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How many mulligans will Warren get?
Posted on: November 4, 2019 at 11:13:43 CT
Spanky KU
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Through her long, steady climb into second place for the Democratic nomination across the summer and early fall, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren ran a disciplined, risk-averse campaign.
Relying on an impressive work ethic, favorable press coverage, an extensive operation and a deeply committed set of core voters, Warren shouldered past Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and seemed poised to overtake front running former Vice President Joe Biden.
And then... pffffffftttt. Or, more accurately, double pffffffftttt.
The conventional wisdom on Warren and her autumn stall is that her class-warfare liberalism is too scary for a Democratic Party chiefly interested in finding the most electable candidate to beat President Trump. As Obama car czar Steven Rattner, a Gergenesque repository of the CW, put it to the NYT about the Democratic donor class, “everyone is nervous” because Warren “would fundamentally change our free-enterprise system.”
But there’s little indication that Warren could ever build the kind of transformational coalition to deliver on her most lavish promises — confiscating trillions from the fortunes of billionaires, free college, the Green New Deal, universal child care and on and on — let alone win the presidency.
Who could have watched the way Warren botched the conception, timing and execution of the rollout of her single-payer health plan last week and still consider her capable of a political revolution on par with FDR’s? Americans are capable of voting for very liberal and very conservative candidates, but almost never those who are bad at politics.
And it’s not like it was her first unforced error.
As Warren prepared last year to begin her candidacy in earnest, she committed with one of the most amazing self-owns in recent political history. She had long faced criticism for exploiting a dubious claim of Native American ancestry for professional advantage. It was a subject she understandably wanted to clean up before she launched her campaign.
In a party where questions of racial identity can be paramount, Warren might have opted for a contrite approach. Maybe a listening tour among tribal nations. Maybe a carefully worded apology.
Instead, Warren opted for confrontation. She took a DNA test that she said vindicated her claims and tried to stick it in the face of Trump, who calls her “Pocahontas.”
It was a disaster.
Warren has between “1/64th to 1/1024th” native ancestry, or about what an average white American might expect to have. Tribal leaders were furious. Not only had Warren reduced native identity to blood rather than belonging, but she didn’t even have the blood to back it up.
In reply, Warren did what she should have done in the first place and sought out the counsel and forgiveness of native leaders. But one had to wonder how the candidate touted as the big brain in the race could have made a mistake so foolish. Only hubris can explain it.
But as spring turned to summer, Warren not only persisted, but she started to make real gains on her left-wing rival, Sanders. She was drawing the kinds of crowds that had once flocked to the Vermont socialist. Coupled with the kind of gushy, uncritical press coverage unseen since Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Warren was ready to break out.
Even better, events conspired to provide her with the perfect moment to take the lead.
Biden has been a remarkably weak front-runner all along. He’s strapped for cash, struggling for a raison d'être beyond just beating Trump and absolutely stinks with the younger voters in his party.
When news broke about a month ago that Trump had pressured his Ukrainian counterpart for dirt on Biden, it looked like it might be nearly as bad for the former vice president as it was for Trump.
Trump was after a prosecution of Biden’s son, Hunter, for pedaling influence in the woe-begotten former USSR. The younger Biden’s business pitch there and elsewhere overseas seems to have been one common to political relatives for generations: My dad will like you more if you pay me.
It’s the kind of swampy, Clintonian conduct that not only raised questions about Biden’s general-election viability but spoke directly to the desire for a populist revolt on which Warren is basing her candidacy.
Warren seemed like she was ready to pounce, rolling out a policy paper on anti-corruption measures. Here was the perfect spot for an insurgent candidate to take a stand. And then, she didn’t.
Instead, Warren did with health insurance what she did a year ago with her claims about “high cheekbones” and contributions to “Pow Wow Chow.” She took an existing problem of her own making — in this case, a failure to articulate a plan to back up her proposal to abolish private insurance — and made it worse with a ham-handed response.
A month ago, Biden looked like he was in free fall and Warren was still climbing. In our average of primo polling, his advantage got as narrow as 2 points.
With a trio of new polls out Sunday from WSJ/NBC News, WaPo/ABC News and our own whiz-bang polling team, however, Biden is back almost where he was before the Hunter episode.
Warren didn’t just miss her moment, she also kicked it into reverse by managing to annoy voters and analysts across the ideological spectrum with an insurance plan that is deemed both overly ambitious and impractical.
But Warren’s real problem isn’t ideological or policy-oriented. It’s her lack of political acumen.
Relying on an impressive work ethic, favorable press coverage, an extensive operation and a deeply committed set of core voters, Warren shouldered past Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and seemed poised to overtake front running former Vice President Joe Biden.
And then... pffffffftttt. Or, more accurately, double pffffffftttt.
The conventional wisdom on Warren and her autumn stall is that her class-warfare liberalism is too scary for a Democratic Party chiefly interested in finding the most electable candidate to beat President Trump. As Obama car czar Steven Rattner, a Gergenesque repository of the CW, put it to the NYT about the Democratic donor class, “everyone is nervous” because Warren “would fundamentally change our free-enterprise system.”
But there’s little indication that Warren could ever build the kind of transformational coalition to deliver on her most lavish promises — confiscating trillions from the fortunes of billionaires, free college, the Green New Deal, universal child care and on and on — let alone win the presidency.
Who could have watched the way Warren botched the conception, timing and execution of the rollout of her single-payer health plan last week and still consider her capable of a political revolution on par with FDR’s? Americans are capable of voting for very liberal and very conservative candidates, but almost never those who are bad at politics.
And it’s not like it was her first unforced error.
As Warren prepared last year to begin her candidacy in earnest, she committed with one of the most amazing self-owns in recent political history. She had long faced criticism for exploiting a dubious claim of Native American ancestry for professional advantage. It was a subject she understandably wanted to clean up before she launched her campaign.
In a party where questions of racial identity can be paramount, Warren might have opted for a contrite approach. Maybe a listening tour among tribal nations. Maybe a carefully worded apology.
Instead, Warren opted for confrontation. She took a DNA test that she said vindicated her claims and tried to stick it in the face of Trump, who calls her “Pocahontas.”
It was a disaster.
Warren has between “1/64th to 1/1024th” native ancestry, or about what an average white American might expect to have. Tribal leaders were furious. Not only had Warren reduced native identity to blood rather than belonging, but she didn’t even have the blood to back it up.
In reply, Warren did what she should have done in the first place and sought out the counsel and forgiveness of native leaders. But one had to wonder how the candidate touted as the big brain in the race could have made a mistake so foolish. Only hubris can explain it.
But as spring turned to summer, Warren not only persisted, but she started to make real gains on her left-wing rival, Sanders. She was drawing the kinds of crowds that had once flocked to the Vermont socialist. Coupled with the kind of gushy, uncritical press coverage unseen since Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Warren was ready to break out.
Even better, events conspired to provide her with the perfect moment to take the lead.
Biden has been a remarkably weak front-runner all along. He’s strapped for cash, struggling for a raison d'être beyond just beating Trump and absolutely stinks with the younger voters in his party.
When news broke about a month ago that Trump had pressured his Ukrainian counterpart for dirt on Biden, it looked like it might be nearly as bad for the former vice president as it was for Trump.
Trump was after a prosecution of Biden’s son, Hunter, for pedaling influence in the woe-begotten former USSR. The younger Biden’s business pitch there and elsewhere overseas seems to have been one common to political relatives for generations: My dad will like you more if you pay me.
It’s the kind of swampy, Clintonian conduct that not only raised questions about Biden’s general-election viability but spoke directly to the desire for a populist revolt on which Warren is basing her candidacy.
Warren seemed like she was ready to pounce, rolling out a policy paper on anti-corruption measures. Here was the perfect spot for an insurgent candidate to take a stand. And then, she didn’t.
Instead, Warren did with health insurance what she did a year ago with her claims about “high cheekbones” and contributions to “Pow Wow Chow.” She took an existing problem of her own making — in this case, a failure to articulate a plan to back up her proposal to abolish private insurance — and made it worse with a ham-handed response.
A month ago, Biden looked like he was in free fall and Warren was still climbing. In our average of primo polling, his advantage got as narrow as 2 points.
With a trio of new polls out Sunday from WSJ/NBC News, WaPo/ABC News and our own whiz-bang polling team, however, Biden is back almost where he was before the Hunter episode.
Warren didn’t just miss her moment, she also kicked it into reverse by managing to annoy voters and analysts across the ideological spectrum with an insurance plan that is deemed both overly ambitious and impractical.
But Warren’s real problem isn’t ideological or policy-oriented. It’s her lack of political acumen.
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How many mulligans will Warren get? - Spanky KU - 11/4 11:13:43