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Sunday, June 10, 2012

Elizabeth Warren: Her Voice Was Breaking, But Her Voice Was Unboken



Elizabeth Warren's clear concise keynote address to Netroots Nation was very fine "left wing of the possible" politics. However close her competitor may be in the polls, I expect a resounding vote for the Democratic President in November to translate into a comparably resounding vote for Warren, especially given the clear match of her politics to those of her progressive state. It is the clarity of her framing of issues that is so encouraging for this progressive rhetorician -- I am not at all surprised that people are already singing "Warren for President in 2016!" (for a Senator, it would seem the thing is to reach up to the next rung of that ladder quickly, before an actually complex compromised Senatorial record accumulates to hold you where you are), and I daresay she will at least be a major contender for VP if Clinton doesn't run (tho' like everybody else I strongly suspect she will).

2 comments:

Seth Mooney said...

I agree with your take on the national stage and what it likely means for a second Obama term, but having lived in MA for 1.5 years now, I don't think it to be the "progressive state" that I've often heard it characterized as from the west coast or from the national media.

In CA, Dems win by large margins in most places. Where they don't, the wackiest of the right in the country often gets into office. I learned this from a breakdown that you linked to at some point in the last couple of years.

In MA, however, Dems win more than half the time, but by nothing near the margins in CA. From what I've seen and gathered from political organizers here, races are actually close in a way that doesn't typically happen out west.

And in terms of culture, I can tell you that I've grown accustomed to identifying myself as a union organizer to relative strangers with trepidation, given that at least half the time it results in being berated by what I learn too late to be a tea-party lunatic. Anecdotal knowledge is just that, and not much in the way of knowledge, to be sure. But if MA is a decidedly progressive state, I must confess to be at a loss as to what progressive means. The Dem majority here, while clear, just isn't much in the way of strong. And to many of them that get elected have to pander to the right by way of the "middle" in order to get there in the first place.

In short, I fear that the race here is going to have to be close in and of itself for an Obama win to pay off for Warren, and the rest of the country in terms of Warren.

But then, I'm not looking at things electoral as deeply as you, and I'd be happy to be wrong in this regard.

Dale Carrico said...

Obviously there are reactionaries in every state. There is no polling suggesting any concern at all that Mass. won't vote for Obama, and doing so they will almost certainly vote for Warren as well, rather than split the ticket for Brown (though the fact that he is more popular than his support of outcomes majorities disapprove would suggest like everywhere else in the USA Mass has more than its share of low-information voters) Warren's positions align with outcomes strongly preferred in polling of the state and her ads are already clearly resonating. I can only imagine union organizing is difficult anywhere in the United States, after more than a generation of plutocratic indoctrination against collective bargaining. There are few things in the whole world more important than what you are doing -- you are a hero!