could run for president.
Just watching and waiting here to see how she plays.
Here’s her announcement video:
41 Responses to “Elizabeth Warren: our next best hope?”
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Adrienne in CA says:
I’m hopeful too. No question she’s sincere, so it’ll be interesting to see under what pretext she’s shredded. She’s only a year and a half younger than Hillary, for instance, so is she also “too old” for 2016?
September 14th, 2011 at 9:42 pm EST -
Violet Socks says:
I don’t think so. She’ll be 66, right? Reagan was 69, and I think Papa Bush was 64. Not only is Warren more youthful than either man (she’s the Baby Boomer generation, longer life expectancy), but she’s twice as smart as both of them put together.
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Sameol says:
Brown’s bought the domain “Queen Elizabeth Warren” (the hell? Seriously?) and apparently plans to shred her on the basis of her being tremendously knowledgeable, because voters think that’s off-putting and elitist, or something:
http://www.boston.com/Boston/p.....index.html
Let’s hope that she’s a fighter (in a completely non-threatening way, of course), because brilliant wonks don’t have the best batting averages against dopey good-old-boy doofuses.
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Violet Socks says:
What I’ve seen so far is attacks on Warren because she’s a post-menopausal woman. Some creep said something like “Golden Girls rerun.” Just being an older woman is obscene and grotesque right there. Just like with Hillary.
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Violet Socks says:
All women candidates are attacked in sexual terms, no matter what. Older women are dried up hags. Younger women are bimbos. Plain women are too ugly to look at, prettier women are MILFs. Never stops.
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Sameol says:
Yes, and the columnist who made the Golden Girls reference was also railing about how she’s such an elitist carpetbagger that she “took a survey of the wealthy towns and found out they think someone from Oklahoma should be representing Massachusetts in the Senate.” (She’s apparently lived there for more than 15 years). I got curious and plugged the man’s name into Wikipedia, only to discover that he, too, is not originally from Massachusetts. It doesn’t get much more shameless than that.
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Nell says:
I’m not optimistic about her success in this race. Despite its liberal reputation, Massachusetts has an abysmal record when it comes to electing women.
We’ve never elected a woman senator or governor* and until recently our entire congressional delegation was male. Even now we have a grand total of one woman in Congress.
*Jane Swift, our only woman governor, was never elected in her own right. She was thrown under the bus by her own party in favor of Mitt Romney when it came time to nominate the next gubernatorial candidate.
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votermom says:
I think that to win, she has to run against Obama. And she actually can do that credibly, with her record. I don’t know though if people in MA have been paying attention to that.
But if she runs as part of the Obama Dem party, she’s dead in the water. -
anna says:
What do you all think of Tammy Baldwin’s chances for Senate in 2012?
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Swannie says:
I wish she were running here in Maryland
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Alice Molloy says:
After seeing Warren on Rachel Maddow last night I’m sure she can win.
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Sameol says:
More on Massachusetts’ problem electing women:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/us/25mass.html
votermom, Obama has close to a 60% approval rating in Massachusetts, fifth highest in the nation. He’s also very popular elsewhere in New England, Vermont, RI. If anything turnout for the Presidential election will probably help her.
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lambert strether says:
Coakley II.
If Coakley had run on taking Goldman Sachs for $20 million in fines, she would have won. Instead, she embraced the Beltway Ds, and lost.
Ditto Warren. If she runs as a populist, she wins. If she runs as an Obama-lovin technocrat, she loses. Unfortunately, she’s already painted herself into a corner on that one.
To put this another way, Palin, who is nobody’s fool, staked out the “crony capitalism” diagnosis on the right. And on the diagnosis, though not the cure, she’s right. If Warren is as smart as Palin, she wins. If not, she loses.
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votermom says:
I wish her luck then.
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Carmonn says:
I don’t know what her chances are, anna, but it would really be something if she could win, wouldn’t it? The trends in Wisconsin don’t seem all that encouraging right now, and everywhere in the country there’s been a conspicuous historical drought of strong, outspoken, very liberal, openly gay women Senators, but wow. That would be amazing.
Not only is Warren more youthful than either man (she’s the Baby Boomer generation, longer life expectancy), but she’s twice as smart as both of them put together.
But she doesn’t come with the built-in Penis Credits. She’d be expected to serve at least a full term or two and actually accomplish something before she could ever hope for any institutional support. “Sense of entitlement” would make a repeat performance.
Keeping with the pattern, she’ll probably be scapegoated for some failure of Obama’s and lose in a landslide while he wins the state with about 80% of the vote.
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sister of ye says:
Let them go ahead and (try to) insult Warren with Golden Girl references. The last surviving Golden Girl, Betty White, is immensely popular among all age groups. Perhaps Warren should go in-your-face with the sexist pundits and approach White for support.
In a country that has deified a senile former B-actor turned politician, association with a sharp old woman with a kick-ass attitude might not be a bad thing at all.
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Violet Socks says:
lambert, Palin is engaging in the same faux-populist shell game that the Reaganites have been playing for 30 years. The game goes like this: identify the problem, then propose a phony cure that is actually designed to exacerbate the problem.
This is why mill workers in the South were told by Republicans, “Somebody’s picking your pocket! You’re being taken advantage of!” Yes indeed, this was true. Republicans went on to say, “And it’s the unions who are doing it! And the government! And the Social Security Administration! What we need to do is get rid of all this socialist crap and cut taxes on the rich industrialists so they can let their beneficence trickle down to you!”
Palin is doing the same thing, with her Reaganite “government is the problem” bullshit. It’s like saying you’re going to fix a corrupt police department by eliminating the police entirely. Reduce those opportunities for corruption! Yeah, that’ll fix things.
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votermom says:
Violet, I’m pretty sure lambert agrees with you.
He said Palin was right about diagnosis (crony capitalism) and wrong about the cure (to shrink govt). -
Violet Socks says:
To an extent. But in the post lambert linked, he welcomes Palin’s faux-populist message and the correctness of her diagnosis, while noting that the proposed cure is wrong.
But the proposed cure is the whole point. Palin isn’t performing a public service by announcing that corruption and graft exist in government. Everyone knows that. What Palin is doing is exploiting the existence of graft and corruption to once again push that same old Reaganite “solution,” which actually just leads to more graft and corruption.
You do not solve the problems of corrupt government by eliminating government entirely. You do not solve the problem of regulatory capture by eliminating regulations. You also don’t shore up the middle class by removing their safety net and transferring even more wealth to the rich.
Palin is just continuing to make that same false linkage (our problems are because of government, the solution is less government/less taxes on the rich) that has damn near destroyed this country.
I don’t welcome anyone continuing to make that false linkage. Its relentless expansion into the American rhetorical landscape is the fight we’ve been having for 30 years. It’s the reason we have Blue Dogs. It’s the reason Obama talks like Ronald Reagan and people think he makes sense.
So I don’t welcome Palin’s faux-populism. To me it’s like a witch doctor announcing, “Your cows are sick! This is because your neighbor put the Evil Eye on them. What you need to do is pay me $100 and spit in your neighbor’s footprints three times.”
Is the witchdoctor performing a service by announcing that the cows are sick? No. The witchdoctor is actually preventing the cows from getting well, because his deluded customer will now think the problem is the Evil Eye, and so will not consult a veterinarian and arrange for the cows to get the antibiotics they need.
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lambert strether says:
Violet: What Palin will prose as a cure for “crony capitalism” will be the equivalent in political economy of bloodletting and leeches in medicine. And it’s very telling that none of the career “progressives,” normally anxious to know down whatever she says, are silent. Nor do I believe that she is sincere. However, she’s seeing an opportunity, and she’s smart to try to take advantage of it.
Here’s another straw in the wind: Obama voters in NY-11 “wildly disillusioned”.
If our political system can’t produce a single candidate willing and able to take advantage of this, it’s truly moribund. That is, Obama will have done his job…
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lambert strether says:
Well, saying we live under a system of “crony capitalism” has the great merit of being true. “Stopped clock” one might say, until you realize this is a statement you’re not hearing from any other national candidate in either legacy party.
Palin’s smart to say that, and to try to take advantage of it. I think it’s an interesting data point. It would be nice if another candidate, perhaps a D, who had policy proposals that would make things better, instead of worse, would try the same message. I think that’s unlikely to happen.
For the rest of your comment, Violet, I am very well aware that anything offered by an R candidate will be a poisoned chalice. Alas, the same is true of the Ds, at least at the national level. The same might turn out to be true for Warren. We’ll have to see. My view is that making mortgage applications more readable isn’t a remedy for the ills we suffer in our rentier state, but perhaps she’ll grow on the campaign trail.
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Violet Socks says:
Well, saying we live under a system of “crony capitalism” has the great merit of being true. “Stopped clock” one might say, until you realize this is a statement you’re not hearing from any other national candidate in either legacy party.
I’ve been hearing about lobbyists and special interests my entire life. I don’t think I’ve ever lived through an election without hearing about how Washington is beholden to fat cats and lobbyists and special interests. So to me it doesn’t seem that Palin is introducing an important new thing here. Her broadside against “crony capitalism” is somewhat unusual for a Republican, but not unheard of. They typically just pick their targets with exquisite selectivity (green tech and railroads are evil crony capitalists, while oil companies are What America Is All About).
At any rate, for me the import of her message is the dreadful false linkage between the problem and the phony solution she proposes.
In a nutshell: You seem to be saying, “yeah, her solution is wrong, but at least she’s seeing the problem!” Whereas what I’m saying is, “she’s hijacking a real problem to serve the conservative economic agenda—which is what conservatives have been doing for 30 years.” The hijacking is the point. I think we both see the same facts, but we differ on the significance.
It’s my view that the rhetorical capture, if you will, of genuine populist grievance into that phony Reaganomic paradigm is one of the worst things that has happened in this country in my lifetime. I think it’s a large part of why we’re hamstrung. So no, I’m not happy about yet another GOPer telling people that the solution to their problems is some Grover Norquist fantasy world.
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Violet Socks says:
Nor do I believe that she is sincere.
That’s actually an interesting question. Is Palin sincere? I think she might be. I think she started out that way for sure: I believe she was utterly convinced of all that Reagan crap back in the 1980s. I think that’s why she got into government. And I think there’s a real chance she still believes all that free-market, drown-the-government-in-a-bathtub nonsense.
But sincerity is neither here nor there if your toolkit is worthless. The witchdoctor might be the most sincere witchdoctor in the world, but that doesn’t mean the cows are really sick because of the Evil Eye. Or that spitting in your neighbor’s footsteps will cure them.
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lambert strether says:
Violet:
You seem to be saying, “yeah, her solution is wrong, but at least she’s seeing the problem!”
Actually, I’m happy she’s SAYING the problem. And it’s extremely an extremely telling indicator of the moral, intellectual, and political bankruptcy to the left of Palin that nobody else contemplating a run (as I have to assume she is) is saying anything like that. Including, I might add, Elizabeth Warren.
Palin might, after all, run and win on her platform of leech application and bloodletting:
Is it possible for a woman, highly skilled at retail politics, and bearing a populist message, to run and win the popular vote in a primary campaign, even if our famously free press, the party establishment, and the access bloggers are vehemently opposed to her?
A disaster for the country, to be sure. But although things can always get worse, we’re in a disaster now.
* * *
As for the extended lesson on R hijacking, I have to assume all that is additive material for the benefit of the general reader.
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Violet Socks says:
Nobody else is saying anything like that? They’re all saying it right now. It’s the Republican rhetoric du jour.
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Violet Socks says:
As for Elizabeth Warren, she is a genuine reformer. It doesn’t help anyone for Republican phonies to co-opt that message. In that article I just linked to (‘Crony Capitalism’ switches parties), the author wryly compares Palin’s Facebook blast against GE to Elizabeth Warren’s previous critique of GE. Warren can honestly criticize GE for paying no taxes; Palin jumps on the bandwagon as a chance to bash Obama and sell her Reaganomic poison.
To a naive person, it looks like both women are reformers. “Oh, great! Both Elizabeth Warren AND Sarah Palin want to clean up government! Great!” Well, no. They’re not the same. One is a veterinarian and the other is a witchdoctor.
The result of all this is not some general increase in political knowledge or awareness. The result is confusion, with Republicans just getting more power and juice and acceptance for their bullshit.
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lambert strether says:
Violet: I guess I should read TNR — and I notice that the date of the TNR is substantially after Palin’s speech, which nobody serious to the left of Palin even did a takedown of! (Yes, by “nobody” I do mean “nobody I read,” which includes all the access bloggers as well as Pravda and Izvestia.) What does it tell you that they’re all over the cultural markers, and not this?
It looks to me like Obama’s going to try to move toward a more populist stance — that would be what the trial balloon for throwing Geithner under the bus is about — but that won’t work. Everybody knows he’s a lying weasel, and that if he were serious about unemployment or the banksters he would have done something by now.
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Violet Socks says:
lambert, I don’t really think our problem right now is that the left is unconcerned about cronyism and corruption per se. We know all about it. The most incisive critiques of Obama’s administration have come from the left, as you know. Matt Taibbi’s work on the financial stuff has been great. And in every Republican administration I’ve lived through we have all been loud and clear about the cronyism and backscratching and Halliburton Specials.
The problem is that we have a sitting Democratic president who is, to all intents and purposes, a Republican. And our political system is much too turgid to allow us to fix that. It costs a billion dollars to run for president. Mounting a primary challenge to an incumbent is virtually unthinkable. Our political culture is mired in loyalties as tribal as the Blues and Greens of old Constantinople. And we have the looming threat of an opposition party that seems in danger of being taken over by its Useful Idiots.
We are just fucked. We are well and truly, deeply and thoroughly fucked.
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lambert strether says:
Which, Violet, is why I carefully wrote: “Actually, I’m happy [Palin's] SAYING the problem. And it’s extremely an extremely telling indicator of the moral, intellectual, and political bankruptcy to the left of Palin that nobody else contemplating a run (as I have to assume she is) is saying anything like that.” Needless to say, Taibbi isn’t contemplating a run.
What I’m really saying is that there’s an opening. The situation is fluid, amenable to root and branch advocacy. So far, Palin is the only one who SAYS she wants to walk through that door. It would be nice if there were somebody “contemplating a run” on the left who would do that, except with solutions that might work. (1. Medicare for All. 2. End the wars. 3. Soak the Rich. 4. A Jobs Guarantee)
For the rest of it, I think we’re agreed; I’m assuming we don’t think of the career “progressives” as “the left,” although even they are showing signs of life these days.
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lambert strether says:
Adding… The term of art for what Palin will do: “Bait and switch.” Heck, it worked for Obama. The bait seems real; that’s why it works as bait.
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Violet Socks says:
Yes, lambert, I know what you’re saying. I just don’t feel the same way. I do not think Palin’s “saying” the problem is a good thing. I think it’s a bad thing. The last thing we need is someone on the right co-opting the populist angst yet again.
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Carmonn says:
lambert, if Coakley lost because there was such populist ferment that the $60 million she managed to pry from Goldman Sachs paled in comparison to inviting Obama in for a fundraiser or whatever, then how do we square that with the subsequent reelection of the entire Massachusetts Congressional delegation? What exactly did they do or say to appease this revolt?
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elliesmom says:
From inside Massachusetts the Coakley defeat is simple. She began her campaign saying that she would be the voice of the people of MA in DC. The people of MA have already experienced “ObamaCare”, and we aren’t happy. We voted for Hillary Clinton, and our delegates didn’t listen to us. Coakley said she was going to be different. Then she took the stage with Obama and the remnants of the Kennedy clan and smiled while Obama declared that she would be another voice for him. She began to fall in the polls the next day.
As for Elizabeth Warren, most of the people in MA don’t even know who she is. Her first step will be to define herself before Scott Brown does it for her. Unfortunately, Obama, Summers, and Geithner have given “Harvard professor” a bad name. It will be easy for the “man with the truck” to paint her as an ivory tower academic with no connection to the real world. If she can’t successfully connect with the people, she’ll lose. It won’t matter that she’s “the smartest one in the room”, because that’s been tainted, too. And being a woman is a real liability in the bluest of the blue states. I would vote against my own representative, Mrs. Milquetoast, but she’s the only woman in our delegation. Not that I think she adds much to the cause of women, but she’s part of that 30% solution.
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Carmonn says:
But again, how does any of that square with the fact that the entire Massachusetts Congressional delegation was reelected? Nearly all of the Massachusetts Congressmen actually voted for ObamaCare, and all of them were soundly reelected. If Hillary Clinton’s delegates were an issue for Coakley, one of the few people in the entire party to buck the leadership at the DNC, and being too close to Obama (whose popularity in the state is sky high now, not sure what it was then) is such poison, why did no one but she lose from Massachusetts in 2008 or 2010, including John Kerry, who virtually declared war on Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. If these were the key issues and she couldn’t meet the standards despite going beyond on Goldman Sachs, on Clinton’s candidacy, then how did the rest of the delegation manage to meet them?
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Topper Harley says:
@21
Interestingly enough, any time I mention how politically savvy this move by Palin is, I get the same “stopped clock” response. Of course, in the same internet fora I’ve also seen her compared (by liberal dudes) to an airhead cheerleader who gives the GOP team a pre-game hummer (way to fight against sexism liberal dudes!).
Here’s my take on what she’s doing: She’s juicing her brand by standing on the sidelines throwing spitballs at Rick Perry. That creates uncertainty as to whether or not she’ll enter the race (either as President or Vice President) which means more people will listen to her on the off chance that she’s going to announce. At the same time, she’s setting herself up to be a king maker for Perry or Romney. Either one can have a “come to Jesus” moment with her to get Tea Party support, which increases her brand even further.
The smart move for her, IMO, is to keep on doing what she’s doing but angle for a cabinet post in a Perry or Romney administration. She’s in the halls of power, but not in such a polarizing fashion. That cements her place as a powerful force, it gives her cred for a run later, and she can bail at any time to cash in on giant private sector bank.
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elliesmom says:
The Coakley/Brown special election took place after the House had already voted for ObamaCare but before the Senate had. The election was mostly a referendum on the health care bill. When the 2010 elections came around, ObamaCare was a done deal, and people voted on other issues. But people are still collecting signatures to get repealing the individual mandate on a referendum ballot here. I worked for Coakley, but I took the time to go to one of Brown’s rallies to see what all of the buzz was. He can fire up a crowd, and I’m not sure ELizabeth Warren will be able to do that. She’s being portrayed as one the “Golden Girls”. She should get Betty White to campaign for her if she wants to attract crowds. All things being equal, MA will choose the Democrat to send to DC, although we have no problem electing Republicans to the governor’s seat. But Scott Brown has done a good job representing MA, and Warren is going to have convince voters that she can do a lot better to unseat him. I want her to win, but I won’t bet any money on it.
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Violet Socks says:
The smart move for her, IMO, is to keep on doing what she’s doing but angle for a cabinet post in a Perry or Romney administration.
Cabinet post? I can’t imagine anyone appointing Palin to a Cabinet post.
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Sameol says:
Carmonn, Coakley’s loss, much like Obama, is a Rorchacht test, everyone reads in what we wish were true. If she had only done x. It’s a great victory for populism, it’s a great victory for the principle of universal health care or Medicare For All. It’s a great repudiation of Obama. It’s a great affirmation of Mass. liberalism. Ad infinitum. Special election turnout + endless fauxrage + Brown playing straight from Obama’s playbill of playing the victim while posing as the squeaky cleanest of all the candidates. They mystery isn’t so much how Brown won, but how Obama lost. In a nutshell, the most salient issue was who knew who Curt Schilling is, and that explains why no one else was ever in any trouble.
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Kali says:
In a nutshell, the most salient issue was who knew who Curt Schilling is, and that explains why no one else was ever in any trouble.
Bingo! That was the reason. Obamacare was the explanation.
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Kali says:
Warren would be wonderful for any state and for the country. The question is are the voters smart enough, unbiased enough, non-sexist enough to vote for her? I’m not so hopeful about that.
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Topper Harley says:
@37 As I said, if I were her, I’d tell Perry or Romney that the price of my support was a cabinet post.
She can ask for Veep but at that point Perry or Romney might as well drop out and spend their campaign contributions on blow.
