Monday, November 18, 2013

YOU TELL YOURSELF YOU'RE NOT MY KIND, BUT YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW YOUR MIND

In a sane world, this report from BuzzFeed's Ruby Cramer would quell the Clinton/Warren catfight rumors that have pulses races throughout the Beltway:
Elizabeth Warren's former national finance chair, Paul Egerman, has told several inquiring donors this month that, despite runaway speculation and a burning desire from the party's left wing, the freshman senator will not run for president in 2016.

Egerman, close to both Warren and to the heavy-hitting liberal base of funders who helped her raise $42 million last year, has been approached by donors in the last two weeks and told them that, no, Warren is not planning to run, according to two major players in Democratic financial circles who spoke with Egerman directly.

One Democratic fundraiser said he spoke with Egerman roughly two weeks ago, after articles by Peter Beinart in the Daily Beast and Noam Scheiber in the New Republic heightened fervor amongst the progressives over whether Warren would challenge Hillary Clinton, already the presumed frontrunner, from the left.

Egerman, the fundraiser said, quickly threw cold water on the theory.

"It's not gonna happen," the source said....
There's more at the link, and it all points to a no answer from Warren.

But the believers just won't stop:



This links to a Hendrik Hertzberg post at The New Yorker's site, which offers no evidence that Warren is uncertain about her own plans, merely an assertion that the future is (seemingly) unknowable:
Will she challenge Hillary? No one knows, probably including Warren herself....

(... even she probably doesn't know what she'll do)....
Hertzberg goes on to speculate that "leaving the possibility tantalizingly open is the best way to keep [Warren's] ideas about taming the plutocracy in the public eye -- and to encourage (or force) Clinton to move in her direction." Bill Scher has similar thoughts:




So does she simply not know what her plans are (at a time when every other candidate is already laying groundwork)? Is she faking, in part to keep Hillary Clinton on a short leash?

That last notion annoys me -- it suggests that her prime target is a fellow Democrat. It seems to me that Warren is mature enough to know that the prime target in her war on fat-cat excess is, um, fat cats. To put it in Python terms, she's a People's Front of Judea member who's actually angrier at the Romans than she is at the Judean People's Front:





I've never seen any evidence that she thinks policing her party for signs of ideological impurity is a good use of her time. She's not Jim DeMint, nor is she an emoprog. She's in this to take on the powerful, not to take on the people who won't take on the powerful. And good for her.
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5 comments:

  1. aimai4:21 PM

    This whole Warren fetishism thing is, well, fetishistic. It has nothing to do with who she is as a person, or her political stances, or her policy preferences, or even the normal role for a new Senator. its pure projection. And at this point its getting almost surreal. And I say that as someone who is one of her constituents and supporters. Its a sign of how feeble and weak the field of potential Democratic progressive political actors is (in the minds of the pundit crowd) that they have to manufacture a new progressive heroine out of whole cloth. Not only is she not this person--this firebrand with a goal of achieving supreme power--but she has no real fan base other than a niche over at Kos.

    I recently read an interesting article interviewing people who had turned out to get their books signed by Palin. Not a one of them would actually vote for her--they liked the idea of an outsider speaking truth to power, they liked her as a standard bearer and a gadfly. The truth is that there is a constituency for an imaginary political figure--whether Palin or Warren. But those people want to see themselves spoken for--they don't have any illusions about the actual electability of their current purity pony.

    Why the pundits are so gullible is beyond me.

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  2. Victor4:35 PM

    Warren is no Nader.

    She's smart enough to understand the consequences. Both in challenging, and, as "some" have speculated, running as a Liberal 3rd Party candidate.

    Nader, wasn't - he didn't understand how Ross Perot's 3rd Party candidacy in the past two elections had helped Bill Clinton solidify a victory that he might have only narrowly won, if not narrowly have lost.

    I think most, if not all, Liberals knew that Obama was planning a major run, successful or not, in 2008, after he gave the Keynote Address at the DNC in 2004.

    At least as far as I've been able to see, Senator Warren hasn't given any signal that she's planning on taking on Hillary, if Hillary runs.
    And if Hillary decides not to run, then I still doubt that Warren would try.
    It seems as if Bernie Sanders is contemplating making a run in 2016 - probably for symbolic purposes, and to keep the major candidate for the Democratic Party from leaning too far to the Reich.
    But it sure will be fun to watch the heads of the FOX hosts explode, when, or if, they ever cover his candidacy.

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  3. Examinator8:06 PM

    I think it's even more cynical. The MSM survives by having their access to an audience. that means they need a draw i.e. "if it bleeds it leads" and "conflict sells". The 'journalists' survive by being able to put a more 'attention grabbing' angle on a story.
    Nothing will get the punters' attention more than either a scandal or a conflict(challenger) ergo speculate on one.
    From the political POV nothing makes the respective political bases happier than stories of conflict in the opposition ranks.
    Generally voters don't like disunity, "if they can't manage themselves how can they manage the country" mindset.
    So why are people surprised by in particular, the right wing media trying to pit the two most popular Dems against each other in the hope it will bring a conflict damaging both see the internecine warfare of Republican primaries b4 the last election.

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  4. Ten Bears12:02 AM

    Ex is on it: it's simply MSM speculation. As ever.

    My observation is she is more interested in what she is doing now. I'd vote for her before Hillary but I'm not sure I'd vote Hillary/Warren. We've had enough political dynasties. I voted Jill Stein last time, and her counterpart in eight. I have no problem with a woman in office. I have a problem with old school Robber Baron political dynasties.

    If Hillary runs she'll lose, I think she's smarter than that; and it is my observation Warren is more interested in doing what she's doing now.

    Could be wrong. It's a Zen thing.

    No fear.

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  5. Unknown12:20 AM

    One of them would actually vote for her--they liked the idea of an outsider speaking truth to power,

    Regards,
    Mangosteen Juice

    ReplyDelete