Charley is absolutely right: Scott Brown’s increasingly shrill and whiny attacks, not only on Elizabeth Warren herself, but on her supporters, are pathetic. Brown doesn’t seem to realize that he’s in a delicate position. It wouldn’t take much for him to see his image transformed from a handsome truck-drivin’ everyman into a thin-skinned, petulant ex-Cosmo centerfold.
Team Warren is aware of this, and they are making good use of Brown’s obvious terror over Warren’s fundraising prowess. Check out this email, which includes the full text of the absurd Brown fundraising email that went out earlier and makes good use of it.
The thing to remember is this: yes, Elizabeth Warren is raising a lot of money outside of Massachusetts. But she is also raising a ton of money inside Massachusetts – more, in fact, than Brown himself is raising. And Brown wasn’t complaining about out-of-state donations when they were funding his successful 2010 campaign. Here’s the email – enjoy!
David,
Scott Brown just sent out an email about you — and it’s not very nice.
The Senator isn’t being a good sport about being outraised two-to-one in the last fundraising quarter. As you can read below, he’s labeling our supporters “insiders, celebrities, elites, occupiers, leftists” — and then makes some ridiculous excuses about why Elizabeth’s grassroots support is so strong.
This email isn’t just an attack on Elizabeth — it’s an attack on all of us who are fighting for middle class families.
Elizabeth didn’t just raise twice as much money as Scott Brown since January 1st — she did it with the support of tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, small business owners, students and retirees. The truth hurts:
- Elizabeth outraised Scott Brown right here in Massachusetts.
- More than 30,000 men and women from 350 cities and towns across Massachusetts have contributed to our campaign.
- 83% of our donations since January 1st have been $50 or less.
A new poll out today shows Elizabeth up by 1 point against Scott Brown, and our fundraising report shows we’re quickly raising the resources to narrow the $4 million cash advantage he has over our campaign.
We’re getting under his skin — and he’s responding by attacking you.
Thanks,
Mindy
From: Scott Brown
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Subject: Warren’s liberal friends
To: Mindy Myers
To view this email as a web page, go here.
Dear Friends,I want you to know exactly what we are up against: Thanks to you and thousands of others, our campaign raised $3.4 million in the last quarter, but Professor Elizabeth Warren raised twice that amount: $6.9 million. How in the world could she raise so much?
She is a far-left ideologue and her liberal friends from across the country are helping her: She has the Harry Reid Democrats, the Hollywood Crowd, the Far Left Juggernaut, the Occupy Wall Street Bunch, and the Massachusetts Machine raising money hand-over-clenched fist.
This is the #1 Senate race in the country and our rival will have virtually unlimited money to burn. You have been a terrific supporter, but I wanted you to know what we are facing.
Warren’s fundraising is breaking every record!
Will you help me again?
Your online contribution will help stop Professor Warren’s election to the U.S. Senate.
WE MUST WIN . . . if she wins, she will take her place among the most ardent leftist ideologues in the United States Senate.
- Warren will raise taxes. I won’t.
- Warren is soft on illegal immigration. I’m not.
- Warren wants to go even further than Obamacare. I want it repealed.
- Warren believes in big government power. I believe in people power.
This is why Washington insiders, celebrities, elites, occupiers and leftists are pouring money into their attack campaign against me, and why I need your generous help again, right now, whether it’s for $25, $50, $100 or some other amount, to fight back hard and win.
Thanks for your continued support.
Senator Scott Brown
The People’s Seat
excellent line.
“insiders, celebrities, elites, occupiers, leftists”
and opera singers. LOLz
nt
elitist web designers/epublication specialists (yes I’ve changed fields, sort of).
Not to mention scarwy BWOGGERS!
This may ring true to his supporters… but I’m not sure that it wins him a plurality of MA voters. On the spectrum, I expect that a minority of MA voters want the ACA repealed. More or less than those who want it expanded? Dunno.
Still, at least he’s drawing a bright line which seems to be 100% fact.
1. Well, not it’s name. They know it as Obamacare.
2. That it increases the deficit — even if it doesn’t because that line has been repeated so often that it must be highly plausible if not true.
3. That it was a very big bill and no one at all really knows what was in it because it was rammed through Congress — because that’s what all the Congress people on TV said.
4. It hurts older people because it cuts into Medicare because lots of ads hammered this home.
5. There’s some kind of government take over involved, possibly featuring unaccountable bureaucrats making life or death decisions because Republicans have been repeating this charge a lot.
6. It unfairly forces completely healthy 25-year olds to buy expensive health insurance because this has been emphasized by the Republican attorneys general.
In short, Massachusetts voters have to be fairly informed — more informed than just listening even to NPR — to understand the merits of the ACA. After all, Ms. Coakley expected to sail into office on the strength of its public support, and Mr. Brown campaigned explicitly against it. So, why, then, is Mr. Brown Senator in the first place if he opposed something so popular?
Bay State voters also “know” that Medicare for All “can’t be done”, if they have even heard of the concept. Don’t count on Ms. Warren to mention it as an option either.
“Warren will raise taxes. I won’t.”
I hope Scotty is paying his communications director everything s/he is worth.
I did quote this on the other thread, too. What it may reflect is not the desperation of the Scott Brown campaign so much as the crazy talk with which he must address his base. Feelings of resentment and victimization lie so central to their world view that their communication directors must become connoisseurs and virtuosos of whining.
I don’t understand why Warren is wasting her time (or mine, as a recipient of this email) with such a content-free message. I don’t care what Brown is saying. And when she’s complaining about Brown, and not about Brown’s issues, I don’t care what she’s saying either.
I can only hope that as the campaign matures that she starts using these emails to talk about things that matter – equality issues, fairness issues, spending, and taxation.
She has to remember that this race is decided by the middle, not the progressive politics echo chamber. The middle doesn’t care if Brown is a meanie. The middle doesn’t care that Brown mis-quotes Kennedy.
Please wake me up when we get to something that’s actually important.
wish we could get off of the money-raising barometer, the he said/she said crap, the which consultant is the bigger jackass stuff, and get down to some things that matter to the voters who will actually decide who the next US Senator will be: the unenrolled/independent voters (who just don’t give a care about all of this other nonsense because they are too busy worrying about things that actually impact their own lives.)
but I sent in another 50 bucks anyway.
the campaign will assume you are happy with the discussion.
… Ordinarily, I would agree with you on this. But I think Warren’s campaign is going a bit subtler than that: here the basic theme in this email is “if you gave EW money, and SB disparages people who gave EW money, then isn’t SB disparaging you? How do you feel about that?” Which as manner of showing, without telling directly, that Scott Brown, if he’s wrong about you, is probably wrong about EW.
If SB is going to argue that EW is an elitist-egghead running on outsiders hoity-toity money then the proper response for EW is to ask her donors if they feel like hoity-toity outsiders and point out both the desperation and the meanness of the argument.
I call this one a home run for team EW.
If something attracts small donors I call it a political success, whether or not I agree with the policy implications. The donors seem to not wonder what EW means by “fighting for the middle class”. I wish I knew.
Your nonsense, Miz Jones, just goes on and on and on.
Ever since your preferred candidate dropped out of the race over 6 months ago you seem to have made it your life’s mission to denigrate and criticize Elizabeth Warren and her campaign. You’ve written dozens of posts with this same basic message (Warren – like all *viable* candidates, I’ll point out again – isn’t as liberal as you would like). You even managed to bang out three quick “zingers” about Warren in a single hour this very morning.
As usual, these posts are nonsensical, whiny and brimming with BS.
Warren has spent her entire career and literally wrote the book on fighting for the middle class. In addition to her book, she’s given speeches, testified before Congress and centered her campaign’s message around this fight. Warren’s also posted this fairly substantial policy piece on her website under the headline “Middle Class Families
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-warren/middle-class-families-vs-_b_954207.html Therein, she details how her positions and polices related to jobs, housing, education and health care help in the fight for the middle class.
You wish you “knew”? I wish you would try harder to understand. Your posts reflect a sophistication about politics, campaigns and policy. But it’s all hard to glean amidst the sore loser tone of your anti-Warren “quips”, “barbs” and criticisms.
The nonsense you’ve been posting lately is part of the problem. Instead, I invite you to be part of the solution. Join us all in helping to define and waging the fight for the middle class. Whatever that means to you.
I’ll bet your reply convinced mizjones to support Warren.
with a lack of specifics regarding some of her policy proposals. I have tried to use quotes from her web site to illustrate which statements concern me. I do not throw barbs at everything Elizabeth Warren does and says. Her analysis of the plight of middle class families is second to none. That is a good start. I am frustrated that her sympathetic words often do not translate into the kind of bold policy recommendations, especially on economic matters, that I read about elsewhere. My criticisms have remained the same because I have not seen her messages become much more specific than they were six months ago. Her web site is long and often very informative on problem definitions but not so inspiring with respect to proposals.
I keep pushing because I would very much like to see her proposals show as much detail as her problem analyses, especially regarding job creation. That could be a winning strategy for both her campaign and the country. I am concerned that her current careful stances leave too much room for her to be pressured into weak positions and the status quo.
You can carp at me for being a “whiner”. All my complaining is voiced with one purpose: to urge the frontrunner to commit to positions that have the best chance of being effective. I just re-read Ms. Warren’s page about the middle class. The referenced page Jobs and the Economy has been fleshed out since I last looked at it. Still, read her paragraph in which she discusses our short-term jobs problem. I appreciate that she acknowledges the problem. Yes, we need jobs now. I wish she would say more or reference the bills which all the Republicans voted against. Would these bills be adequate? What needs to be done to create more jobs now?
Or look at “Health Care” under the Middle Class page. I see three paragraphs describing the current situation. These are followed by: one statement that we should maintain the recent gains; a statement that we should reduce the cost of care, followed by reasons why this is important and a hint that more research might help reduce costs. I always like the idea of supporting research but I’m not convinced that this is the only way to reduce costs. Health care research typically takes a very long time to bear fruit. Other industrialized countries have access to the same research results we have now and they manage to deliver as good or better care for much lower cost. I’m glad that EW wants to reduce the cost of care but question the adequacy of her plan.
Finally, when I get snarky about “middle class, middle class” it is because I think we should also be concerned about those who have never known life in the middle class.
…but alas, not enough green.
and…people power? As in, corporations-are-people power?!? 😀
I know you folks can’t be everywhere. But I was driving and it was on ‘BZ and Dan Rea had a Brown strategist/acolyte on. Two things to note:
Rea’s incessant whining about Warren not coming on his show. He wants to sound challenging, but it’s whining. He needs the ratings.
Second, the guest was complaining about Warren’s out-of-state contributions, though he readily admitted that last time Brown had huge out-of-state contributions once the national Kennedy-haters thought they might get that seat. He never admitted that current contributions in-state show Warren beating Brown.
But he also complained that Warren’s website never mentions Massachusetts. This despite the fact that Brown’s website doesn’t mention “Republican.” Warren shouold correct that oversight, if true; and she’ll do that before Brown starts featuring “Republican.”
I know await effusions of gratitude from the BMG constituency for suffering through that half-hour of Rea. The only funny part was when he whined about how much smarter Warren would be than he is because she is Harvard and he’s “only BU” law.
isn’t clear enough? http://elizabethwarren.com/
… she is on file with the FEC under “Elizabeth for Ma” which is probably what confused Dan Rea… he maybe thought she was referring to her mother…? Maybe? Anyone?
Is this mike on…?
There are 15 references to Massahchusetts on one page alone, which is “Investing in the future”. That page, and the entire web-site has numerous references to individual cities.
and anyone who has ever written a letter to the editor (keep it up!)
Friend of big oil and Wall Street no elitist
To the editor:
Scott Brown is no elitist. He didn’t graduate from George Washington University. He went to Tufts. He never taught at Harvard, or anywhere else for that matter. As an anti-elitist, he left the North Shore years ago. He just voted with almost every Republican senator to extend $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies for the oil industry. In 2011 the three largest U.S. oil companies made more than $80 billion. But he is not an elitist because he knows you pay $4 for every gallon of gas that you pump. Besides, that elitist from Maine, Olympia Snowe, voted with the Democrats to cut the tax breaks. What an elitist. The oil companies paid Brown $200,000 for his trouble. He is no elitist; he will take money from anyone. Not being an elitist, Brown knows you like a little adventure in your life, like letting Wall Street play fast and loose with your retirement money. So he gutted the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Consumer Protection Act of the ability to enforce its regulations and then he voted for it. If you lose your retirement like you did in 2008 because some harebrained algorithmic bank gizmo goes on the blink, you can thank Brown for not being an elitist.
Brown can’t decide which he likes more; religious freedom or women. So he got real shouty about his vote for the Blunt Amendment which says if religious organizations have a moral objection, they don’t have to provide contraceptives to the women who work in those Catholic school cafeterias. To be fair, it allows any employer to deny any medical coverage to any employee if the employer finds it morally repugnant, which is no big deal for the 28 percent of women who own businesses and the 15 percent who are on boards of directors. Besides, 100 percent of management at the Catholic Church is men. Anti-elitist bipartisanship at its finest.
So when smarty-pants Elizabeth Warren tells the junior senator how wrong he is on these things, you know what he does? He calls her an “elitist.” That’s telling her.
XXX XXXX
I guess anti-Harvard class resentment is about all they have left. If you’ve got “Professor Warren” in the 2012 MA-Sen drinking game, you’d better have a designated driver.
And apparently leftists and professor no longer even meet that standard–are we not men (or women)?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/11/elizabeth-warren-fundraising-scott-brown-email_n_1417549.html
How dare he accuse EW of being far-left? As far as I can tell, she is middle of the road in a country in which the middle seems to be defined as not the Tea Party.
Raise taxes? That’s not clear. Her web site calls for “serious tax reform to make the tax code fairer and simpler”. Fairer for whom? Fair is in the eye of the beholder. Will she try to let the Bush tax cuts expire? Rest easy, she hasn’t said that.
Go further than “Obamacare”? EW’s only proposal beyond keeping ACA is reduction of the cost of health care. I agree, that’s important. “Do more to lead the way to a more affordable and high quality system” (EW’s words on her web site) can mean whatever you want it to. Without more detail, it seems premature to worry that those nice drug companies might have to negotiate with Medicare/Medicaid on prices.