Warren: "There are issues I want to talk about that are more important than running."
Guthrie: "So, you're saying you might run?"
— Evan McMurry (@evanmcmurry) March 31, 2015
The upscale hometown paper calls her “Senator Clickbait”, because “invoking Warren can work wonders” for online marketing. Professor Lessig and his sad Both Sides! PAC won’t shut up demanding she serve as the hobbyhorse for their feckless campaign. Even the usually-sensible Boston NPR station won’t take a hint — hell, a direct denial:
No one in politics today is hearing more calls from progressives to run than Elizabeth Warren, the popular and populist Massachusetts senator. Warren, though, denies any interest in the presidency and continued to do that Monday in an interview with Jeremy Hobson on WBUR’s Here & Now.
“I’m out here fighting this fight,” Warren said. “I’m fighting it every single day in the United States.”
Asked if she wants to run, Warren said bluntly, “I do not.”…
“What I care about is that everyone who runs for president, who runs for any national office right now, talks about this core set of issues about what kind of a country we are and what kind of a future we’re building. For me this is really personal.”
She also said she won’t challenge Chuck Schumer to be the Democrats’ top Senate leader and all but endorsed the New York Democrat, whom some on the left have accused of being too close to Wall Street…
So I guess we can’t expect better from the (Dis)Loyal Opposition, or the GOP’s enablers among the Media Village Idiots. Mr. Pierce, at Esquire:
It is an interesting place in which Senator Professor Warren finds herself these days. If it’s not progressive nuisances acting as though she’s running for president, even though she’s not, it’s Republicans virtually daring timid Democrats to align with her so that they can then be defined by Republicans as radical redistributionists or some such nonsense. Naturally, the elite political press is above all this petty foolishness and trickery. It simply casts the whole business into the basic paradigm of Both Sides Do It, and it finds a template that does not require the messy business of actual analysis.
To wit: Elizabeth Warren Is—oh, excuse me, “plays the role of”—Ted Cruz…
This person is an idiot and should not be allowed to hold anyone’s money, including their own… Ted Cruz is an authentic extremist; his views on church-and-state are blatantly theocratic, and his notion of the federal union stopped evolving when the results came in from the presidential election of 1860. Elizabeth Warren’s primary mission during her time in the Senate is the re-establishment of an economic order with which most people were happy from 1945 until the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980. There’s nothing radical about the Glass-Steagall Act. There’s nothing extreme about supporting both Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in their traditional forms…
In case you think this is overstated, I stole the video clip below from the paleoconservative Weekly Standard, which ran it under the title “Elizabeth Warren Gives Presidential Podium a Test Run“:
Warren on if she ever entertained a 2016 run: "No. What I am working on are the issues the people of Massachusetts sent me to work on."
— Dan Merica (@danmericaCNN) March 31, 2015
Germy Shoemangler
I like her right where she is, getting good work done.
Baud
I saw that Today Show interview live. Guthrie was amazingly awful.
different-church-lady
She should form an exploratory committee to examine not running for president.
Baud
@different-church-lady: She is going to be really surprised when she wins.
CONGRATULATIONS!
We need a president. A good one.
AND we need at least 51 – preferably 60 – dead-on reliable Senators too, and everyone forgets that part. Warren is dead-on reliable. We need about 30 more of her.
Dems haven’t built a bench since Dean’s 50-state project and that is going to come back and bite us in the ass but good for the next decade.
Violet
I guess it shouldn’t, but it always amazes me that people don’t seem to understand that having good Senators is important. Multiple branches of government, people!
lamh36
@Baud: Guthrie is always awful. Wasn’t her last interview with POTUS panned as well?
scav
@CONGRATULATIONS!: funny how that reads when you skip over the word “[-on] reliable” I must say.
just can’t see the word in context of the Senate or something of the ilk I guess . . .
Tree With Water
You’ve got to admit that making hay out of a possible presidential run is a step up from quibbling about Warren’s native American ancestry.
Baud
@lamh36:
I don’t watch them enough to know. Today’s interview was cringe-worthy.
Belafon
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I don’t think Dems have ever built a bench. Too many are still shocked that Texas has gone Republican. The party gave up the automatic Southern vote but never figured out how to reliably win elections.
cokane
warren will be a fine 2024 candidate imo, what’s the rush? clinton is flawed but a campaign and media veteran by now and a formidable opponent.
Warren’s issue set isn’t going to disappear any time soon. She will be a fine candidate down the road.
Baud
@cokane:
She’ll be like 90 years old.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Belafon: Anytime would be a great time to start. Sooner the better.
Belafon
@cokane: Why would she ever leave the senate. Let it go.
Richard Shindledecker
Hey – Jamie Dimon can pick up a phone and tell BHO what to do and it will be done. SP Warren can open her mouth and make Jamie Dimon have to change his depends. Let her do her damage the way she does best.
Belafon
@Baud: 74 to be exact.
Baud
@Belafon:
Give or take.
Belafon
@CONGRATULATIONS!: I think there are a lot of people on the blogs I read that would make great candidates for local offices. And I’m not just talking about the people who write the posts.
srv
She could win – if the Republicans run Mike Dukakis.
jl
At first I thought the tweet was a joke.
All the corporate media diva hacks grovel for scoops. Disgusting and hilarious spectacle to watch them.
Stephanopoulos went into delighted conniptions during his O’Malley interview, trying to unilaterally declare he had the scoop that O’Malley was going to run. Even though O’Malley refused to say the magic words.
Well, if it helps them pass the time, at least they are not doing too much damage to public knowledge while they grovel.
scav
Oh thank you statistical chaos for the existence this night of John Finnemore and the BBC Radio
Iowa Old Lady
Warren is concerned about economic issues and doing good work in the Senate. Does the media talk about that? No, they do not. They engage in endless, breathless speculation about her running for president. Because, like the Rs, they are not interested in governing. Instead they’re all about the horse race.
And since the national horse race runs only every two to four years (depending on what you care about), they fill the 24-hour news cycle with hot air.
wasabi gasp
So is she running or what!?!
JPL
OMG.. I have been on the blog for a long time. Terry Schiavo was ten years ago. John left the repubs behind ten years ago.
Mike J
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
And when you “build a bench”, emoprogs will complain about the machine democrats who control everything.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Violet: one of the things that bugs me most about my fellow blog-anauts. So many people can’t break out of the cult of the Presidency. True of the tote-baggers, the lo-info voters and the MSM as well.
raven
@JPL: Raven was in cancer treatment at Auburn and we could bring him home for the weekend on Friday’s. I was driving back through Atlanta when they were looking for Brian Nichols. I stopped at a gas station on 316 and the cops had M-16’s in the parking lot. Shit was real.
Eric NNy
What just really p’s me off is the media’s myopic focus on her non-existent presidential aspirations rather than her message. People in my neck of the woods are dropping off the poverty cliff while I doubt most in the media today knows anybody without a six figure income. I want to punch them. Repeatedly.
Germy Shoemangler
@jl: What bugs me about the tv and radio pundits is the whole horserace thing. It’s just a horserace to them. It’s entertainment. The issues don’t affect their lives. I worry about the future. I got a sick feeling in 1980, and I saw how things changed around me. I got the same sick feeling in 2000. The tv folks find it endlessly amusing and entertaining. PBS News Hour is no better… Gwen Ifill sounds like she’s covering a soap opera… all power struggles and optics and drama.
Germy Shoemangler
@Eric NNy: You kind of said what I was trying to say. You did a better job.
jl
@wasabi gasp:
” So is she running or what!?! ”
Well, hell, her firm and repeated strong denial denials don’t fool me, not for a second. Why would she deny it so strongly and repeatedly if she wasn’t going to run.
Warren should turn the next interviewer who harasses her with a little lesson on ‘No means no’. Work in some abusive relationship and codependence issues.
raven
Rachel has her on “live”!!!!!!! IN STUDIO!! Do you know how fucking important it is when someone is IN STUDIO?????
JPL
@raven: Would you do the treatment again? Moxie developed a tumor that grew fairly quickly so it would have been surgery and chemo. She was not a great dog when left without me.
raven
@jl: Comin right up.
NotMax
Eyes on the prize, not on the white House.
Bully for her; best strategy choice.
Waiting for the moment she properly responds to any typical horse race election reporter, “What about ‘No’ don’t you understand?”
JPL
@raven: In the green room…
Baud
@raven:
I hope Rachel asks her if she is running for president.
jl
@Germy Shoemangler: They carve their scoops on their asses and show them off at contract time. Pointless scoops are also good for clicks and views and, probably, desirable bookings. They are almost all careerist hacks of the lowest, most narrow minded order.
How many times to you see a real reporter with really interesting things to say on talk show or a high profile speaking gig? The late Bob Simon comes to mind. How many times did he get interviewed. Too busy actually working.
Iowa Old Lady
@Germy Shoemangler: No kidding. Look at the Iranian negotiations. The media doesn’t talk about what their collapse would mean in terms of war, death, blood, and treasure. No, they talk about how the Rs would score a victory.
Or look at the HIV crisis in southern Indiana. Turns out HIV testing there was done at a Planned Parenthood clinic that was closed when the state cut funding. Those political struggles have real consequences for real people.
Germy Shoemangler
@jl: And I get the feeling they’re all trying to impress each other. Bragging rights at their cocktail parties or “21” or where ever they congregate. Doesn’t Charlie Rose have his own table at “21”?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
OT: I was in the kitchen so I don’t have the exact quote, but Rachel Maddow just perfectly summed up Very Serious Reformicon Marco Rubio: “Senator Rubio isn’t sure why he stands with Governor Pence, but he stands solidly with Gov Pence!” He’s not a scientist, man, he’s not a lawyer, man, he’s not anything, man! He makes Jeb Bush look like a suit that’s busting at the seams.
NotMax
@jl
He’s rarely on the TV (and then usually on C-SPAN) but the blunt, knowledgeable and outspoken Tom Turnipseed is always worth a view when he does show up.
raven
@JPL: We say we wouldn’t. It was horrible on the little fella. We could get him Friday pm and had to have him back by noon Sunday. We did that run for 8 weeks cuz we didn’t want to leave him alone. He had an anal tumor so the radiation burned his ass. He was in so much pain and we learned that opoids only can do so much for dogs. We were so bummed and the paperwork said he should show improvement in a week or so. We saw none and decided it was time to consider putting him down. We met at the vet and not only was my wife crying the vet was crying. We talked it over and decided she would call Auburn and we’d go home and talk about it. An hour later she called an said “They said that was a mistake and he won’t improve for a month at least”. So we decided to hang in there. He felt like shit and one day we had a party and we put him upstairs. He heard the commotion and came a scratched at the door. When we let him out and he saw all these people he loved he perked up big time! We are pretty sure our fears were wearing on him and he seemed to turn the corner that day. He made it 2 1/2 years after treatment so, in doggie years, that was pretty good. We say when the time comes for these two we’ll make them as comfortable as possible and not put them through that. We’ll see.
JPL
Sometimes Rachel just talks to much.
imo
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Because he pissed off liberals. See Cleek’s Law.
Baud
@JPL:
Not just you.
Baud
Rachel still talking instead of interviewing.
raven
This is a good book
Pets Living With Cancer: A Pet Owner’s Resource
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I usually find her explainers informative and interesting, but a lot of times it’s just blather, especially when she’s leading up to a story or interview she’s really excited about. Still, I’d say that’s less than a third of the time.
max
@Tree With Water: You’ve got to admit that making hay out of a possible presidential run is a step up from quibbling about Warren’s native American ancestry.
They just want Warren to damage Hillary so they can finish HRC off.
max
[‘Also, they need good attack lines. Otherwise they’ve got BENGHAZI! and ‘she’s not rich enough be President’ and ‘also, she has a vagina, which should be illegal’. Not a bunch of winners in that draw.’]
JPL
@raven: Moxie would have died being away that long. BTW, I found what I thought was a large lump on Finch and brought him to the vet. They cleared the area and it was a pimple. At least I vigilant now. lol
Tree With Water
@max: You know, Max, I think you just might be right.
raven
@JPL: I’m pretty vigilant especially with having to do LIl Bit’s eye’s twice a day.
Baud
@max:
Guthrie tried to push that angle this morning.
Zinsky
This article is another manifestation of the “great man” or in this case, “great woman” fallacy that Democrats fall for again and again. It basically says that if we can just find the great man or great woman, all of our prayers will be answered. It never happens.
We should instead develop a core group of goals and programs and push them relentlessly, like: universal single payer health care, defunding the war machine, a strongly progressive income tax, clean green energy, etc., the way the assholes on the right relentlessly push for criminalizing abortion, eliminating all taxes and fighting endless wars.
Germy Shoemangler
@max: They just want Warren to damage Hillary so they can finish HRC off.
I believe that’s it. The way I want the KlownKar hopefuls to attack each other mercilessly, so that whoever makes it to their ugly nominating process is battered and limping. They want Warren to scratch HRC to pieces. It drives them nuts that Warren has indicated her support for her.
Baud
@Zinsky:
Messianic liberalism will destroy us.
raven
@Zinsky: Oh whatever.
lamh36
Baud
What I like about Warren’s liberalism is that her message isn’t based on throwing Democrats under the bus.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: I like Rachel better when she is guest on other shows, rather than when she is hosting her own show.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat:
I don’t think I’ve seen her as a guest.
hamletta
@Zinsky: That’s what she (Warren) said.
Seriously, that was the thrust of the first part of the interview.
raven
@Baud: Which is why her wiki entry notes that she voted for both parties because she didn’t think either should dominate.
JPL
Rachel is informed and keeps up to date on policy matters. I’d love to see her as host of Meet the Press but the current forum doesn’t necessary suit her. imo
catclub
@lamh36: If I were a sneaky GOP I would pass another RFRA bill while there is a big uproar in Indiana. The media cannot pay attention to two things at once. Or – once a lot of states pass them, the boybott effects and effort goes down.
Baud
@raven:
She was surprisingly late to the game, but wasn’t that 20 years ago?
lamh36
85 years after infamous lynching, another noose stirs tension in Indiana town
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: During the elections when she used to be one of the panel members analyzing the results,
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: I made a point of not watching any election coverage.
ms_canadada
@Germy Shoemangler: I watch Thom Hartmann, Amy Goodwin. Free Speech TV has some great programs and they’re not usually hysterical.
jl
@Germy Shoemangler:
You and max saying the corporate media wants to cover a HS girl fight? I find it hard to believe they would be that stupid. But, they constantly surprise me in a bad way.
” They want Warren to scratch HRC to pieces. It drives them nuts that Warren has indicated her support for her. ”
Elizabeth Ann Warren, current US Senator from MA? That Elizabeth Warren will try to scratch someone to pieces in a way that the media would like? Really hard t believe the corporate media are that stupid. But Fox would be filled with facial expression, posture and gesture analysts!
JPL
O’Donnell is covering Walmarts statement about the Arkansas law. Does it really matter though since Walmart is not going to move out of the state of Arkansas.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: Wise Baud is wise.
David Koch
Rachel told Warren that if she doesn’t run she’s afraid the repugs will win the WH.
Why would Rachel say something so baseless. Is it just CDS? Is she just bad with numbers? All the polls show Jeb! is really unpopular, with Hillary is leading by double digits.
Belafon
@JPL: The Mammon wing of the party is finally having to deal with the Persecution wing of the party. Gonna be interesting to watch.
beltane
@JPL: Walmart will never move, but it’s conceivable they can do a lot to “move” any Arkansas politician they want right out of office.
lamh36
Oh…please
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@jl:
Are you kidding me? They are at minimum at LEAST that stupid.
different-church-lady
@David Koch:
Because fretting is the only thing
liberalspopulists do well.Belafon
@lamh36: As a white man, I’m gonna say this country really needs to be invaded by a major opponent so that whites feel what having their privileges taken away really feels like.
David Koch
@lamh36: He went of Fixxed News and said he’s not a bigot because he has a black friend (John Lews).
lamh36
@David Koch: I mean, dude…”the I have a Black friend” line is soooo stupid.
I’m sure John Lewis is too nice to say it in polite company, but I’m betting he’s like “dude…keep my name our your flippin mouth”…
smdh
beltane
@David Koch: It’s interesting how the “black friend” defense now confers immunity from allegations of religious bigotry in addition to racism.
fuckwit
The Assemblyman my old man used to work for, whenever told about some open seat and asked breathlessly by the press if he was running, would always answer, “I’m running away”.
lamh36
jomike
You Maniacs! The heads, you blew them all up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell! [shakes fist in impotent rage, collapses on beach]
jl
@beltane:
” It’s interesting how the “black friend” defense now confers immunity from allegations of religious bigotry in addition to racism. ”
It is a good point that the bogus Indiana religious freedom law would allow all sorts of discrimination besides against LGBT, though that has gotten by far the most attention. Maybe that insight was gradually seeping into Pence’s brain and he did a Freudy slip.
A cynical person might say that, and other sorts of discrimination has been on his mind all along. That opening would be a pander gold mine for a reactionary GOP pol’s career.
fuckwit
@Zinsky: This is exactly the problem. I do not know what drives populists and democracy so consistently towards demogoguery and dictatorship, but it’s a very bad disease and it is not new. The Framers of the Constitution knew of it well, and designed a system specifically to discourage some “man on horseback” from being able to seize the reins of power. It is said that at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelpha were several dozen men, and one ghost– Oliver Cromwell.
I can totally get behind universal health care, investments in clean energy and public transportation, the return of progressive taxation. undoing corporate personhood, universal voting like the Oregon plan, equal rights for women, gays, and people of color, more funding for education, less funding for war and incarceration, and a reinvigorated labor movement, among other things. I think these are generally popular things. Now we just need more candidates willing to stand up for them, at every level of government, for a generation or two.
Not one candidate to rule them all, but MANY candidates, everywhere.
jake the antisoshul soshulist
The devil’s bargain the money wing of the Republican Party made with the religious right has run its course. Not sure who will pay up.
Also, what do creatures without souls pay the Devil with.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’ve never heard that phrase, it’s really interesting.
max
@jl: You and max saying the corporate media wants to cover a HS girl fight? I find it hard to believe they would be that stupid. But, they constantly surprise me in a bad way.
If you ever watch, the people positively drooling in the press for Warren to run are conservatives/conservative-friendly types. The rest don’t like Hillary and/or just want something to cover.
There you go, nothing to it.
max
[‘Lots of moderate types in the press ready to get on board the Jeb Bush train.’]
beltane
@jl: At the end of the day, it’s always about racism with these people. The engine of the modern conservative movement is a desire to repeal the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Everything else is just the icing on the cake (a cake baked by evangelical bigots).
Cervantes
@Germy Shoemangler:
No, but Brian Williams does, as do Henry Kissinger, James Baker, and numerous members of the Bush clan.
Charlie’s table is at Michael’s.
Cliff in NH
Have you played with google maps pac-man?
Tokyo is tricky with google-pac-man
Just browse around and try the different levels … er.. neighborhoods.
Suzanne
@beltane: Do you really think it’s all about racism? Like, entirely? I think that is way too simplistic an answer, not to mention incorrect. I honestly think that if Obama was white, they would treat him….about as badly as they do now. The tenor of exactly how they treat him badly would be different—they’d probably insinuate that he was low-class instead—but the GOP is tribal and loves money more than people. Racism is just one flavor note of that particular shit sandwich, IMO.
WaterGirl
@jl: One of my favorite Elizabeth Warren interviews was way back when, and the interviewer was trying to get her to attack President Obama related to her not being made head of the consumer financial protection bureau. Her response was “I’m saving the rocks in my pocket for the republicans”. I loved her for saying that.
beltane
@Suzanne: I wasn’t thinking of Obama at all. It’s just my observation that the real passion underlying the conservative movement at the grassroots level has a lot to do with racism. Southern whites, for example, were quite supportive of FDR’s socialism as it did not interfere with Jim Crow laws in any way. Likewise, a lot of evangelical furor is driven by nostalgia for another time, a “better” time when American was the white Protestant homeland and everyone else was kept in their place.
Mandalay
@NotMax:
The headlines will write themselves if she could ever be tempted to give such an honest response to such a stupid question….
“Warren blames the media”
“Warren gets emotional and throws hissy fit”
“Is Warren really presidential timber?”
“Thin skinned Warren has interview tantrum”
fuckwit
@Mandalay: One thing that annoys me about progressive politicians, and Warren has fallen victim to it, is to be cornered by our idiot press into whining about wanting to talk about “the issues” but never being allowed to mention them specifically. I think it’s time for some– and Warren might be able to pull it off– to try instead of using vapid, meaningless terms like “the issues” or “working for the people”, to actually start rattling the damn things off they’re trying to do, and let the idiot reporter try to cut them off, then talk over them. And thus forcibly inject them into the airwaves by violence, even if they get cut off. In other words, instead of saying “I’m not running for President, I’m working to eliminate corporate welfare”, or better yet, list some specific bill she’s trying to get passed but can’t get our idiot media to pay attention to. If you can sneak at least some meaning into the 2-seconds you might get before the idiot reporter starts blathering on about polls and horserace, then win. But every time I hear “the issues”, I cringe. Name one. Please. Now.
Tree With Water
@fuckwit: Name one? How about this instead: google ‘senator warren’ and educate your own self. You’re in for a nice surprise if you do.
Redshift
@Belafon: I’m always a little mystified by these sorts of statements. How does having a bench look different than what we have? We elect Democrats in place where there are enough Democratic voters. A lot of those elected are ambitious enough to want to move up when they can.
Yeah, the national party could do more to support potential candidates and local party organizations in marginal places, but in places where it may be years before a Democrat has much of a chance of being elected, it’s hard to get ambitious people to stay part of the bench instead of doing something else. (And honestly, I think the important part of the 50 state strategy was supporting organizations and networks of volunteers so that candidates could run, more than finding candidates.)
So enlighten me: what should we have that we don’t?
Mandalay
@fuckwit: I’m with you, but I’d be happy if she’d just use this two second soundbite time after time: “The game is rigged”. She owns that, and the more she can be associated with being the person to take on those who rig the system the better.
But those headlines will still write themselves: “Warren ducks question about presidential run”, “Evasive Warren non-committal about running for president”, etc…
She must feel that talking to the Villagers is like nailing jelly to the wall – it’s a waste of time, and no matter how careful you are, it all falls apart and you end up with a mess.
El Caganer
So there’s somebody in the Senate who has all the chops needed to take on the Wall Street pirates, is working in the right institution to block or promote legislation affecting them, and is able to focus most of her attention on them. What to do? Have her run for President, so her expertise and focus will be diluted and she won’t be able to immediately address pro- or anti-pirate legislation. Sounds like a plan!
fuckwit
@Tree With Water: Oh, I know very well how awesome she is. I want some progressive politician to name one instead of saying “the issues” when they’re dealing with the soundbite media.
David Koch
@fuckwit: Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.
AxelFoley
@Richard Shindledecker:
You serious with this shit?
Of course you are.
AxelFoley
@Suzanne:
There’s no fucking way they’d treat Obama as bad as they do now if he was white. Clinton got shit from the GOP, but not anywhere on the level that Obama has. And half the shit they gave Clinton was because he gave the GOP ammunition to use against him.
Richard Shindledecker
@AxelFoley: Yes I’m serious and your latter point on the GOP racism is on the money.
Southern Beale
WTF. STOP with the “will Warren run” busllhit. SHE SAID NO. NO MEANS NO.
So fucking disrespectful. Why is it when a woman says no people hear “maybe”? Everyone needs to get off her fucking back. SHE SAID NO. NO MEANS NO.