This morning we heard Elizabeth Warren’s definitive non-denial denial that she would ever run for President:
Would you tell these independent groups, “Give it up!” You’re just never going to run.
I told them, “I’m not running for president.”
You’re putting that in the present tense, though. Are you never going to run?
I am not running for president.
You’re not putting a “never” on that.
I am not running for president. You want me to put an exclamation point at the end?
OK, so that’s a maybe someday. With an exclamation point.
But I don’t think she’s going to run. Not in 2016, and I think probably never.
- Too human. Think about the kinds of people who run for president. Typically there’s a relentless, robotic, teflon temperament, which has a lot more to do with ego than any visceral, deeply felt desire to do something for actual people. It’s more the grand sense that whatever the matter, I’m the one that should be at the center of it all. George W. Bush was perfect at that. Obama absolutely possesses those qualities. Clinton, definitely. But honestly, I don’t think Warren particularly relished her run against Scott Brown. She seemed stressed and incoherent at times. Brown even agreed to limits on outside spending and then wasted his time on the stupid Cherokee attacks. If we’re honest, we’ll admit that election was kind of a joke — in a geographically small state, pitting a woman who is a hero to many against a guy who is a barn coat to many. But she didn’t win in a laugher.It’s her compassion and anger, her very emotional volatility, that makes her compelling. She’s the opposite of robotic. That’s why we like her. But that’s why she’s unlike anyone who’s been at all successful in running for President. Maybe she’s got the hang of it and has an appetite for the big fight. But at the very least, it wasn’t definitively proven in 2012.
- Age. She’s 65. Young enough for a couple of terms in the Senate. Not that young to be running for President. Hillary is 67, but has already demonstrated mind-boggling, hot-pepper-fueled physical stamina.
- Johnny-One-Note. Warren basically has one riff, and it’s an awesome one: The game is rigged on behalf of the big banks and the wealthy against the little guy. It’s undeniably true, and it fits the Zeitgeist, it’s wide and deep and has huge explanatory power. But particularly when it comes to foreign policy, I wonder if this frame is going to fit. She would have to answer all manner of questions in topic areas we’ve never heard her in.
- Risking influence. Sometimes power is greater when held in reserve. Right now she’s a movement hero. If she came at Hillary, she’d be up against a lot of party apparatus and jes’ folks who truly are “Ready for Hillary”, who have a lot invested in her personal success. Going from increasingly powerful Senator and voice of a movement to “losing primary candidate” is definitely a step down. I think that’s because it’s assumed that anyone running for President has sold his/her soul for ambition’s sake.
- Doesn’t need to. Beyond party ID, the personal qualities of the President are arguably less important than the political Zeitgeist and set of assumptions that surrounded their election. It’s not even the controversial stuff; it’s the movement of certain ideas into the non-controversial realm, like (increasingly) gay marriage. As said above, Warren is in a much better position to get her message out, without compromising very much at all. She’s shown that she’s perfectly happy to embarrass her own party and call out its uselessness. And hey look: Wall Street fave Cory Booker is now shocked, shocked! that derivatives gambling is going on in this establishment.When Hillary runs, she’s going to know where her bread is buttered. Warren’s buttering that bread right now.
Now, I don’t know anything anyone else doesn’t know. I could probably write another list as to why she’s perfect, and as I say, maybe she’s changed. But I like how she’s using the current gig, and I hope we see more Dem senators follow her lead. 2016 could be pretty good even without her at the top of the ticket.
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I think you accidentally put the same link in twice in point #5
Ach, blogging is hard
Every single point is valid and I’ve stated them elsewhere. I’d add that I went to high school with one of her staggers and he said point blank that the answer is absolutely not.
Point #1, #3 and #4 are he big reasons. And today she is still 50 points behind Hillary while Obama was not 20 points behind. Like her hero Ted Kennedy-she has a great Senate career ahead of her, and just like his quixotic campaign against Carter I just don’t see it worth her time.
Kudos to the Booker example, Gillibrand turned against Chuck and voted against the dr omnibus bill-she’s gonna run someday and will be formidable. Same with Franken and Sherros Brown.
At the end of the day of rather a Senate full of Warrens than a White House with just one.
In Diane Sawyer’s interview with the women in the Senate, she asks at one point, “Is there a future president in the room?” Mazie Hirono, subtly but still noticeably, looks to Gillibrand and says, “We have ours here.”
I also believe that Gillibrand’s vote against the NDAA indicates her future political ambitions. She opposed it because she thinks arming the Syrian rebels is a disaster waiting to happen. I think she wants to make sure she has not attached to what could be a foreign policy disaster so as to avoid what happened to HRC because of her support for the Iraq War.
Going back to Warren, I am happy to have her as my senator, and I think she’s happy to stay a senator. Foreign policy is not her thing, and that’s a big part of the presidency.
Not a bad place to be, particularly since she has started to take gutsy votes for a New York pol against Wall Street and the foreign policy establishment, while also having a centrist reputation from her days in the House and the bipartisan bills on ending sex assault in the military, co sponsored with Ted Cruz (!) of all people. She or Franken would be well positioned for 2020 presuming a Hillary loss, and she’d be a front runner in 2024 (assuming the Hillary’s VP is lackluster).
It would be pretty cool to have a woman succeed a woman.
Huffington Post.
Is he in the 2016 mix? Tacking left as the new Obama to Hillary?
I don’t think so, but I am glad to see he is branching off of the private equity reservation. I would have proudly voted for Rush Holt in that primary, with his loss for that race and resignation from the House my congressmen, Bill Foster, is the last physicist standing in the House.
#5 is the reason. She does not have to and in my humble opinion, just her presence as someone who can run will move anyone who does run over to her point of view.
In the Senate, Warren can talk about what she wants to talk about, and as she’s shown, she can make a lot of noise and make a lot of people very uncomfortable while doing it. That’s fantastic. And she can and will influence the presidential race by doing exactly what she’s doing, from where she is right now.
But as a presidential candidate, she loses control of the conversation, and, as Charley correctly points out, would have to talk about a bunch of stuff about which frankly she may not have much to say.
The big question, I think, is how can she best succeed in what she’s trying to do. My inclination is that she can best do that from the Senate; in any event, I will certainly defer to her judgment on that question, and as of now at least, her judgment seems to be not to run.
Having just reached the age of 60 and having had to personally deal with age discrimination in seeking employment opportunities for the past 15 years, it is always disheartening when I read analyses on BMG and elsewhere that refer to age as an impediment. It’s never put in terms of “hey, she’s 65, she’s loaded with experience and wisdom.” We don’t want experience and wisdom anymore. We want youth.
I might be an addicted runner and in better physical shape than I was in when I was 40. But employers don’t see that. They see someone who is over 60 and they say “uh oh, we better hire the guy with the felony on his record. He’s only 35.”
Well, glad to know that Warren is at least still young enough to serve in the Senate.
I don’t think Charley was saying he thought her age was a liability, simply that is what the media and society tend to say. Ever since Kennedy, we have wanted a youthful President with plenty of ‘vigah’ as he used to say. People forget his age was a liability in that election, and prior to that, most people wanted to vote for the more experienced and seasoned candidate.
Were Hillary nominated, she would be the first Democratic candidate older than the Republican in an open contest since Humphrey. And he was only two years older than Nixon, it seems likely she will be at least 5-10 years. The younger nominee has won the popular vote consistently since 1988, but it’s one of those facts that’s about as relevant as that Redskins game.
it’s something for her to consider. Only she really knows how physically fit she is, and how much stamina she has. Running for president is unbelievably taxing, physically and otherwise – we’ve all seen candidates visibly age over the course of just a few months. Months on end of constant travel, very little sleep, and being 150% “on” every waking hour … I don’t know that I could do it, and I’m a lot younger than Senator Warren.
and 1984 campaigns. I’m not sure candidates age during campaigns, although there’s no question that presidents seem to age in office. But it doesn’t seem to me that being 65 years old should be considered an issue for Warren, much less a potential liability for her. I haven’t seen that she shows any signs of memory loss, lack of mobility or other factors that are indeed associated with advanced age. Those factors might be potential liabilities were she to exhibit them.
Bias against age is considered acceptable, as Charlie’s mention of Warren’s age as a potential liability attests (that’s the way I still read his comment); but that bias is, I think, a serious problem in our society.
by his second term. He suffered from dementia. Sure, not everyone has the same capacity in their mid-seventies. I know 80 year olds that could mentally and physically pass for 60, and 70 year olds who seem more like 100. It’s a choice that each candidate has to assess for themselves, but I don’t think that voters have to ignore a candidate’s age.
age and experience should not necessarily be viewed as liabilities, as they increasingly are in our society. Unless proved otherwise, I would like to see the day come when age and experience are viewed as potential assets in a candidate or any other job seeker. Sort of a shift in the burden of proof.
Ronald Reagan was a ventriloquist’s dummy for the emerging right wing from the very start of his national political career. His job was to learn and recite lines, and his worsening Alzheimer’s disease (visible during that disastrous debate appearance in his re-election campaign) was only a minor impediment.
George W. Bush played much the same role for Dick Cheney, though he did not perform as well in that capacity (Ronald Reagan’s acting career helped him enormously). Mr. Bush’s much-rumored alcoholism was irrelevant for the same reason as Mr. Reagan’s Alzheimer’s.
Rightly or wrongly, age is an enormously significant factor in choosing a President if we want a President who is more than a mouthpiece for others. Ronald Reagan is far enough outside the envelope to be irrelevant to the question of whether or not Ms. Warren should run.
“ventriloquist’s”…
George H.W. Bush served:
1. Two terms when Reagan was president.
2. One term under his own name.
3. Two terms when his son was President.
Here is a piece of trivia. When those planes hit the Twin Towers on 9/11, where was George H.W. Bush (daddy)? Answer: He happened to be in the White House, which shows how often he was there while his son was POTUS.
that regardless of age, you’d better prove that you have the physical/mental/emotional stamina to run for president. A younger person obviously gets some of the benefit of that doubt, and an older one doesn’t. As I said, Hillary’s proven it.
(And a younger person wouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt on experience/wisdom.)
I’ll be 60 in a few weeks (along with Eddie Van Halen, I might add) and in better shape than most 30 & 40 year olds. I went through the same age discrimination. It sucked. Anyone who saw Senator Warren on Sunday at Kate’s house knows that she (and we!) are far from being put out to pasture!
She is the Senior Senator from Massachusetts and the rest of the country HATES US. They hate our democrats AND our republicans with stark impartiality, I see no reason to add the incomparable Elizabeth Warren to that list of Bay State Also Rans.
Everyone needs to calm down and look elsewhere.
JF
Of course the question is understood as “Are you running for President (in 2016)?” and the answer is best understood as, “I am not running for President (in 2016).” If she were currently running in the sense of having a campaign or at least exploratory committee up and running, then nobody would have to ask if she is running because that would be known. Now that 2014 elections have passed the time for being coy is just about over and EW is not being coy.
For two reasons that I can think of–
1. If you say “I will never run for president” and you do run in 2020 you will be forced to watch the “I will never” comment run on a loop 1000 times. No candidate wants to deal with that. Better to answer 2016 questions with 2016 answers.
2. Constantly being mentioned as a potential presidential candidate and having “draft Warren” movements is good for your brand and your issues. So, I bet Sen. Warren sees a lot of value in the media attention that she can generate by not making the so-called Shermanesque statement. The more the media pays attention to her, the more attention is paid to the issues that she’s championing—middle class income (inequality), Wall Street bailouts, Wall Street risk, Wall Street nominees to high level positions in government, student loan burden and interest rates, etc. Since she can get a way with the present tense, she’ll keep doing it for a while since she can fall back on her “I am not running.”
then maybe she can be the one Senator to do her job of public oversight and release the full uncensored torture report.
I suspect there are rules or even laws governing what can and cannot be released. I doubt an individual Senator can just decide to release everything because she feels like it, and honestly I’m not sure I would want an individual Senator to have that right. Plus, not being on the Intelligence Committee she may not have seen anything more than the rest of us have anyway.
but for those who do, they have the right and responsibility to make the full report available. That’s how the complete pentagon papers were made public — by the act of a single Senator, Mike Gravel.
Click here for link to New Yorker Article about Senator Warren’s Career
First – the President is NOT the source of new laws and programs – the Congress is. The President is the executive and administrator in charge of implementing what Congress produces for law. I am aware that some modern residents flout this, but that is the job description and those who seek to over-expand it will be smacked down by SCOTUS on an increasing basis. Warren wants to MAKE change, not administer it.
Second – when you become President, you must also take charge of agencies and programs that you think are icky and have no interest in. You also come smack up against realities that you were unaware of as a legislator and must do things you promised you wouldn’t and refrain from doing things you want to (closing GITMO comes to mind).
Third – what is it with Democrats that they treat public office like a game of Super Mario? The minute they get an office, they seem compelled to bounce onto the next one. That was part of what made Coakley repellent, and Grossman to a lesser degree – they both came off as ‘check the box’ about what they were elected to, and immediately began to run for the NEXT thing on the food chain, often offices where the functions were entirely different, but hey – it was a step up in..prestige? Cash? Influence? Who knows – it wasn’t about service.
She can stay where she is as long as Robert Byrd. Why the heck would she run?
They propose a lot of legislation, they set priorities, their words get the most press.
As for serving as long as Robert Byrd, unless she is some medical miracle she really IS too old for that!
come to the conclusion that Warren does not want to “administer” change, as you put it. She did, after all, actively pursue the leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until she was blocked by virtual unanimous opposition from the Senate GOP, forcing Obama to redirect his choice. It seems to me that heading the CFPB would have been one of the biggest jobs of administering change in recent US history.
her bully pulpit is clearly bigger in the Senate than it would be as head of CFPB. When was the last time we heard from that guy? How many people even remember his name? (I can’t come up with it off the top of my head.) US Senators naturally have more public and media presence than do the heads of administrative agencies.
It’s Richard Cordray and he has such much power and influence at CFPB that he is considering a run for the Senate…
And for what it’s worth, I think I said she’s have more influence at CFPB in an argument with you before she ran-happy to eat
my crow and happy we are in agreement (I think she agrees too!) that senior Senator from Massachusetts is the best gig for her.
I remember now. 😉
and agree that she will have more impact there than she would at CFPB, especially since both the GOP and many Dems in the Senate seem hell-bent on repealing the core of the legislative framework creating the financial service regulatory mechanism.
My point was that it seemed a slur for somebody to claim that Warren was not interested in administering massive regulatory change. The evidence is to the contrary. But again, I agree that having been rebuffed by the members of porcupine’s party, she can do more in the Senate.
I get why she’s answering the way she is — she’s using the moment to expand her influence — now and in the future. Which is wicked smaht.
I agree with your list except for #2. Senator Warren seems like a pretty high octane person with a ton of stamina. I hope I have half her energy when I’m 65!
That said, the rest of your list is spot on, especially #5. I’ve been so impressed to see how she’s using her megaphone, boosting her own stature so she has more of a voice, and building very unlikely coalitions — Cory Booker?! Not to mention getting Joe Manchin to vote against the banksters repeatedly. And as liberal as Pelosi is, getting her to flip against the White House on the CRomnibus was pretty impressive.
After watching Senator Warren throw punches this past week and give Citigroup a much-deserved tongue lashing, I keep thinking of Charlie Pierce’s prescient comment the day after Warren was elected:
This is EXACTLY what we all voted for and worked so hard for in 2012…and I for one am looking forward to many more years of hell raising!