Elizabeth Warren, Regulator

Fish

Steve Fishburn is a Linux sys admin living in Colorado with two kids, two dogs, and a very patient and understanding wife. He can be found as Fish in the comments and is on the twitters as steven.fishburn

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26 Responses

  1. Jaybird says:

    I have two issue with Warren mostly… one general and one specific.

    The general one is that the Republican Party Machine sucks at pretty much everything but the thing that it does *NOT* suck at is defeating Northeastern Liberals. Elizabeth Warren is the most Northeastern Liberal that has Northeastern Liberalled since the last one they threw at us. Clinton, I think it was.

    The specific one is that Elizabeth Warren doesn’t seem to have good instincts. We kinda got into that here and here. (Ooooh! Going through the comments, I see that I got permission to post recipes! Here’s Mama’s Biscuits.)

    It was the evolution of “HA! IN YOUR FACE, TRUMP! GIMME A MILLION DOLLARS!” to “why are we still talking about this?” in the space of 12 hours that had me saying “holy crap, that was dumb”.

    Moving from a triumphant position of victory in the morning to issuing an apology to Native Americans everywhere before suppertime.

    Hey. Anybody can make a mistake. But we moved from a triumphant announcement to “everybody knows that she was cauterizing a self-inflicted wound” in a friggin’ day.

    And that tells me that she doesn’t know how to read the room.

    And *THAT* gets me to suspect that she’s going to be Just Another Northeastern Liberal that the Republican Party Machine defeated.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Jaybird says:

      Those are your objections?
      Really?
      The first one is the baseball Trend Fallacy (The Cubs have never won the pennant, so therefore they will not win the pennant this year);

      And the other is Sophistry (She is not good at political manipulation) which is self-negating. If she was not actually good at politics we wouldn’t be discussing her as a viable presidential candidate.

      And are you really sure you find nothing else objectionable about her? She is a veritable fountain of policy proposals, and you don’t object to any of them? Really?Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        “If she was not actually good at politics we wouldn’t be discussing her as a viable presidential candidate.”

        haw. “talking about how it’s pointlessly silly to even talk about her IS STILL TALKING ABOUT HER, CHECKMATE MOTHAFOCKAReport

      • Jaybird in reply to Chip Daniels says:

        Yeah, mostly, I have two issues with Warren. One is general (and, thus, could apply to more people than just her) and one is specific to her.

        These are both issues that strike me as reasons that she wouldn’t win in the election.

        (My objections to her proposed tax rates should probably be assumed but I see no reason to see them as interesting.)

        So you say that both of my objections are fallacious? Fair enough.

        I imagine that I will be eating a lot of crow when she gets nominated and goes on to win the election.Report

    • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

      I’ll happily vote for Warren if she’s nominated, but I agree with Williamson that white papers and technocratic plans aren’t going to defeat Trump in 2020. My complaint of her candidacy isn’t that *she’s* doing anything wrong, but instead that there’s something wrong with the party and layered up legislation isn’t the solution.Report

      • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

        She doesn’t strike me as *THAT* exciting of a candidate to vote for… but I imagine that she will actually go to Wisconsin at least once and Michigan a handful of times and maybe even Pennsylvania even more than that and, really, that’s all she needs to do to win because I think that the only state that went Clinton last time that might go Trump this time is New Hampshire and there are a half dozen states that went Trump last time that might swing D this time.

        And all she has to do is do JUST A LITTLE BIT better than Clinton did to win them.Report

        • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

          Well sure. I don’t disagree, but I am a little confused. Weren’t you just implying to Chip that you think she’ll *lose* the general election?Report

          • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

            I was saying, not implying, that I have two concerns with Warren.

            I suspect that, if Warren loses, it’ll be related to my two concerns (and that she’ll have lost two of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to get there).

            But we’re a year out.

            Now one thing that I said in the Harris thread is something that applies to *ALL* democratic candidates: you only have to do better than Clinton.

            The question then comes as to whether it is possible to do better than Clinton and, if so, which candidate is likely to be best at being better than Clinton.

            And whether it’s Biden.Report

            • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

              Now one thing that I said in the Harris thread is something that applies to *ALL* democratic candidates: you only have to do better than Clinton.

              Maybe I”m naive. but it seems to me the nominee has to do better than Trump.Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

                Hee hee.

                That’s a fun wrinkle but are there any among us willing to believe that Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016?

                He’s not. He can’t be.

                We have to assume that he’s exactly as awful today as he was then and the only problem is turnout.Report

              • Stillwater in reply to Jaybird says:

                “Clam down everyone. I didn’t beat Trump, but I *did* improve on Clinton’s popular vote total!”Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Stillwater says:

                This is a serious concern and you do well to bring it up.

                But, I think, there are nominees that will make it so we don’t have to worry about this.

                I don’t think that Warren is one of them, though.Report

              • Fish in reply to Jaybird says:

                “But, I think, there are nominees that will make it so we don’t have to worry about this. I don’t think that Warren is one of them, though.”

                Well, THAT can certainly be taken in more than one way!Report

              • blake in reply to Jaybird says:

                If 2016 assumptions about how awful Trump was were correct, Clinton would’ve been 50 points ahead in the polls…Report

              • Mr.Joe in reply to Jaybird says:

                I believe he is stronger in 2020. I don’t see how you could think otherwise.

                He has all the experience he gained from the prior election. He has had time to work on improving his image and many of his disadvantages from prior election. He now has all sorts of executive power levers he can pull when it suits him. (eg I suspect the timing of the list 4 tariff was influenced by the Democratic debates.)

                As things stand, I expect Trump to win. From the arguments he is lining up to the arguments team blue is lining up, it does not look likely to go well for the eventual avatar of team blue. A major change in something would be needed to alter this outcome.Report

              • blake in reply to Mr.Joe says:

                Events, my dear boy. Events.Report

              • Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird says:

                …are there any among us willing to believe that Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016?

                Yes. Easily.

                He doesn’t have “never Trump”, they’ve left or shut up.

                He’s the safe, known candidate. We haven’t had any new wars. He’s not pulling out nukes.

                He has the power of the Presidency to use to put his thumb on the scale. One example of that would be the Fed lowering interest rates (say, right now) to goose the economy right before the election.

                He has the power of the Presidency to focus attention on himself. That’s Billions of dollars of free media.

                His campaign will attract serious, comitent people much earlier because it’s obvious that he can be President.

                He’s experienced. He was brand spanking new at running a campaign last time.

                He has more money.

                He has more connections.

                He’s shown that he’ll keep his word with the various elements of the GOP. Guns!, God!, Moats!, and Money! are all behind him.

                He doesn’t have a lot of the flaws he did last time. No one is going to mistake him for not being serious or claim it’s impossible for him to win.

                The Dems are weaker this time. They’re not united, 20 Dem candidates spit the nomination. Worse, thus far the Dems are running on… racism and Trump-is-vile. Ya, ya, death camps will be set up soon… something like that.

                He’s Fun and Interesting. He runs the Presidency as a reality show.Report

    • sdfds in reply to Jaybird says:

      She’s an Oklahoman liberal Jaybird. So, not even close.Report

  2. Fish says:

    Good points, both. I don’t know that a single own-goal demonstrates a trend toward putting the ball in your own net–even the best players occasionally make mistakes. If she’s the nominee the “Native American ancestry” thing is going to come up, but since it seems to be something that only really plays to Trump’s audience, I don’t know how much of a response it’ll require from her.

    I think maybe the biggest obstacle to the Republican Party Machine carrying out it’s programming might be the incumbent himself. I could see him having difficulty reigning in his id long enough to let the machine do it’s thing.Report

  3. Saul Degraw says:

    I also wrote a post endorsing Warren. My split is honestly between Harris and Warren. The things that make me a little hesitant for Warren are her age and that a Republican governor will pick her Senate replacement if she wins.

    Despite what Jaybird claims above, she is quite good at the stump and speaking to crowds.

    What is interesting to me is how many people are still stuck in this Reaganite mindset because they came of political awareness when Reagan ruled the earth and could do no wrong.Report

    • Chip Daniels in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      Ironically, I see Warren as a Reaganesque figure. She is able to take ideas that are thought to be too radical but communicate them in folksy, nonthreatening ways.

      Like you, I am torn between her and Harris, but they both seem to really grasp the stakes at play in this historical moment in a way that Biden just doesn’t.Report

    • Fish in reply to Saul Degraw says:

      I admit to being a little unclear on what you mean by a “Reaganite mindset.” Are you referring to Jaybird’s “Republican Party Machine?”Report

      • Saul Degraw in reply to Fish says:

        I think people tend to overlearn political lessons. They generally learn these lessons when they are young like their teens or twenties. Maybe their thirties. The lesson revolves around whatever the zeitgeist of that time was.

        Right now, there are lots of people who came of political age during the late 1970s and 80s. This causes a lot of them to think that government is always the problem and the solution to everything is deregulate, deregulate, deregulate. This is something they will keep until they die.

        Relatedly, the big fight in the Democratic Party right now is from an old guard that remember bleeding defeats during the 1980s and 90s and overlearned the mantra of the DLC vs. a young guard that remembers the Great Recession as their defining political moment.

        There are seemingly lots of voters out there who think Trump is a disaster but their Reagan lessons kick in and they can’t bring themselves to vote Democratic just yet.Report

        • Fish in reply to Saul Degraw says:

          Ah, thanks for the explanation. I was a teen in the 80’s and active duty during the 90’s, and I was a low-information voter who couldn’t understand why anyone in the military would ever vote anything but Republican. Then I met people with differing political views and I went overseas and experienced cultures and people who were not American and, while my views maybe didn’t change, seeds were planted and doors were opened.

          All that to say I’m trying to figure out what political lessons I may have overlearned and it’s difficult because I’ve flip-flopped and changed my mind and rejected and adopted so many different things that maybe I’m just a massive jumble of internalized life experiences and dad jokes.Report