Elizabeth Warren has the pitch-perfect response to a Tea Party heckler who called her a “socialist whore”:
“I actually felt sorry for the guy. I really genuinely did,” Warren later told the Huffington Post. “He’s been out of work now for a year and a half. And bless his heart, I mean, he thought somehow it would help to come here and yell names.”
She also added: “I’m not angry with him, but he didn’t come up with the idea that his biggest problem was Occupy Wall Street. There’s someone else pre-packaging that poison — and that’s who makes me angry.”
I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a first-time candidate who is as talented a natural politician as Warren.
xian
She’s like a Bizarro world Sarah Palin.
I’ve become a total Lizbot…
Moe
She’s spent days in front of congressional committees fending off hostility. No better training than that!
Moonbatting Average
I love the “bless his heart” bit. I thought only Southerners used that stealth insult.
Judas Escargot
I can’t watch the video link because of my firewall (Praise the Company).
What was the crowd reaction?
cathyx
She says she’s not angry with him, but at those who are poisoning his mind about who he should be angry with. Good answer.
Baud
Nice!
cathyx
@Moonbatting Average: That’s what you say about a child who doesn’t understand how the world works. But at least the child has an excuse.
Satanicpanic
@xian: Does that explain the starbursts I’ve been seeing?
azelie
She’s originally from Oklahoma, which I guess is close enough to the South to explain the “bless his heart” thing.
The way I’ve heard it used is not just for children who don’t understand things yet, but generally for people that you want to imply are hapless.
Spiffy McBang
@Moonbatting Average: She’s from Oklahoma, so that’s about right.
Lolis
@Moonbatting Average:
She is a Southerner. Alabama, I think.
I lurve her too.
Tom Q
I’m in complete agreement: Warren is turning out to be one of the great natural candidates I’ve seen. I was very wary of her — based on MA Dems’ uneasy history with female candidates, and what I thought would be her niche appeal to college-age folk. But she’s not only the anti-Palin; she’s the anti-Coakley. She has a common touch at which I’d never have guessed. I think Brown has all he can handle in this race.
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Moonbatting Average: I loved that bit. She’s from Oklahoma and went to college in Houston; it’s a current expression in both places.
jl
@Judas Escargot: Most of the audience reaction was to the teabagger yahoo, who acted like a tin pot jackass who was entitled to take over the meeting agenda and hurl insults, and the audience did not seem to like him very much.
Applause for Warren.
You gotta remember that she is an academic and has been through peer review for promotions and journal articles, so has acquired the skill of handing base insults and ignorant accusations with skill, dash, and aplomb, and keeping focus on the important issue at hand.
gogol's wife
Warren in 2016
David Koch
If Warren is such a natural politician, why does she want to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran back to the stone age?
Watch, next she’ll support the DEA’s jack booted storm troopers against decriminalizing marijuana.
Baud
@David Koch:
They only mean it when they sing it.
Jewish Steel
For reals. That’s a lady who’s been practicing her scales.
Spiffy McBang
I think it does Warren somewhat of a disservice to call her a natural politician. She’s a supremely intelligent and knowledgeable woman and a gifted public speaker whose knowledge base fits the moment perfectly. In my opinion, campaigner Warren is an even better version than campaigner Obama. But where he did it through ideals blended with that political sense of what to say when, everything about Warren suggests she’s just speaking truth to power and letting the cards fall.
Basically, a politician can sound similarly good in a variety of situations. I don’t know if that applies to Warren; I don’t think you’d see her running for office unless she felt there were no better way to accomplish her goals. But in this case, that is the best way, and she’s built perfectly for this situation. In a lot of ways, I think that makes her better than a talented politician, and I think you’d see a better run government if it had more people dedicated to finding the answers to problems they consider critical and less who are just trying to hold on to a job.
Short Bus Bully
I think we found our nominee in 2016.
And yes I’m aware that I’m all READY, FIRE, AIM but fuck it… I need shit to hope for.
MikeJ
@Short Bus Bully:
Sge’s worse than Bush, she will have sold us out, she’s going to throw us under the bus.
Hungry Joe
I attended a fairly small event for her in San Diego a few months ago, and she’s got it — as in, It. She radiates charisma; it’s like feeling the bass in a rock concert. Clinton has it (I once perceived his bass thrumming from 50 feet away) as does Obama (tested at 25 feet).
An inherent danger, of course, is that such vibrations can short circuit your higher-level reasoning powers. Best to take a few deep breaths once the Personage is out of range.
Which I’ve done with Warren. Still in love.
David Koch
@Short Bus Bully:
I agree. Alan Grayson will make a great nominee.
Linda Featheringill
@Short Bus Bully:
Not a bad idea, though.
jl
I don’t see how calling some one a ‘natural politician’ is a disservice, at least how I interpret the term. When I think of a natural politician, I think of some one who has emotional intelligence to not go with a gut reaction to insults and stupid accusations, who as a mature understanding of human nature so they can quickly sense the best way to capture the interest and sympathy of an audience (even when some jackass is making a spectacle of himself and calling you a commie b*tch or whatever), and the intelligence to formulate a relevant and sensible response on their feet. (Edit: and coherent and convincing response too, now that the sad spectacle of the GOP primary debates comes to mind, and which are NOT full of natural politicians.)
So, those are pretty rare qualities to put to together in one person, I think.
xian
@Moonbatting Average: she’s from Oklahoma, so I think it’s still regionally apt.
I caught it too. That’s a dog whistle we could all get behind. Poor Mitt Romney, bless his heart, just doesn’t know what he stands for. That Rick Perry, bless his heart, so anxious when speaking in front of people.
Jenny
The PUMA-Firebagg death cult hates Elizabeth Warren. The hive is gonnna attack her like Kamikazes.
The axis if idiots, led by Yves Smith and Hamsher will never stop avenging Hillary’s defeat and hating Obama allies. They hate Warren, in most part, for being a supportive Obot.
Bubblegum Tate
Man, she’s awesome.
daveNYC
Great response by her. I’m worried though, if people are showing up this early in the game and yelling crap like “soсialist whоre” (seriously, whоre?) at her, what will things be like nine months from now?
There are people out there who consider OWS to be The Enemy, and she’s come out as being very pro-OWS.
Short Bus Bully
@Hungry Joe:
I feel about Warren like I did after watching Obama introduce Kerry at the convention: Where have you been my whole life?
LURV…
Poopyman
@MikeJ: Whew! Glad we got that out of the way!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Jenny: Well, she doesn’t need the blog to save her, and they know it. And that is what really bothers them.
JGabriel
Daily Kos has the video of the Warren name-calling.
Personally, I think the guy should embed it in his Match.com page. Cause nothing turns on women more than men who publicly call women “socia1ist whores”. Stay classy, dude.
.
JGabriel
Moderated: Please to be helping?
Davis X. Machina
It’s high praise. Would that all the Lord’s people were politicians. The ancient Greek word idios as a noun refers to someone interested solely in his own affairs. Guess what word that gave us?
Console
Bless his heart is definitley my favorite backhand compliment of all time
Maude
@Jenny:
Didn’t they like her at first?
Davis X. Machina
@David Koch: Perhaps if he started small, like winning a House race….
Julia Grey
WHYYYYYYY?
KG
@David Koch: “taking nothing off the table” while “facts are still emerging” is quite different than “bombs fall in five minutes”. There are times when war, as a last and final resort, is necessary. And any intelligent person would understand that idea. If you can recognize that some times you may have to use force, there’s nothing wrong with that.
The people I worry about are those who believe war is the first and best option. And I say this as someone who got swept up in the war drums over Iraq.
jl
I hope too see the day the GOP bitterly regrets keeping her out of the golden cage of running an executive agency, which would constrain the damage she would do to their rackets.
Will be more fun watching her in the Senate.
Steve
I have fallen out of love with Yves Smith. Man, some people just can’t be happy. She would do better to stick to analyzing the financial industry and stop trying to be an expert on Iran.
dadanarchist
Cue wails of “elitist condescension” and “patronizing liberalism” from the usual precincts.
Cain
@Jenny:
Sometimes when I play Batman:Arkham Asylum, I imagine all those crooks that I’m hitting are PUMA-firebaggers that I hit repeatedly.
That said,I have no idea why the hell they would not like her? What’s so damn special about Hillary that she must be put above all others. Is it because it is her turn?
An all woman, Elizabeth/Hillary ticket might prove interesting.
TheStone
@Davis X. Machina: There is a difference between “politician,” as the term was read by jl, and a citizen of a demos. In fact, Athens was wise enough to ostracize many of their most talented politicians, sending them into exile for 10 years or so every now and then. The pejorative reading of politician, as it was used here, is probably closer to the Greek tyrant, who manipulated the citizens of a democracy for self-aggrandizement.
dadanarchist
Good point. Plus she works at Harvard. She could probably teach a master’s class on dealing with obnoxious, boorish idiots.
The Moar You Know
@daveNYC: I’m hoping that with Romney as the candidate, the teabagger contingent will be demoralized enough to at least leave the guns at home.
I am not counting on it given U.S. history, however. The teabaggers got a scalp in Arizona already, and you just know there’s a bunch of them who are itching to add to that collection.
I’m honestly terrified over what the next year is going to bring. It won’t be pretty and may well be bloody.
Tonybrown74
@Davis X. Machina:
Why, yes! I do believe you;re right. If I’m not mistaken, the fact that she wasn’t nominated to head the Consumer Protection Agency by the President was yet another reason to despise/hate the President.
I would question the logic in now hating on Ms. Warren, but I have learned since way back in the Clinton Years, that when it comes to political hatred, there is no such thing [as logic].
cleek
blah!
dadanarchist
A practice I think should be revived.
Tonybrown74
@KG:
I think Mr. Koch is snarking …
Chris
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t see these guys ever getting demoralized, just madder. I’ve said this here before, but if it’s Obama/Romney in 2012, we’ll be lucky if they don’t nominate a guy in white robes and a dunce hat in 2016 or 2020. (Especially in 2016, if Romney loses, cause that’ll have been the second “moderate” in a row).
Davis X. Machina
@TheStone: Ὁ ἀνθρωπος φυσει πολιτικον ζωον….
David Koch
@KG:
Really? You want to bomb, bomb, bomb Iran, too?! This is why I stand with Jane Hamsher and Yves Smith in opposing Elizabeth Warren’s call for a 4th war in the Middle East! As Jane says, you can’t spell War, without Warren.
Steve
@Cain: Unlike Elizabeth Warren, Hillary would never imply she might use force against Iran. Never, never, never. Well, hardly ever.
jl
@TheStone:
A colorful bunch, those Athenian tyrants, like something out of a Faulkner novel, if you are hallucinating along with the Gestalt of the thing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrant#Athens
One thing I am sure of, the current GOP primaryiters would make some of the old school Greek tyrants look pretty damn good, sad to say.
Suffern ACE
@Tonybrown74: Well, maybe the’ve met her and know that after consumer finance protection, her number two goal is to abolish the Senate and rule by fear.
FlipYrWhig
@Tonybrown74: To a certain kind of person, whenever you start to like a political figure, disappointment is inevitable–so it’s better to concentrate on political figures’ flaws and, if at all possible, to amplify them to monstrous proportions. Because, you see, if you never really like anyone, you’ll never be coopted or played for a fool, and you’ll get to be permanently indignant, and that’s how you know you’re superior to other people who follow politics.
RalfW
@Jenny:
Our Firebagg idiots are not as bad as their TeaCreap idiots, but if Warren gets Hamsher in a tizzy, hey I’m just a bit more in lurve with Elizabeth.
FoxinSocks
A co-worker of mine is from the South and she says, “Bless your heart” to me all the time. I assume she hates me.
jl
SAUSAGE-SELLER
And I, Demos, if it be not true, that I love and cherish you, may I be cooked in a stew; and if that is not saying enough, may I be grated on this table with some cheese and then hashed, may a hook be passed through my balls and let me be dragged thus to the Ceramicus!
CLEON
Is it possible, Demos, to love you more than I do? And firstly, as long as you have governed with my consent, have I not filled your treasury, putting pressure on some, torturing others or begging of them, indifferent to the opinion of private individuals, and solely anxious to please you?
SAUSAGE-SELLER
There is nothing so wonderful in all that, Demos; I will do as much; I will thieve the bread of others to serve up to you. No, he has neither love for you nor kindly feeling; his only care is to warm himself with your wood, and I will prove it. You, who, sword in hand, saved Attica from the Median yoke at Marathon; you, whose glorious triumphs we love to extol unceasingly, look, he cares little whether he sees you seated uncomfortably upon a stone; whereas I, I bring you this cushion, which I have sewn with my own hands. Rise and try this nice soft seat. Did you not put enough strain on your bottom at Salamis?
He gives DEMOS the cushion; DEMOS sits on it.
[Editorial note: see how far conservative humor has fallen since back in the Golden Age of democracy. Alas.]
Zifnab
@Chris:
If Romney gets nominated this year, it’ll prove the Tea Party really doesn’t have any national clout. 2010 was their year. If they can’t leverage that into a GOP nomination, they aren’t holding the reins. And if they’re not holding the reins now, they never will. Money will follow the winning candidates. Tea Party candidates aren’t winners. Dick Army will lose his funding and that’ll be that.
Marci Kiser
Hey! No fair using the classic Southern ‘bless his heart’ to soften criticism of idiots.
Now what will we use to passive-aggressively say awful things about everyone who’s not within earshot? For god’s sake Liz, leave us our snide commentary!
Suffern ACE
@FlipYrWhig: And, if your passion is politics, you will never be happy for a single moment of any day of your life.
Cris (without an H)
2004 IL-Sen?
ericblair
@FlipYrWhig:
I dunno, I’d assume the hatred started when it became obvious that she could win. If that happens, and you agree with what she stands for, then you could possibly be Proven Wrong if things don’t go perfectly. It’s much better, then, to insist on things that can’t possibly happen, and people who can’t possibly win, because then you can never be Proven Wrong and can continue to throw rocks from the cheap seats with your smugness intact.
KG
@Tonybrown74: my snarkometer is broken, can’t fix it because I can’t find my sonic screwdriver
ETA: how is there not yet a cocktail called a sonic screwdriver?
JGabriel
KG:
War is unforeseeable.
.
PurpleGirl
@Moonbatting Average: Isn’t she from the midwest? Something she learned at her mother’s knee?
Turgidson
@Cris (without an H):
He’d already been an Illinois senator for a while before he ran for US Senate.
trollhattan
@FoxinSocks:
Have you gotten, “You’re just a big ol’ sack of sugar!” yet? That will be another clue.
trollhattan
@KG:
IIUC it involves vodka, orange juice and a hamburger so I can’t recommend it.
Corner Store Operator
Curious of the evidence that firedoglake is against Warren? Just ran a quick search of her name and didn’t see anything negative.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
@Jenny:
Oh my goodness gracious, aren’t you the plucky little hater? The only real question is, do you hate progressives more than progressives hate the policies of President Obama and his allies (Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, Hillary Clinton, Ben Nelson, Joe Lieberman, Alan Simpson,Tim Geithner, Jamie Dimon, Field Marshal Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Al Khalifa and Saud royal families/dictators, the police chief of Oakland, the bankstas, all his “free trade” deal partners and Hooverite advisors, et al.)?
I do believe you are filled with more hate than all those dirty fucking progressives combined, because there is no hater like a hater with a Cult of Personality profile.
.
.
Jay B.
You idiots deserve each other. Hamsher is an fool and you guys are at least equally so.
Warren is, and has been, unafraid to lay out a case that capitalism and greed have failed us and need to be reigned in. It’s barely been heard from an American politician in 60 years. Obama and the GOP did a great service to Warren and the people of Massachusetts by failing/succeeding in the scuttling of her nomination.
She may support Obama, great! But she’s light years beyond what he’s offering. He’s offering up compromise and Tim Geithner, mixed with a late-but-welcome focus on job programs, instead of 18 months chattering about the fucking deficit (along with tepid job bills).
Whatever it is, he’s “leading from behind” with what Warren already owns — a critique of economic injustice (something the administration has been an utter failure at addressing or even interested in talking about until recently).
I’ll go with what many of you guys have been going on about for three years now — he’s a mild centrist. And to believe otherwise just proves we haven’t been paying attention, so it was foolish to ever care that he wasn’t doing enough about [the economy, the environment, civil liberties, endless war, whatever]. OK. Warren isn’t a mild centrist — she’s a mild-mannered lefty populist.
She struck an instant chord because she’s hitting the right note at exactly the right time.
While you crow about the star-bellied sneetches over at FDL (and they probably laugh at the no stars on yars), Warren is making the case Obama should have made in 2008 and fought for in 2009. And she’ll win with it.
Triassic Sands
I don’t know if there has been a candidate in my lifetime that I wanted to vote for as much as I would like to vote for Elizabeth Warren. Certainly, no one in the last several decades.
Given the weak-kneed crap that Democratic candidates have been serving up for years now, it’s hard to believe Warren is even willing to be candidate. Man, is she going to be out of place in the Senate.
Alas, I don’t live in Massachusetts.
hildebrand
@KG: Would it not have to have the essence of jelly babies, fish fingers, and custard?
Quick, get one of our avant-garde food fusionists on this!
Lojasmo
@Short Bus Bully:
Exactly how I felt about Obama in 2004. When I heard his convention speech, I turned to my wife, and said “That’s our next president.”
True story.
Catsy
** MILD SPOILERS FOR DEUS EX 3 **
@Cain:
There were so many things that I thoroughly enjoyed about Deus Ex: Human Revolution, but I have to say one of the highlights of the game for pure political catharsis was getting to infiltrate and blow the shit out of
Fox NewsPicus TV headquarters.Some of the emails you find by hacking computers there could easily have been lifted verbatim from Fox memos–just substitute “augmentation technology/augmented humans” for any given liberal issue that Fox lies about daily.
One of the real tells in the whole allegory was the way that Picus regularly referred to anti-augmentation groups as “pro-human”.
Linnaeus
We could use a few more of those.
Steve
@Jay B.: I think the typical BJ attitude is “We could do so much worse than Obama, and you’re an idiot if you spend your time griping about how disappointing he is instead of being grateful for all the stuff he gets right.” I don’t think you will find many people who think Obama is a perfect progressive, although they may question whether someone more progressive than Obama could get elected in the actual country where we reside.
Fundamentally, the reason there is so much contempt here for the firebaggers is not because we think there are no valid criticisms of Obama, but because of the over-the-top “OMG HE IS WORSE THAN BUSH.”
Triassic Sands
@Jay B.:
Apparently you haven’t gotten the memo: Congress won’t let Obama do what Warren is doing.
Jay B.
@Steve:
Are you kidding? The main vibe around here is that if Obama did it, it was as perfectly a progressive thing as was possible to have. But I do think that, in fact, a more progressive President could get elected in the actual country where we reside. They have in the past and they will again in the future.
He couldn’t campaign against corruption and excess? He had to appoint Larry Summers and Tim Geithner? He can’t, right now, make the case for DoJ investigations on Wall St. malfeasance?
See what I’m talking about Steve?
Steve
@Jay B.:
That’s a lot different from saying that Obama is a perfect progressive. Do you see why? It is not crazy to think that Congress is the major obstacle and that Obama is doing about as good as he can considering the difficulty of getting anything progressive through Congress. Also, too, we do not reside in the past or in the future.
harlana
Warrenbursthss!!
gogol's wife
@Jay B.:
And two days later you’ll be complaining about her.
J. Michael Neal
It seemed to me that the Hamsherites turned on Warren when she didn’t respond the way they wanted to not being nominated to run the consumer protection agency. She was supposed to take it as a betrayal by Obama and say nasty things about him. When she indicated that she was fine with not being nominated, it proved that she was on the wrong team.
Jay C
So? One has to wonder what power of political influence a blog like FDL or its ilk is actually going to exert on a Massachusetts Senate race; particularly if Elizabeth Warren is smart enough to run a “traditional” ground-game campaign where the electorate will be getting most of its impressions of her from her campaign, rather than off the Internet.
I know we all here like to imagine that the blogosphere and its Big Names is all-pervasive and all-powerful; but it’s hard to imagine that a major Senate campaign is going to get seriously derailed by the animus of one crank leftist blog. And animus founded in old Obama-Hillary Clinton rivalries? Puh-leezee!
hildebrand
@Jay B.:
I would guess that the average BJ type would think that Obama is exactly what we thought he was when he was running for the presidency (even when he gave the speech in 04) – a left leaning centrist. Those who thought him some champion of the progressive left were seeing what they wanted to see, not what was actually there.
Think of his speech in 2004 – did he really say anything then that would be different from how he has attempted to govern? The whole ‘no red states, no blue states’ rhetoric was a tremendous tell that he was someone who longed for a something closely akin to the left-leaning centrist, consensus builder he tried to be during the first two and half years of his presidency.
Read his books, this man yearned to be the one standing in the middle bringing everyone together. Does he believe that government can and should do big things? Yep, but his whole demeanor is to want to work with everyone to get there.
J. Michael Neal
@Jay B.: You don’t seem to be able to process the idea that us Obots also like Elizabeth Warren a lot. How do you square that?
Perhaps it’s because we recognize that campaigning for the Senate is an entirely different job than trying to run the country. Had Obama done what you think he should have, we’d have no functioning government now, because none of the appropriations bills would have passed. Maybe you think that that would be a better world, but the rest of us disagree with you. We *like* the idea that Obama makes his first priority ensuring that the country doesn’t stop functioning altogether.
You don’t like Tim Geithner? Please tell me who you would have nominated to be Treasury Secretary and then tell me how you would have gotten him confirmed by the Senate. Please tell me how that person would have kept the banking system functional given the laws that were in place.
That you put Larry Summers onto the same list mostly demonstrates your complete ignorance. Summers is a gigantic asshole, but within this administration, he was arguing for exactly the things you say you want. You can’t simultaneously argue that you wanted a bigger stimulus and that Summers was on the side of evil in that debate. It ignores actual facts.
boss bitch
Gee, its as if she’s been hanging around a certain someone for a few years and maybe picked up a few things while putting her own stink on it.
LongHairedWeirdo
“Bless (his/her) heart” isn’t a stealth insult. It’s a way of saying “I love this person in spite of their faults.” And, it’s cynically, and dishonestly, overused, which is why there are jokes about it. (“He’s an evil, murderous psychopath, bless his heart.”)
Jay B.
I square it because I think you have your hearts in the right places, but your bag of endless excuses for Obama’s conduct and proposals kind of gets laid out when Warren lays out a simple and obvious case that Obama can’t and won’t in a million fucking years.
I know this will never, ever, penetrate the mindset here, but the reality is that OWS has done more to change the conversation in 6 weeks than Obama has in 3.5 years.
Warren is more OWS than not.
We don’t have a functioning government now.
You like him? Why? Because Obama chose him. QED. He’s been a thorn in the side of reform. There were dozens of people he could have chosen. He chose the one literally closest to Wall St. without being a Goldman Sachs chairman. And he’s helped sell the disastrous foreclosure policy the administration has implemented.
Actually, you’re wrong. He summarily rejected calls for a bigger stimulus by people (Romer) who he was working with. You are wrong, completely and utterly misinformed.
From the New Yorker:
BOND VIGILANTES! Jesus wept.
And that approach has been an abject disaster. I’d figure that, you know, he’d change that approach given the opposition. My bad!
hildebrand
@Jay B.:
Ah, but that is not the complaint that you were making earlier in the thread. You were kvetching about how Obots try to paint Obama as a true progressive.
Additionally, he has changed tactics, or have you not noticed the last couple months? He realized that what he wanted to do (and campaigned on) wasn’t working – so he changed tactics. Perhaps not as soon as you would have wished, but the change has been made, and he seems likely to stick to it for the foreseeable future.
You disagree with Obama, not a problem. A good thing, in fact, as long as you are attempting to be honest about who he is and what he is attempting right now. The problem is that you are not being honest – neither in your reading of what ‘Obots’ thought/think about Obama, nor about his change of tactics this fall.
Jay B.
No. I said that he’s a milquetoast centrist and that Obots think that anything he has passed is the exact amount of progressive “change” he could have made.
I did. I even said so a few posts up. And said it was “welcomed, if years late.”
Some Obots think he’s the most progressive president that we’ve ever had. Somethink “he’s center-left” or “centrist”. Most think he’s as progressive as it is possible to be and be elected. Don’t blame me for dishonesty. I only want results. 9 percent unemployment speaks for itself.
SiubhanDuinne
@KG:
OJ, vodka, and hedgehog piss?
boss bitch
Oh Jay B who gives a shit? Just go to bed.
SiubhanDuinne
@Triassic Sands:
I’m thinking it would be worth moving up there for a few months. FSM knows my vote isn’t going to matter much in GA.
SiubhanDuinne
@Lojasmo:
I did too (well, I don’t have a wife, but that was my thought) and I know a lot of other people who had the same reaction at the same moment.
birthmarker
@FoxinSocks: Condescension at best.
@LongHairedWeirdo: You must have had a very sweet mom and grandmothers.
SiubhanDuinne
Just read through this post and all comments, checked Facebook, and saw that a friend (personal friend) who lives in western MA had status of being with Elizabeth Warren at an event. I liked her comment and told her I was jealous!
hildebrand
@Jay B.:
Then might I suggest you direct your ire at the Republicans.
Triassic Sands
@SiubhanDuinne:
If I were young, healthy and otherwise unencumbered, moving to Massachusetts just to vote for Warren would be not only fun, but an honor. Unfortunately, none of those conditions prevails, so such a move is merely a fantasy.
Besides, my vote will be badly needed in Washington State. Right now the Republican candidate for governor, Rob McKenna, has a substantial lead over the Democratic candidate, Representative Jay Inslee.
McKenna, the attorney general, won the state in 2008 by a bigger margin than Obama and he’s one of those creepy faux moderate Republicans that have successfully sucked in so many would-be Democrats over the years. In truth, I don’t don’t that he hasn’t been as extreme as say Cantor or his ilk, but I wouldn’t trust him for a second with Republican legislative majorities — that’s when you find out just how real the moderation is, and it’s usually bad news. Unless the Democrats suffer an across the board rout next year, I doubt that McKenna, should he win, will get legislative majorities, but it’s not a risk I want to take. As far as I’m concerned the Modern Republican Party needs to be eliminated from top to bottom. No one is safe, including the rich, until that happens. (The rich aren’t safe because given the power the Republicans are so incompetent they are very likely to destroy our economy, screwing everyone even most of the rich.)
Maria Cantwell is up for re-election next year and her status in Washington has never been one of sure thing. Depending on who the Lunatics run, she could have anything from an easy time to a nail biter. Obama’s prospects could also help or hurt.
So, I’ve got my work cut out for me in 2012. I may try to volunteer for both campaigns, but I’ll do one for sure.
Linnaeus
@Triassic Sands:
Cause for concern, to be sure, but McKenna right now has an advantage in name recognition. I think his lead will start to narrow once campaigning really kicks in.
Monkey Business
Cuomo/Newsom 2016!
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@boss bitch: WOWIE WHAT A GREAT COMEBACK YOU ARE MY HEEEEERO BOSS BITCH UR SO KEWL
William Hurley
Warren’s living proof that there’s a world of difference between attending an “Ivy” and being a tenured Prof at one.
FlipYrWhig
Elizabeth Warren is great, says great things, and wants to do great things. If she wins, she will inevitably climb on board with less-than-great things and maybe even support some bad things. She’s not going to remain as pure and untainted as she is now, because she’ll be part of a system that produces outcomes that are substandard for progressives. Just to name one: I am confident that Warren would vote for a health care reform bill that didn’t include a public option. For that matter, I would be shocked if she was a skeptic on Israel.
She’s not going to be a down-the-line champion of All Progressive Causes to the point where she’d rather kill bills than grudgingly endorse them — because she knows full well that the objective is to get the most that you can out of a system that’s hostile to her, and our, goals. That’s what the left edge of politics looks like in America.
William Hurley
@FlipYrWhig:
If Warren does ultimately prevail, it will be interesting to see how she balances caucus with constituents.
William Hurley
@Triassic Sands:
It does seem that WA and OR will be toss-up states in 2012 – just as each was in 2000.
William Hurley
@Jay B.:
Indeed, Obama chose to believe in the “recovery fairy” and the arrogant nonsense of Larry Summers when predicting that the woefully conceived and executed ARRA would result in unemployment rates of around 7% by this time.
It’s a given that the headline unemployment rate will be north of 9% on election day. Coupled with the broader “U6” labor force measure, a measure that indicates 30,000,000 or more working age Americans will be un- and under-employed on election day, makes Obama unelectable.
Obama, Plouffe, Acelrod and Wasserman-Schultz will try to run against Congress while the GOP’s nominee – who in all likelihood will not be a Rep or Senator – will run against Obama’s economy.
Consider that since the housing and financial bubbles collapsed, exactly 0 (zero) banksters have been tried and home-owners lost more than $7,000,000,000,000 in home-based wealth – about which Obama has done nothing if not made it worse in some cases. That’s a record he’ll run away from, blaming Congress during his campaign just the as the GOP tried to pin the housing and financial bust on Barney Frank and the Congressional Democrats (a habit even Mikey Bloomberg can’t break!).
Yutsano
@William Hurley:
Hardly. Seattle is one step from sociallist now. And four-fifths of the population lives in the west. No one is paying much attention to the 2012 races because there’s a bunch of ballot initiatives happening sucking the political oxygen.
@Linnaeus:
McKenna also has to account for stabbing his governor in the back by joining the anti-ACA lawsuit still. I don’t think Inslee’s gotten any of his serious campaigning in yet for the reason listed above. Trying to fight anything until the initiatives get settled would be foolish.
Triassic Sands
@xian:
Better than being a Warbot.
Triassic Sands
@Linnaeus:
@William Hurley:
It’s much too early to have a good feel for how Inslee will run statewide. A weak showing by Obama could really hurt. On the other hand, the Lunatics always seem poised to self-destruct, and even though I expect McKenna to run a careful campaign, with none of the whacko nonsense that guys like Perry and Cain dish out on a daily basis, the national party (GOP) could damage McKenna’s chances.
It’s just too early to tell. But not too early to be concerned.
Jay C
@William Hurley:
Just out of curiosity, William: how many of those banksters do you imagine a Republican President is likely to indict?
dave
Imagine if progressives in media and online had the same attitude as Elizabeth Warren re: Tea Partiers? Maybe we could actual convince persuadable voters that we are right?
Nah….its so satisfying and fun to just call them racists instead. Who cares that its bad political strategy?
Ironically, the fact that this comment will inevitably be dismissed as concern-trolling provides further proof of my point.
Paul in KY
@Short Bus Bully: Let’s get her in the Senate first.
All in good time…
Ben Cisco
@boss bitch:
DAAAAMMMNNNN!
Paul in KY
@Cris (without an H): He had previously been elected to the state senate, so our beloved President doesn’t count as a ‘first timer’ (politician-wise).
Edit: I see Turgidson beat me to it. Damn you & your precious bodily fluids!
Paul in KY
@SiubhanDuinne: How about pureed hedgehog, instead of the piss?