Quite so. Heinlein wrote of an iguana that bragged his great-grandfather was a T.Rex.
My MIL delved deeply, almost obsessively into her heritage (mostly Anglo-Nordic) and found definite links to Mayflower passengers and Gen. Abner Doubleday, who did not invent baseball. I ran a brief ancestry scan. Besides expected Anglo-Scot Quakers, and Cherokees the family did not speak of, I’m nth-cousin to music stars, Western outlaws, and US senators. Some self-destructed; some were hanged; family didn’t talk about them, either. But if I’d been told of Mohawk heritage, I’d have believed. Why not?
Various kits and labs return varied results. Did I desire to prove Native American ancestry, I’d look for a kit or lab with a rumored bias in that direction. That still would not entitle me to tribal membership. And my wife likely won’t let me marry into a local Miwuk family for a share of casino proceeds.
Lance, you keep saying that there are a ton of people who are as white as Warren who self-identify as Native American without any problems. Tell me, how many of those people have had to apologise to Native Americans for falsely claiming to be one?
You say the real world doesn’t give a shit what I think, but it seems actual Native Americans don’t give a shit what you think. Evidently, they have no more time for Warren’s bullshit than I do. And how do you square your claims of Warren’s unimpeachable sincerity with the fact that she submitted a plagiarised “family recipe” to the Pow Wow Chow cookbook? We know she lied about that. She stole it from the New York Times!
If you want to persist in giving her the benefit of the doubt then there’s nothing I can do about it. But for you to insist it’s unreasonable to say she lied about her heritage despite the plagiarism, despite the literal cultural appropriation apology tour, despite the DNA test results, and despite the fact that this “family lore” that we’re all supposed to take as fucking gospel was built on racist nonsense like “My Pawpaw had high cheekbones like all the Indians do” is completely absurd.
P.S. - Airbeck, I’m not right wing. Politically, I’m closer to Bernie than Warren.
So circular firing squad it is? Christ how can people not see an exact repeat of 2016 happening. Same damn thing. Why don’t you get as worked up about what is happening to our country right now as you do about this? Is this more important to you than the supreme court? Than free and open elections? Than continuing to have any allies whatsoever around the world? Why do some people lose all perspective during primary season?
You’ve said this a couple times and I think I should loint out that it’s not really true. The amount found makes it a dubious claim in the first place but also,most DNA databanks have almost no NA Indian DNA for comparison and so use South American native DNA to approximate.
I’m just going by the information provided in post #36 by Unreconstructed Man… “According to her own DNA test, her closest NA relative was between 6 and 10 generations away.”
She didn’t apologize for falsely claiming to be a Native American. Once again your own cite is the proof that you are wrong. Read the words of her apology. There is nothing on there to indicate that she did not honestly believe that she had Native American ancestry.
I haven’t repeated it since you brought it up, but I’m not sure I believe you. It is my understanding, that is supported by other posters in this thread, that her DNA test showed some distant Native American ancestors. If you have a cite showing that that is incorrect, I’ll be happy to read it.
You think that the narcissists that want power actually care about you and your desires? They want power. Much of the nonsense they say is like religious leaders preaching stuff they don’t believe for power.
I don’t mean actually calling her Pocahontas; I mean pointing out the fact that she exaggerated her ancestral history a bit.
And while I personally don’t think it’s a bad thing that she reversed course on Medicare-for-All, the fact is that she did go all in on a Bernie-care like program and then later pulled back, which is also when she took her dip in the polls.
Don’t tell me for a moment that Warren didn’t know the mic was hot – she absolutely knew they were on a recorded mic and that she was going to use that to look tough in front of the cameras. Her whole closing statement seemed to be an “I am woman” moment, and then she went right off into Bernie’s direction.
In short, Warren tried a political stunt. Whether it’s a effective or not in terms of hurting Sanders, I don’t know, but I don’t see how this really improves her image or that of the Democratic party when the general election rolls around.
That pretty much reaffirms what I said in an earlier post: a non-aggression pact is a silly idea, and it’s silly because it’s never going to last throughout the duration of the race. Even the sharpest, savviest politicians know that they might have 1 or 2 chances of being president – nobody who’s close enough to taste the nomination but behind in the polls is going to let a little gentleman’s (gentlewoman’s) agreement get in the way of potentially winning the nomination.
Warren knows that time is running out and she wanted to deliver her own Kamala Harris moment. It’s entirely possible that Sanders might have made a remark to the effect that this might not be the best year for a female candidate, but if he said something to that extent, then it’s understood that this was a private remark and Warren is being the under-handed one here, and she’s using her vagina to do it.
A lot of Sanders’ activists can be whiny babies, but this is one of the few times I’m with Bernie.
It’s the progressive wing of the party that’s fighting with each other for the heart and soul of that wing. It was bound to be a circular firing squad, but in this particular case, Warren’s decision to slash Sanders may be just what Joe Biden needed to separate himself from the rest of the field. Buttigieg also stands to benefit from this as well. Both Biden and Buttigieg are showing resiliency, and they are both looking like they are above the fray. Sanders was wise not to engage with Warren, but he may still end up losing votes anyway.
In addition, with Trump being as disliked and vulnerable an incumbent as he is, the Democratic competition is going to be particularly cutthroat. Not only is it the presidency at stake, you (the nominee) gets to be the one who goes down in history as* the one who took down Trump.
*
Add to that the additional boost for Warren that she’d go down as the first woman president in history, and she has absolutely no reason not go all knives-out from here on out.
You said, “You’ve said this a couple times and I think I should loint out that it’s not really true.”
But your cite only goes as far as saying that it’s possible that it’s not true.
i.e. The person who did her DNA test said, “EW had a Native American ancestor.” While your cite says he should have said, “It is possible that EW had a Native American ancestor.” That’s a pretty far cry from saying, “EW did not have a Native American ancestor,” which is what you implied.
If any Dem brings up the Native American thing, it’s going to hurt them among Dem primary voters because Trump has already hitched his wagon to that line of attack. Even if Trump is doing all the name calling and someone like Sanders keeps it civil, people are just going to connect the two lines of attack. The one thing Democrats can agree on is that they don’t want any similarities with Trump.
The Native American scandal thing is a swiftboat level fluff attack anyway. It plays well with voters who don’t care about policy at all. Some of those work in primaries, but the most likely scenario is it hurts the person bringing it up as much or more as the person it’s directed against.
As for the rest, yes this is obviously contrived from Warren and the hot mic doesn’t feel spontaneous at all. The most charitable explanation would be that what she said is true, she legitimately wanted to keep it private, but someone else happened to leak it right now and she felt like she had no choice but to tell the truth, although even that doesn’t explain the hot mic. It could still be true, but holding it until now and then releasing it doesn’t make sense unless she thought she could use to boost her with left-wing voters.
I don’t know if Sanders is every going to hit Warren on M4A. It has been an issue that’s been killing primary candidates, but I think Sanders is coming from a place of not having a ton of allies on healthcare and realizing that if he calls Warren a liar over it, it paints M4A supporters generally as liars, and I think he also realizes if he becomes President that he’s going to have to push for the public option and will put himself in the same conundrum.
