As much as I lover her, I’m sure she won’t run and I don’t think she should run. She wouldn’t necessarily be a very good president; I don’t think her experience is broad enough and I don’t think she has the political skills to be successful. She’d be cock-blocked by the GOP even more than Obama is, if that’s possible.
On the other hand, I think she would make a hell of a VP. From that position, she can be the administration’s attack dog on the finance and backing industries, where she has her expertise, and with no aspirations of the presidency she doesn’t have to worry about being well-liked in Washington or on Wall Street. She can keep the president honest by pulling him or her to the left, while giving the prez some political cover by distancing him/her from controversy.
I don’t think she’d make a good running mate for Hillary (too many similarities) - but I’m not enamored with the idea of a Hillary presidency anyway. She’d make a great running mate for just about any other candidate though; especially any younger, moderate candidate.
I think she’d be much better situated where she is right now, as the leading figure in writing banking legislation and as a populist spokesperson for financial issues. She’ll be in the Senate as long as she wants to be that way, but the vice presidency is toothless and temporary.
If you were to dig out the Washington Post Outlook section from the Sunday after the 2006 midterm election (I think that would have been Nov. 12, 2006), you would have seen a big headline: HILLARY v. OBAMA. With big pictures of each underneath, followed by a ton of prognostication about how the race for the 2008 Dem nomination between the two of them would shape up.
(I remember it vividly, because I was pretty pissed about it at the time: five days earlier, the Dems had won a remarkable victory, retaking both houses of Congress for the first time in a dozen years - and the fucking WaPo couldn’t spare one lousy Sunday opinion section to talk about what that meant, but instead was racing ahead to the Next Big Thing.)
And trust me, that blaring Outlook cover didn’t come out of nowhere. It wasn’t exactly news on that day that they were considered the two frontrunners for the nomination.
I didn’t start off with this belief, but I’ve come around to the belief that Warren should run in 2016. Not because she’d win the nomination - she wouldn’t - but in order to do well enough to force Hillary to take seriously the concerns and priorities of the Democratic base.
First thing is that, just as those of us who hoped back in 2008 that Obama would be more liberal than Hillary were fooling ourselves to a fair extent, the same thing is now true in reverse. The people who now see Hillary as somehow being the liberal hope who will govern noticeably to the left of Obama, absent being forced to do so by political pressure from that side, are fooling themselves as well. There will be differences in style and emphasis between this Administration and a Hillary Administration, but they really won’t be that far apart overall.
And there’s really nobody else out there right now who can bring it from the left like Warren can. Which is why it should be her.
It wasn’t just the commentariat. It was one hell of a speech. I waved my wife into the room and said, “this man is going to be President someday.” The only surprise was that it happened so soon. When he declared, I remember thinking, “Good Lord, it’s gonna happen now, isn’t it?”
Meh. That stuff doesn’t survive past the election. Meanwhile, there’s a risk of damaging the candidate who’s going to be your nominee anyway. Hillary doesn’t need toughening up that way either, unlike a more novice candidate who *needs *the primaries.
I know of very few such individuals. Can you point out a few?
Having a President with a stiffer backbone and less naivete about the Congressional Republicans would certainly have made a difference in tangible results over the last six years, wouldn’t it?
Which is why she needs to stay in a position of real power, both governmentally and as a spokesperson, on her area of expertise and passion for many years to come. That means staying in the Senate.
I don’t know - I could see a Clinton-Warren ticket being successful. True, they’re both Democratic women, but having Warren as a running mate would allow Clinton to really focus on making herself appear moderate. She could get more Independent and maybe even moderate Republicans to vote for her, while not having to worry about scaring away the hardcore liberals. I doubt Clinton herself would pick Warren, though; she’d likely go with a “safer” candidate.
I don’t see this as being a problem. You can attack a politician on issues, or on personal grounds. I can’t see Warren making personal attacks on Hillary (besides, they’ve all been used up ages ago), and if Warren attacks Hillary for being, say, insufficiently devoted to regulation of businesses or worker protections, it doesn’t exactly give Hillary’s eventual opponent an attack to use against her.
I will the next time I see one. But I do see them with a fair degree of regularity in blog comments and stuff.
Tru dat. But I also remember that in the 2008 cycle, Hillary had to be dragged, practically kicking and screaming, into saying she’d do something about health care. (That she did at all is part of the debt we owe to John Edwards.) We now have a functioning ACA. Would that have happened if Hillary had won? We’ll never know, but there’s really not a lot of reason to believe Hillary was ready to re-fight that battle, after how things turned out in 1994.
Well, sure. But since Warren won her seat in 2012, she can continue to be a sitting Senator as she runs for the nomination in 2016, since she comes up for re-election in 2018. I don’t see the problem here.
The New York Review of Books reviews Elizabeth Warren’s [del]campaign bio[/del] memoir. The book combines a revealing account of Warren’s rise to prominence with prosaic personal details—lots of hugging babies and dogs—and ringing political declarations. Its begins: “I’m Elizabeth Warren. I’m a wife, a mother, and a grandmother.” And it goes on:
[INDENT][INDENT] I never expected to go to Washington. Heck, for the most part I never even wanted to go. But I’m here to fight for something that I believe is worth absolutely everything: to give each one of our kids a fighting chance to build a future full of promise and discovery. [/INDENT]
Two hundred and seventy pages later, in an epilogue, Warren returns to the pugilistic theme, although, in truth, she never really departs from it: “I believe in us. I believe in what we can do together, in what we will do together. All we need is a fighting chance.”
Does that sound like somebody who has definitively ruled out a tilt for the Oval Office? [/INDENT] The problem with Warren is that Hillary has a far better resume. The problem with Hillary is that her decision to run will be strongly influenced by the medical issues of Hillary and Bill. Some put the odds at 70% which is less than 100%.
Also, Warren might run to angle for VP, a cabinet position or to advocate for middle class interests. It’s not about eating the rich. It’s about opportunity, the American dream. From the viral You Tube clip of a few years back: [INDENT]Now look, you built the factory and it turned into something terrific, or great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid that comes along. [/INDENT] A lot of conservatives have a problem with that – Warren is only Senator because they didn’t want a middle class advocate running the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – but I believe most Americans instinctively know better.
You take Lizzie just by herself, hold in a pair of tongs and examine objectively, not so good a candidate. Not that she might not do a very good job as President, but she has to win it. Have a bunch better shot if there had already been a woman President.
On context, however, compared to those who have campaigned for the office, a set of glassy-eyed howler monkeys and a vacuum in a very nice suit…she looks pretty darned good.
All in all, I would prefer she stay right in the Senate and pursue her hobby of tearing new ones in pampered backsides. A better political figure than a candidate.
Actually, the social contract is that you give 25-30% to the government, who give it to either campaign contributors or a group they really need to win the next election. Since the money they need for these purposes is never enough, every few years they come back to you and demand “just” another 2-3% for “the children”, but the money just gets spent exactly the same way.
In industries where that’s possible, it’s what’s happening. Find me a company that pays low wages, and I’ll show you their low profit margins. The only way for them to fulfill the social contract is to raise prices, which doesn’t really help anyone. The bigger paychecks get lost in the higher prices.
By using a model that involves fewer workers and greater efficiency. It’s a great model, but it keeps their expansion in check because you have to keep the culture right. You can’t just open up 1000 new stores in a short time and expect it to work.