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Warren Wasn’t Sanders Lite™ – She Was Hillary
Barry Goldwater famously said that voters deserve a choice, not an echo. Democrats are getting a stark choice, though an unenviable one: a 78-year-old Democratic Socialist and a relatively fresh-faced 77-year-old Swamp Creature.
Having seen the writing on the wall, Bloomberg, Klobuchar, and Buttigieg dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden. But former Native American Elizabeth Warren was, characteristically, the last one in the room to get the joke. Playing to type, Warren has also refrained from endorsing either of the two remaining candidates.
Maybe she has a plan for that.
Though depicted by the press as essentially a Bernie Sanders whose numbers actually add up, Warren is, in fact, everything that Sanders is not: an inauthentic, opportunistic social justice warrior where Sanders is an unabashed classical Marxist who says what he means and means what he says. Sanders is reflexively open and honest – never more so than when he’s wrong – while Warren instinctively goes full-Hillary the moment she perceives the truth to be threatening her political fortunes.
In fact, the apt comparison to Elizabeth Warren isn’t with Bernie Sanders but with Hillary Clinton. Both Warren and Clinton are duly prepared to rap the knuckles of America’s left-handers (billionaires and deplorables). And both not only have an image problem but the same image problem: an unmistakable air of entitlement. “I knew they wouldn’t let me be president” sounds as true to form coming from Warren as it did Clinton, revealing as it does their shared perception of the presidency as a pony to which they are entitled and which Americans are denying them. Finally, both Warren and Clinton felt it important that voters to be acutely aware of what’s between their ears and their legs.
The heart of Warren’s coalition – such as it was – more closely resembled that of Clinton than that of Sanders. Specifically, women. And while Sanders’ energy comes from the Dirtbag Left, Warren’s and Clinton’s consisted of media elites, yoga instructors and wine-track whites desperate for a candidate who flatters their intelligence.
Clinton, of course, didn’t have a plan for everything or, indeed, anything (except making money). Warren, on the other hand, aspired to be to policy what the computer Deep Blue was to chess: every permutation thought through and published in a white paper just long enough to ensure that no one reads it too closely.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. The nearly four years that have elapsed since the 2016 election was enough time to give Democrats what worked for them during the Obama era: a candidate with eloquence, youth, de facto membership in a historically-oppressed group, all of it wrapped up in a crisply-creased pair of pants. Instead they’re left with two white male candidates on the wrong side of 75.
Popcorn anyone?
Published in Elections
She thought she had the “de jure membership in a historically-oppressed group” but then, you know, SCIENCE.
I was joking with friends that Biden should pick Warren to be his VP candidate. That way his memory wouldn’t be too taxed trying to keep up with which lies she was telling this week, and nobody would expect him to do so, because her lies could easily shift to match whatever he was garbling at that moment.
Didn’t even take science – her lies were soundly discredited by just basic conventional research.
My understanding is that her DNA results came back showing her to be alt-white.
She was a serial liar, who — due to her past high-dollar corporate work — people on the left didn’t trust because of her lack of concern for the truth. They knew Sanders was a true-believer in progressive causes, but suspected Liz was simply adopting the Flavor of the Month for career advancement purposes, and would abandon them in the same way they thought Hillary had abandoned them when she didn’t stop her husband from triangulating back to the middle in 1996 on things like welfare reform, in order to win re-election.
You can even argue that Warren’s base (such that it was) of upper-middle-class and somewhat wealthy urban elites supported her specifically because they thought she was lying about her hard-core commitment to socialism, and when push came to shove when elected, was going to give them carve-outs like Hillary would have. In contrast, they truly feared Bernie might impoverish them by including them to squeeze for cash for his trillion-dollar government programs. So her repeated lies angered people on the right, but it also made those on the left question her commitment to The Cause, and in the end, sucked the oxygen out of her campaign.
Yes, I think this is an apt comparison.
Perfect
Thanks, Joshua! I’ll write with you in mind. ;)
I always viewed her as more Woodrow Wilson, with the problem being she couldn’t get rid of the Debs types.
Something in the vein of socialism is fine, but the smart people need to be able to run it without you hoi polloi involved.
She had many plans and no principles.
Judging by some of her comments, she would have been as ruthless as president towards all who refused to get with the program as Woody was, pre-stroke, during his second term.
I agree, Warren is Hillary – but with even less charm, of coarse I mean Bill. I dont think I’ve ever even seen a photo of Mr Warren. I dont think I’ve even heard his name.
I still think Trump should have paid off is $1 Million bet with Warren on her native blood claim. Because as the recent math scandal at MSNBC demonstrates – the media and the general public are now completely innumerate. He should have paid off the 1/1024 of $1 Million, or $976. It would have clearly demonstrated to everyone how far off her claim was…
“I knew they wouldn’t let me be president” – isnt completely about entitlement, its also a misunderstanding of the process. Its a competitive process, your competitors arent going to let you win out of charity.
I sometimes here this lament playing poker – “you cant let me win this pot?” no – my money is in there , I am not going to give you my money. I was once playing a 7 card stud hand with a lady. she was showing 4 to a flush on her board, at the river… but she looked at her river card (dealt down in 7 card stud) and rolled her eyes… So I knew she didnt have the flush – not just because she rolled her eyes – but because she looked at the river card at all. IF she already had the made hand she would not have looked at all. She bet the river and I raised her – without looking at my river card – My hand (2 pair) was as good as it needed to be… She folded but was a little saucy about it. ((IF she had 3 bet me, I would’ve looked at my river card to see if I had filled up – to make a full house, to beat the flush))
A few months ago I was remarking (to myself) that the Native American Elder looked so wonderful compared to Hillary – better pantsuits, no Mao jackets, healthy, vibrant, spry, not needing strong men to catch her when she falls. But as time wore on, I would see her on TV and think Hillary! every time.
I agree, Warren is Hillary – but with even less charm, of coarse I mean Bill. I dont think I’ve ever even seen a photo of Mr Warren. I dont think I’ve even heard his name.
They were divorced in 1978.
This is her husband. Check out the brief “personal life” section, describing their engagement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_H._Mann
From that article: “Mann was involved in the Elizabeth Warren Native American ancestry scandal in that he also erroneously claimed Cherokee ancestry in the same 1984 cookbook that Warren did.”
At least it was erroneously and not falsely. To claim it falsely would be bad.
But in that case, why was it a scandal?
I enjoyed this for the rhythm. Sentence to sentence, point to point, it flowed. Wonderful writing. I know that’s an odd comment to make, but I appreciate the prose. One quibble: as a former sommelier I need to tell you that you should lay off the “wine-track” folks. We’re just like you only more gregarious.
It’s the voice.
I hear a lot of mainly men, complaining about Elizabeth Warren’s “tone” of sounding like she’s scolding or talking down to people. I never got that – she sounds less like that than Bernie, but it’s funny how its ok when Bernie spouts off….. She’s ultra liberal, but I believe she’s intelligent and genuine in her causes, right or wrong. I could never compare that to Hilary, who to this day, I believe, fumbled her qualifications and actual skills to the detriment of her positions and our country.
We’ll see who she endorses to decide if she’s genuine in her causes, or if she simply jumped into the far left lane of the Democrat’s presidential primary highway because she thought either Sanders wasn’t going to be there after 2016, or she could run Bernie off the road first in the 2020 election cycle. The hard-core progressives stuck with Bernie in part because they came to see Liz as an opportunist and not a True Believer in socialism. who might try to hammer people on the right, but would leave the rich urban elites on the ‘soft’ left, who the Bernie Bros also hate, safely entrenched in their current privileged lifestyles.
Liz will have a harder time squaring the circle if she endorses Biden, or worse for him, she’ll pull him over towards the left lane with her rhetoric, where the other Dems backing wacky-but-lovable Uncle Joe want to at least pretend to the swing voters that Biden’s only driving in the middle lane, and is trying to steer the car back to the Obama era (and other than the hardest of the hard-core radical feminists, all the bi-coastal urban elite who backed Warren are going over to Biden anyway just to try and defeat Trump. It’s the Bernie Bros who might be the holdouts in getting on board Joe’s Amtrak special).
A great column, that Warren is Hillary, due to her sense of entitlement, and her sense or arrogance, that she knows better than all of the rest of us.
I have a provocative question. Which Republican, if any, operates from a sense of entitlement, grievance and whining?
If you added at the end of your question “…and wants to tell everyone how to manage their business, raise their children, and in general live their lives, under the threat of severe government fines or other penalties of the law?” then you would have Senator Warren. Conservatives who prize decorum over everything else — including actually getting elected to do some conservative things — prefer to talk about the gripey guy in the White House and downplaying the government intervention into personal lives part that will be the dividing line in this year’s election, and pretty much has been that for the past 40-plus years.
You’ve described the GOPe very well!
YES!!!!! uuugghh…I shudder now just thinking about it.
David, do you play chess and follow the international competitions? Not too many people would recognize the name “Deep Blue.”
Hi Steve – No, just a casual observer. I had to double-check that one to make sure I had it right.
And SNL’s Kate McKinnon can do an impressive job parodying either or both of them.