What, is Team Obama going to act out like a bunch of BernieBros because she disagreed with them and was willing to go to the mats over it?
So the program wound up coming out ahead. The crux of the argument is, could and should the Obama Administration have kept the banks from tossing people out of their homes while they were saving the banks’ asses? Geithner and Summers come off pretty bad for being pissed at Warren for pressing them to do just that. They kinda waved their hands and said basically that they had been too busy saving the financial system, but never explained beyond that just what the problem was that they had with her.
Given that it was Politico, I have to believe it was intended to be a hit piece on Warren, but she should use it in her campaign.
I noticed that too. Really fucked up. I don’t know if the media is covering for her or what, but I couldn’t believe it.
I’m not going to go through the whole debate to find it, but this video clip (the single, solitary one on YouTube) provides the context:
It’s weird that the audience laughed, but her reaction is SO bad. How can anyone argue that she doesn’t come across like the stern, strict teacher at your high school that everyone was afraid of? It’s TERRIBLE politics. This should have been a big point in the coverage, and for it to be utterly ignored is scandalous, almost Orwellian.
Dave Weigel sort of did hint at that. The media have treated her very positively and some might say with kids gloves. He said some part of that is she is a favourite among younger reporters who prefer progressive policies (in other words not Biden) but don’t like the abrasiveness of Bernie. Warren’s “I have a plan” message combined with her good campaigning helps create the narrative she is the electable one.
:rolleyes: It doesn’t require any special politics meter to say that if a debate gets millions of words of coverage, it’s weird if virtually none of it even briefly mentions that one of the frontrunners got laughed at by the audience, and admonished them for doing so. That should be notable. If you want to argue that it shouldn’t be treated as a huge scandal and obsessed over to the exclusion of everything else, OK. But for it to be something where people who didn’t watch the debate but read coverage about it or watched highlights have no idea it even happened? Come ON. That’s called a coverup.
Sure, it’s nice to say that, but it’s not much more fleshed out than the vapid Yang plans. To think that the ultra wealthy would simply allow their tax burden to rise dramatically without combating it somehow is wishful thinking. It’s not like moves wouldn’t be made as the legislation is advancing.
Well, of course there’ll be shenanigans dancing on either side of the legal line. That’s going to be true of any major tax reform. But of all the people running, Warren is by far the most knowledgeable about financial shenanigans.
The transcript calls it “crosstalk” and that’s defensible; clearly some laughs are heard, but it’s not really an incident of uproarious mirth. It’s more that some portion of the audience wanted to stop Warren from recounting her anecdote about the ALS patient.
So what would have been the response from Warren that would meet with the approval of the freaked-out?
What she did was say three words that got the audience quiet. And they remained quiet. That’s demonstrating good crowd control skills.
This is only raising ire because some have a viscerally negative reaction to a person whose “proper” role is to be silent, saying three words that quiet a crowd. It’s an outrage! Schoolmarmish! Why aren’t all the news anchors talking this up?!?!
Okay, so, thanks: you have three pieces of what you consider to be evidence that Warren “cannot weather attacks well” :
**“Floundering” over her DNA test (of what does this “floundering” consist?)
**Making “quips” about Trump not wanting to fight a girl (?)
**Quieting a crowd using the three words “this isn’t funny.”
Not a very convincing list, really.
I understand that the current situation is very hard on people who have definite ideas on how people of certain demographic traits should behave. But to deep-six this candidate, you’re going to have to do better than “cannot weather attacks well”. It’s very thin.
(Apologies for firewalled source, but I couldn’t find a free one. NBC has what’s labeled “Night One” but is actually Night Two, July 31; annoyingly it’s what’s linked to everywhere else, it seems, when July 30 is searched.)
But it’s not only the media giving her the kid gloves. Minimally the narrative is forming that she and Biden are the top contenders, even if some think my belief that it is already basically down to the two of them is premature. That sucks the oxygen out for others who want to be the one who is one on one with Biden. The lack of anyone going after her is both odd and paradoxically not good for her campaign I think. Her sealing the deal with those possibly leaning to her is contingent on her demonstrating that she can handle hostile questions and unfriendly rooms. Not getting the chance to do that, assuming she can, serves her poorly.
Is it your view that this ‘narrative is forming’ completely independent of polling results? (And of fundraising results?)
I agree that all the viable candidates should get plenty of practice with dealing with attacks. I’m not sure that having the Democrats put a lot of energy into attacking each other is the smartest way to accomplish that, though.
Town halls and sharp questioning by journalists seem to me to be two better ways of acquiring experience with handling opposition.
That’s a matter of opinion. I personally didn’t mind the stern teacher thing. I think that’s a legit archetype for a strong female politician.
But the problem is that I bet you can’t come up with a more impressive list of successful attack weathering. And, imho, the dirth of list components is part of the concern. She has no practice and experience in tough political campaigns.
While I don’t believe this has anything to do with expectations of behavior based on demographic traits let’s go with that for the sake of argument. If highly educated center left folk who have had many female superiors in the workforce like me, who want to be convinced that their tentative support of her is not a mistake, have those implicit biases that she fails to overcome then what chance does she have with those less left and less educated than me?
I am not a skillful politician. Tough gig I am sure. I do however know when I am impressed by how a politician handles a difficult moment and when I’m not.
You complain my evidence that she cannot is thin. I am complaining that the evidence she can is nonexistent.
Before I am all in I want to see her stress tested a bit.
The narrative is supported by polling, its stability, and persistent directionality. It is based on the reported strength of her on the ground organization in key early states. Biden is up there for obvious reasons. Sanders has not connected with anyone who he wasn’t already connected with, which isn’t enough, and has lost some of them. Harris had her shot and has fallen ever since. Buttigieg, despite money and attention, has not moved beyond a small group of highly educated white voters, and lost some of them. No one else is even worth talking about now.
That’s really not good at all. According to those I follow who seem to be both passionate about the environment and know their shit, we really need nuclear power as part of the mix.
And the objections - which I certainly had - pale next to what we’re looking at here. How many Fukushimas, how many Chernobyls, does it take to equal one global climate disaster? I can’t claim to have crunched the numbers with any precision, but by my back-of-the-envelope calculations, the answer is somewhere around a shitload or two.
We can’t let being all pure on nuclear power get between us and keeping the planet in a condition that will support seven or eight billion people.
I’m not sure where you’re going with this. Who on earth thinks that “the ultra wealthy would simply allow their tax burden to rise dramatically without combating it”? Obviously Warren doesn’t, or else she wouldn’t talk about how to guard against this.
The economists who helped her devise this plan [have a white paper about it](wealthy would simply allow their tax burden to rise dramatically without combating it). They discuss in some detail, starting on page 3, how to guard against loopholes/avoidance, but to a large degree they point to other nations in which such guarding has been successful.
Any time you ask people to pay their share of taxes, you’ll have cheats. This is just like any time you ask people not to speed, you’ll have speeders. Some folks are gonna break the law. As a general principle, we can’t say that lawbreakers render laws pointless. In this specific case, there’s good reason (i.e., success in other countries) to think that a wealth tax can be enforced to a degree that makes it a useful law.
Oh, and as for her cringe-inducing DNA tests, I wonder what percentage of the electorate is even aware of it? I know the “consensus” is that she fucked up; but of the percentage who’s aware of it, what percentage considers it a significant event? Of that percentage, what percentage would have ever voted for her in the first place?
It’s turned into Trump’s main attack on her. Of course she’ll prepare for that attack. I don’t think it’s a particularly effective attack.
The claim was that Warren can’t weather attacks well. I didn’t make it, so I’m not obligated to provide evidence or citations of any kind. But let’s look at CK’s request. It amounts to:
IF Sherrerd cannot provide video (or other acceptable evidence) of Warren successfully weathering an attack,
THEN it is proven that Warren cannot successfully weather an attack.
This is clearly fallacious. If I provide no videos—or even if no videos exist—it cannot be legitimately concluded from such circumstances that Warren has never successfully weathered an attack, much less that Warren is incapable of weathering attacks.
I suppose that as any readers of the thread come across video of someone saying something harsh to Warren and Warren responding, they may post them. Then we can argue over the “weathering”—was the weathering successful? Partially successful? Cloudy with a chance of showers?
Slacker, your dislike of Elizabeth Warren has been spewed widely across every thread in this forum, over and over. You have such a hate-on for Warren that you are now suggesting that there is a media-wide cover-up (!!) of a statement she made in a (heavily-covered, live) televised debate. I respectfully suggest that you stop rolling your eyes, because they are seeing things that clearly do not exist.
It seems to me that if the problem is that she’s never weathered an attack, then Biden should attack her. Either:
a) She’ll crumble under it, and we should all breathe a sigh of relief at the bullet we dodged, knowing that she’d also have crumbled under a Trump attack; or
b) She’ll weather it (maybe making Biden look like an asshole), and we’ll all breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that she’s ready to take on Trump.
That’s missing the point of the current conversation. No one was talking about how devastating the Pocahontas thing is. We were talking about how it demonstrated her scrappiness or lack thereof.
