First let me start this by stating that my love for Elizabeth Warren burns with the fire of 1000 suns. That being said, Elizabeth Warren should not run for President.
With recent reports that Ready for Warren has launched and progressives getting excited about it, I think it might be a good time to point out that a President Elizabeth Warren will not be as effective for progressives and Democrats as Senator Elizabeth Warren and that we should not encourage her to run. There are several reasons for this:
1. She is already a political superstar. She already has a nationwide audience for her message, raises a ton of money, and draws bigger crowds than most presidential candidates could dream of. She doesn’t need to run to be heard.
2. She has a super safe national spotlight. If she runs for President, she will at best be in office till Jan. 2025. She can be a Senator basically as long as she wants to be.
3. The end of the honeymoon. Every President faces this around 18 months in. They come sweeping into office, everything is great, their base is jazzed up and then the realities of day to day governance come in and the honeymoon ends with the public. The same thing that is happening to Obama now, WILL happen to the next President. All of a President’s issues are tied to the popularity of the President. When she leaves office, especially if she is unsuccessful at making the changes we want, she could really set the progressive agenda back.
4. She is way more effective for her cause as a Senator. By being a Senator she can push the President to the left, she can push Congress to the left, she can raise money and advocate for her issues, and she can help elect other candidates with similar feelings. Even more importantly than that, she can change the national conversation on all of these issues (something she is already exceptionally good at). Can a President do all of these things? Yes of course. But a President can only do it for a limited amount of time each term and then they are stuck in a quagmire. And if they do it wrong or the media plays it poorly, then the repercussions (aka losing Congress) are way more severe and long lasting.
Anyway, what are your thoughts on if she should run?
She has said repeatedly she is not interested and I believe has even hinted she would support HRC. She could be a base activator in the second slot, however.
And by all accounts, so does she.
Sen. Warren has gone way beyond the requirements of a Sherman statement and has already absolutely ruled out a presidential run. A good friend of mine from high school is on her DC staff and is emphatic that she won’t be running whenever I’ve asked him. So, while I think a draft for a progressive alternative to Hillary Clinton is a laudable and worthy goal, I strongly feel that focusing such efforts on Warren is a waste of time, money, and resources that could be better spent on electing a progressive Congress in 2014, a progressive president in 2016, and more importantly focusing on delivering victories on issues rather than candidates on all fronts. Whether this is the Moral Monday movement, the remnants of Occupy, focusing on passing ballot initiatives like the living wage in Seattle or the minimum wage and paid leave proposals right here in Massachusetts, there are lots of ways for progressives to work for their issues rather than for candidates.
I am sick of devoting time and energy on charismatic candidates that overpromise and underachieve, let us instead focus on issues and build a broad coalition and constituency to deliver the change we want at the local level and at the federal level through all our lawmakers, not just the Executive Branch.
I can live with a President Clinton if we have a House and Senate full of Warren Democrats, and if we make our state full of them too.
like her husband, and pretty much like Obama turned out to be in practice. Warren would be better, at least economically. Why surrender so early to more of the same, a continuance of another ruling dynasty not all that different from the Bushes?
The last liberal insurgent we elected to defeat a centrist Clinton restoration ended up governing exactly like a centrist Clinton. I am not going to argue that Liz Warren has the same spinelessness and lack of principle the incumbent President has, but I also don’t see the establishment in either party, creating the kind of progressive change you want. I have given up on the idea that the right President will make the right difference for America. We need a much stronger Congress, a more emboldened grassroots, and a bipartisan push to rein in the power of Big Business. I view Liz Warren as a more influential key player in that push, but a player all the same, working in concert with other actors to make that change.
A recent leak suggested that Obama ran for President because he was bored with being a Senator, Liz thrives on the art of crafting and passing legislation. Just as Ted Kennedy did more in the Senate than Obama, Clinton or Carter did in the White House-I see Liz doing the same. I would rather her remain the unabashed progressive populist the MA electorate allows her to be rather than go through the soul eroding process of compromising her integrity to raise the Wall Street dollars needed to mount a credible national campaign that appeals to Iowa ethanol farmers to get nominated and Ohio swing voters to get the top prize.
It’s the preservation of that independence and integrity that is likely the real reason she is staying out of the race, along with a disinterest in the foreign policy challenges that will likely dominate the next Presidency. Hillary is more than ready for those challenges, and may be more likely to pass the buck on a domestic legacy to the kinds of policies Warren can pass for her in the Senate.
Don’t forget that many also thought he ran early- before he had to take any contentious votes. At BMG HRC’s Iraq vote is still a topic of discussion.
She’ll probably be closer to the center than some, but likely left-leaning, as was her husband.
…I always saw HRC as the more liberal of the couple, and indistinguishable from the Bushes – give me a break!
Left-leaning Bill Clinton? Okay. Based on what?
BC’s #1 legacy was massive deregulation that destroyed lives, Chris. Plus some disastrous free trade pacts. And the devastation of Sudan.
And what makes you think HRC is “more liberal”? The Iraq War? Defending bankers? Flag burning?
Sudan? Where is that one coming from?
or looking the other way on Rwanda?
Could be anything.
We bombed locations there and in Afghanistan in an attempt to smoke out al-Qaeda and as I recalled badly misidentified the Sudanese target. This was the time Clinton was accused of “wagging the dog” to distract from the Lewinsky scandal.
While I was only 10 or 11 at the time, I remember Howie Carr making the exact comparison back when dad used to listen to him in the car. The irony is, it was Howie joining Chris Wallace and other conservatives who later complained Clinton didn’t do enough. During my internship at the State Department, I worked closely with someone who lost both her parents during those embassy bombings, so while the intelligence and results were bad, the intent was certainly good (which I don’t think we can say for the Iraq War). Frankly, I wish (as I am sure he does), that Bill or Dubya launch a pre-emptive strike on the Taliban as Richard Clarke and Sandy Berger advised in the winter of 2000.
Bosnia in the early 90s made sense, I question whether our assault on Serbia in response to Kosovo did anything, other than antagonize the Russians and actually delay the inevitably toppling of Milosevec.
Yes we are talking pharma factory, and no, “intentions” don’t mean much in the face of predictable large-scale suffering brought on by a bomb-happy USA.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/02/afghanistan.terrorism3
…her vote to allow the person who was POTUS to do so not withstanding. She has always been on the liberal side of the cultural issues. Ditto her husband (and in the 90s I give more of a pass on marriage equality than I would now). I don’t see HRC seeking re-election in 2004 on the back of ballot questions to ban same sex marriage. I definitely see her SCOTUS appointments as better; her husband’s certainly were. Bill’s budget and stimulus created the environment for the great 90s boom whereas the Bushes cut taxes for the top tier of society. The Clintons brought the notion of universal health care into the conversation for the first time in a generation. It’s not just me, BTW. I consistently see political spectrum diagrams who place the Clintons center-left and the Bushes center-right.
He took office in 1993, and Republicans & conservatives in Congress exerted their power to block progressive moves. They blocked universal healthcare (with the help of media people like Andrew Sullivan at the New Republic). They blocked economic stimulus packages. They threatened to use legislation to reverse Clinton’s proposed executive order to end discrimination against gays in the military. They blocked a carbon tax that Clinton and Gore proposed.
But President Clinton did achieve these progressive goals: a mild gas tax increase to fund roads, a millionaire surtax, an increase in corporate tax rates to better fund schools & emergency services, an assault weapons ban. He did that with a Democratic Congress in 1993.
If America gives Hillary a Congress with progressives in the majority (like making sure John Tierney wins), then America starts making progress.
Not to mention Clinton had more moderate Midwestern and northeastern Republicans to work with, and also more conservative southern Democrats who were far to his right like John Breaux and Sam Nunn. Obama just had to appease Ben Nelson in the Senate and Jim Cooper in the house , Bill had a lot more blue dogs to contend with.
I think Hillary will be under no illusions she can work with Republicans on day 1, unlike Obama, we won’t see a fete of Susan Collins delaying the passage of health care reform. I am still torn on other questions which is why she needs a primary challenger and progressives in Congress to push her to the left. But you won’t get those challengers or that Congress via a quixotic Warren candidacy.
I suggest that we remind ourselves that elections are LAGGING, not leading, indicators. We expect our candidates to be “leaders” — so long as they choose the direction we have already determined to be correct.
In order to change the direction of the presidency (and the senate, and the house), we must change the direction of ourselves and our culture.
Too many of us believe the lies that Fox tells us about who we are, who we are not, and why. Too many of us believe that the crushing economy is the fault of “illegals”, or “liberals”, or “atheists” or whoever else the scapegoat of the day is. Too few of us understand just how wealthy the very wealthy are, just how much wealth they have plundered from the rest of us, and just how they use that wealth to perpetuate our misery.
If Joe Sixpack were as aware of how a typical leveraged buyout transfers the balance of a pension fund into the pockets of a Mitt Romney as about how much money the latest Red Sox hero or villain makes, Joe Sixpack might be less likely to believe the lies of Mr. Romney.
Closer to home, too many of us still believe that intentionally and knowingly taking money from poor neighborhoods, cities, and towns so that we distribute that money to affluent neighborhoods, cities, and towns is acceptable. Too many of us still believe that doubling down on that plundering of the poor and desperate (in the form of casino gambling) is an acceptable way to raise much-needed tax revenue for the state. Too many of us believe that the apparent prosperity from the short-lived bubble of casino construction jobs balances the long-term structural costs that the resulting cancer on our culture creates. As those casinos metastasize into unemployment, lost homes, destroyed families, destroyed neighborhoods, and destroyed prosperity and hope, we will all learn how despicable the lies are of those who are currently foisting this dangerous drug on the rest of us.
Too many of us do not understand that those casinos are simply money-mills, where people (with a pronounced bias towards the lower end of the wealth distribution) are rolled through presses, squeezes, slicers, and dicers that separate them from their money so that said money can be efficiently transferred to the offshore and un-taxed havens of the three or five or seven men who own the operation.
Too many of us have lived too long among liars of both parties who tell us we can have all the things we want from state government while scrupulously and publicly avoiding any tax increases. Too many of us believe the lies from candidates from both parties about “eliminating waste and increasing efficiency” to fund ever-increasing spending.
Too many of us still believe that the solution to our automobile-choked highways is to make those highways even wider and build more of them. Too many of us believe that public transportation benefits only “somebody else”.
Too many of us, even here in Massachusetts, believe that climate change is some abstract future threat comparable to an asteroid hit, or even an elaborate hoax concocted by a vast army of corrupt climatologists.
It appears to me that we have to change these aspects of our culture in order to bring about the political change we seek. It appears to me that we have to worry less about winning and losing specific campaigns (especially when “winning” demands that we support a candidate who betrays our core values) and more about persuading our family, friends, and neighbors that our way is both their way and a better way.
When we are helping our neighbors deal with a breadwinner who has been out of work for years and adult children with college degrees who cannot find work for more than minimum wage, we must help them understand the real differences between our economy today and our economy forty years ago — after we have fed them.
We must grow a culture where our soup kitchens are accompanied by workshops in small business creation, and where the religious organizations that sponsor them punish politicians who plunder the poor as aggressively as they currently chastise those who make affordable and safe abortions available to the poor (they’ve always been available to the wealthy).
We must help them understand that demanding “jobs” is no more than a childish temper tantrum until we change the wealth distribution that allows employers to be created. We must help them understand that in today’s world, they and their adult children might need to become entrepreneurs themselves. The time when neighborhood companies flourished, grew, and hired well-paid and highly-skilled employees is LONG gone.
When we have changed our culture, our political leaders will reflect that change. Not before.
I’m a bit cynical here … are you supporting Warren, and posting this to keep the discussion going, or supporting Hillary and urging us to move on?
Or maybe you want us to vote for Cory Booker? He better win his election first.
I’m not really supporting anyone or against anyone here. I just didn’t think a discussion had happened about the reasons Warren shouldn’t run for President and thought it would be fun to write one and see what happened.
…but kind of with JimC in noticing that your first post and first comment happened today, although one might infer you’re a frequent reader (as in, “just didn’t think a discussion had happened”).
Anyway, way to get over the stagefright.
Yup a very frequent reader. And since all the conversation lately seemed to be complaining about Market Basket/Artie T, thought this might be a good time to come off the sidelines.
Elections should not be about someONE. Elections should be about someTHING. I am guessing that the main issue two years from now will be the same issue as today: Are there two America’s? Is the system rigged for the 1%? Those are the key issues that we should be discussing.
IMHO, although elections should be about someTHING, they are (at least at the presidential level) inevitably also about someONE. Yes, the message has to be right, but so does the messenger.
I would say that elections are about someone and something, the message and the messenger. But, governing is all about the ability of the people who voted in the candidate to also advocate for their issues outside of his or her candidacy/political career.
I think immigration advocates have done a great job of pushing the reform agenda in spite of obstructionist Republicans and our all too cautious lame duck President. I think the LGBT movement was also very effective at pushing this President to go further than he wanted on their issues. Labor and more broad economic based activists could and should do a lot more to exert similar pressures. So, the message and the messenger matter to get us a win on election day, but advocating for the issues directly will get us wins past it.
Again, Elizabeth Warren should stay in the Senate. The rest of us should make sure she can hold her banner high. Restore rights to the middle class.
After three decades of a withering bipartisan war against the 99%, the 99% are pretty @#$%ed. At some point, something will happen – say, another banker-fueled cataclysm or a despondent street vendor setting themselves alight – and the powder keg will go off, in a way that hasn’t been seen in the best part of a century.
And it will suck way worse than it does now. The outcomes from those types of things, we don’t want to think about.
We need a chief executive to lead America away from the precipice. Seems to me that this person needs to have the following qualities:
1. A deep desire to help the 99%
2. Charismatic
3. Smart
4. Effective
5. Tenacious
6. Honest
As I look at the other names being tossed around, Warren’s the only one that has these qualities. For example, Hillary’s had decades near or in power, and I can’t think of a single thing she’s done to substantially help the 99%, and as far as I can recall she’s lost every tough political battle she’s engaged in. And honesty? I’ll leave that to the reader to decide.
Warren, on the other hand, has all of these. She has a long, documented history of being pro-99%, so unlike our last two Democratic Presidents, there’s little chance she’ll sprint hard-right once elected. She fought against the banker-filled White House to get the CFPB. She took out a popular sitting senator. She played a big role in keeping Larry Summers from having another crack at us, and is getting the Fed to start doing its job a little. She was one of only a handful (4?) senators to vote against the rich banker Obama nominated to negotiate the TPP and other trade hand-grenades being lobbed at us. She’s fought to stop screwing holders of student loans. And she’s done all of this in a very short time. I suspect she’s got more good done in a few years than anyone else in Washington.
I’d rather elect a President with executive experience, but… if not Warren, then who? We don’t have many more chances here before the thing goes sideways, I fear.
… but HRC is more than capable and I think passes the test as well. A large part of the reason I support her is she is hands down the best prepared to be President and I am confident she will step up and do the right and practical thing for the circumstances with which she is faced.
What has Ms. Clinton done to help the 99%?
Here is a list of quotes, voting record references, etc. for HRC. I think progressives will appreciate many of the items under the “Budget & Economy” and “Corporations”.
That’s an awesome link.
I’d love to see a similar analysis for Martha Coakley and Robert DeLeo.
The site apparently only does Governors and candidates for that office on the state level, so no Deleo, but their Coakley page only seems to be in the context of her Senate race.
Both BIG Clinton disappointments to me. I hope Mrs. is different from MR.
In Sen. Warren’s new book, she mentions that as First Lady, Hillary Clinton was against the bankruptcy reform and against repealing Glass Steagall, but changed her mind on both issues due to the fact she had to run for Senate in NY and needed Wall Street money (and remember she was initially going up against the then popular and then socially liberal Rudy Guiliani). I’ve heard the argument before that she is a closet liberal, whose instincts are liberal, and who will let her liberalism be unleashed if she’s elected. I don’t buy it, but it’s something to hope for since it does seem more likely than not that she will be our next President.
I also think that if Bill had a third term he would have been both smart and compassionate enough to change course to make the economy work for the forgotten middle class on whose behalf he campaigned in 1992.
I think that if Bill Clinton had been allowed to serve a third term, the entire course of national and world affairs would have been different and better for this new century.
I think 9/11 would have happened, been dealt with, and healed. There would have been only isolated incidents of anti-Muslim harassment. There would have been no Iraq invasion. No torture. No GITMO. No AG abuse. No crash of 2008. None of the long string of intentionally-provoked confrontations (Bill Clinton would have crushed the GOP and Tea Party as president). No NSA surveillance scandals.
I similarly think that if FDR had been forced to step down after his second term, we would all be speaking German today.
The 22nd Amendment is among the WORST mistakes the US has made in its legislative history.
I like the idea of a single six year term. Midterms could still be used to punish unpopular Presidents, but it prevents the two years preceding a re-election when the President is too risk averse due to fear of losing, and avoids the nearly four years worth of lame duck status during a second term. Yes we get stuck with Bush through 2006, but he would have been out two years earlier with an incoming Democratic Congress for Hillary (unlikely Obama runs after just two years). Similarly, Clinton wouldn’t have had to keep triangulating and would’ve been out a little before Lewinsky hit the fan setting Gore up a lot more nicely.
Making the house staggered for four year terms is also a wise idea, one men as diverse as Nader and Nixon have endorsed.
You get a third Reagan term in 1988, followed by a Democrat in 1992, and I don’t know who but it’s not Clinton. ’88 elevated his profile.
I don’t recall hearing about Clinton before 1992, though granted I was 14. His contribution to the 1988 race was a nominating speech for Mike Dukakis that was so long is biggest applause line was when he said, “In conclusion…”
And the Duke’s Arkansas appearances were among his best, because Clinton helped.
He was at a historic nadir of his popularity during Iran-Contra, which would’ve been a significant campaign issue and liability for him, not to mention his failing mental health from the earliest stages of his Alzheimer’s.
And the 88′ speech was a dud for Clinton, but he had already been feted by the DLC, who’s leaders ensured Nunn and Gore would stay out leaving a single southern centrist to run in 92′. Clinton came awfully close to running himself in 88′.
The biggest difference is that Ike was still wildly popular in 1960 and likely would’ve run for a third term, beating that pesky papist and saving the White House for protestantism. The Republicans who passed it after FDR died openly admitted they made a short sighted mistake.
Ike, Reagan, and Clinton are the only ones who would’ve benefitted. Dubya was in no shape for a third term, nor was Johnson who was actually eligible for one (having finished less than half of Kennedy’s single term).
Reagan was worse than either Bush, and no one will ever convince me otherwise.
I think Dubya’s mistakes, particularly in his decision to wage unneeded warfare on Iraq, are continuing to be felt today and will be felt long after we are all dead. If there is a single bad decision made by a world leader in this century, historians looking back in 2099 on the eve of the turn will say it was that one. I am 100% confident in that.
Now, we wouldn’t have had Bush if it weren’t for Reagan. For two reasons. The first is, that be elevating HW Bush to the Vice Presidency, it eventually enabled him to reach the Presidency and to help his two sons get plum governorships. There is a fascinating Times article on how close HW Bush came to getting stuck in academia or being an 80 and 88 also ran. The second is Reagan plucked the neocons, religious conservatives, and supply siders from obscurity and into government, and they sowed the seeds that enabled the Bush nomination, election, and eventual disaster as President. So it all goes back to Ronnie.
I could live with Ford Republicans versus Humphrey Democrats as the political divide in America, unfortunately I am stuck with Tea Party Republicans and Clinton Democrats, and I blame that on Reagan. We are still operating in his shadow.
His Alzheimer’s was an issue in his 1984 campaign, and was very pronounced by 1988. I don’t believe he could have survived a campaign, and I think he would have lost if he did.
I think George H. Bush would still have been elected President in 1988, even without the 22nd Amendment.
Some of his advisors signed PNAC, and successfully lobbied him to pass the Iraq Liberation Act, which made Hussein’s removal a key objective of American foreign policy. And there is his own very public support for the war, even after Abu Gharib.
My strongest objection to the post 9/11 Iraq war was the timing. I felt we should have been laser focused on Afghanistan. However, there were several times during Clinton’s presidency when Saddam was violating no-fly zones and otherwise testing our patience. My stance then was for crying out loud take him out once and for all and stop playing these games! Then again, I’m among those who thought Bush 41 should have advanced on Baghdad and deposed Saddam then, but I guess nobody asked me.
In his classic way, Mr. Clinton gets the headline (and the resulting support of hawks) that says he “supports” the war while actually saying something very different (and far more nuanced).
His actual words say something very different from the headline (emphasis mine):
Regarding the abuses Abu Gharib, here is what Mr. Clinton actually said (emphasis mine):
I fear you have left a mistaken impression about Bill Clinton’s posture towards both the invasion of Iraq (he clearly stated he thought it came to soon) and the abuse of AG (he clearly expressed the opinion that the perpetrators should have been investigated, prosecuted, and punished if convicted).
That’s some fine triangulation there. Support the president, throw a shot at him your defenders can cling to, and punch the hippies. Also box in antiwar people as left.
Clinton is talented, but he’s frustrating as hell. If you asked me what his real passion is, I might say it’s hatred of liberals.
…I say nuance and center path. However, we can’t forget his classic quote in 1992 about the first Gulf War: “If it had been a close vote I would have sided with the majority, but I agree with the arguments of the minority.” You can’t prove a counterfactual, of course, but I suspect neither Clinton would have pursued war with Iraq in 2002 had they been President.
How about calling out the war for the BS Clinton knew it was? That his wife knew it was? That John Kerry knew … etc.
He says both, and tells the truth both ways. I’m sure he DID repeatedly defend President Bush against the left on Iraq. I’m equally sure that he was too smart to allow himself or America to get sucked into the invasion of Iraq that the neocons (like Mr. Wolfowitz) had been promoting since the Iron Curtain came down.
Whatever Mr. Clinton would have done, the path that Mr. Bush took was absolutely disastrous (as we are seeing this weekend) and will take generations to undo.
When I read that passage in the book, I thought the same thing.
The chief executive simply does not have the ability to “lead America away from the precipice.” The most successfully progressive presidential administrations have been paired with significant progressive majorities in Congress. FDR’s fireside chats didn’t count for anything once Republicans and conservative Democrats were able to form a coalition against him. All the charisma and tenacity in the world isn’t going to be enough to get Congress to vote for things they don’t want to vote for.
The Presidency has enough power that we certainly can’t ignore it, but Congress is what matters. They make the laws, so they’re where change ultimately happens. And if we have a majority in both houses, then Elizabeth Warren can show off her leadership skills from in there.