It looks like the best candidate for president to come along in my lifetime will not get the nomination. Baring a miracle Super Tuesday performance, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren will go back to her seat in the Senate, where she’ll remain the bane of rogue bankers, payday lenders and all of those who prey upon the weak and try to equate democracy with capitalism.
It’s a shame. Warren showed up ready to govern. A law professor whose landmark study of bankruptcy taught us that most personal financial crises aren’t caused by irresponsibility but by sudden expenses for which people caught in wage stagnation, crippling health care costs, spiraling housing prices and unaffordable education simply cannot prepare themselves. Warren sees the threat to the working class trickle down economics has created the past 40 years, but what’s more, she sees the threat to the nation the impending crisis presents. As the Wall Street Journal has noted, Warren comes not to attack capitalism, but to save it.
She’s prepared. Her ideas are laid out on her website and if you wish, she’ll text them to you. She’s got more energy than a puppy on a sugar rush. She’s the best I’ve ever seen at explaining complex ideas, a skill that comes with being a great teacher. And she never had a chance running a Democrat.
There’s a cute saying, “Democrats want to fall in love and Republicans fall in line.” That’s not why Senator Professor Warrent (h/t Charles Pierce) won’t get the nomination though. She won’t get the nomination because Democrats are voting for who they think is the best candidate and Republicans are voting for who they think will be the best president. Say what you want about trump, he’s stupid, he’s a con man, he’s a screaming racist, he’s a thief. All of that is true. And Republicans don’t care because he’s doing the job they wanted him to do. He’s making it harder to be brown, to be poor and to speak out in this country. He’s given them tax cuts and judges who would vote to uphold the
Dred Scott decision. They didn’t nominate him because they thought he would be a strong candidate against Hillary Clinton. The nominated him because he is what they want in a president.
Not Ds. Nope. The Ds are going to vote for who they think will make the best candidate. And they are spectacularly bad at it. Warren is exhibit A. The vast majority of my trump-hating friends were fully on board with Warren as long as the stories were about her plans, her energy and her background. It wasn’t until the press started questioning her electability that they started wavering. Once that happened, Warren dropped like a name on the Dick Cavett Show.
The GOP doesn’t do this because they don’t trust the press. When the press told them trump wasn’t electable, the reaction was “fuck you, get a real job you lying sacks of shit.” But when the press told Ds Warren wasn’t electable because she’s too shrill, not likeable, doesn’t have energy they acted like NFL scouts at the combine. Did they look at the tape and see if any of that bullshit was true? Nope, they went running for a safe white man. Democratic voters will complain about the horse race coverage, but they are reacting to it. They are informed by it and they vote based on what the insider press does.
And here’s the bad news. Voters aren’t who the political press is writing for. The political press, other than the occasional Cletus Safari, doesn’t have the first clue what voters want. They talk to political insiders. Their coverage is framed through the lens of electability, because their sources are people who get people elected for a living. Jay Rosen of NYU has suggested a new model for political coverage(and my alma mater, The Facts newspaper of Brazoria County seems to be paying attention). Rosen calls for reporters to listen to the voters. It sounds obvious, but it’s actually revolutionary. You go out and you talk to people about what they care about and the questions they have. You convene focus groups. You work the streets. You bother people at the mall until you can speak for your community. Then you ask those questions. And if a candidate dodges them, you point that out and ask it again. Stop interviewing the campaign staff. It’s really hard. And it doesn’t get you invited to the church of the savvy. But that’s what the job is.
Republicans understand this about the press. D’s don’t. Instead, they try to follow the press and ape their lens. But voters don’t have the time to do it right (and it can’t be done right anyway). So they come up with bullshit reasons not to vote their conscience. So I’ve got to vote for a 37-year-old who can’t get elected in Indiana and was the mayor of a town the size of Beaumont. Or a nobody midwestern senator. Or Joe Biden. All of these people make more attractive candidates than Warren, when viewed from the pews of the church of the savvy. But we’re not electing a candidate. We’re electing a fucking president.
Who do you want to go to war with? Biden, a man who voted yes twice for Gulf wars. Bernie, who might have us helping rebels in Angola (ok, cheap shot). If Elizabeth Warren tells us we need to go war, you know damn well she’s right because she’s put a lot of thought in it and you know she’s done everything she can to avoid it. It won’t be for ideology and it won’t be for expediency. If Warren tells you Medicaid for All is too expensive, or isn’t the right plan or can’t be shoved through Congress, you know its because she’s done her homework. Warren isn’t looking to pass something, she’s looking to help people. She’s the only candidate in the field who isn’t running because it’s a promotion, other than Sanders. She doesn’t want to wield power. She didn’t want to run for Senate. She didn’t want to run for president. But she looked around and came to the same conclusion I did. She’s the best person for the job.
Oran Today 