New Republic: Elizabeth Warren, Hillary's Nightmare?

[Zeke L Brimstone]

We’re three years from the next presidential election, and Hillary Clinton is, once again, the inevitable Democratic nominee. Congressional Republicans have spent months investigating her like she already resides in the White House. The New York Times has its own dedicated Clinton correspondent, whose job it is to chronicle everything from Hillary’s summer accommodations (“CLINTONS FIND A NEW PLACE TO VACATION IN THE HAMPTONS”) to her distinct style of buckraking (“IN CLINTON FUNDRAISING, EXPECT A FULL EMBRACE”). There is a feature-length Hillary biopic in the works, and a well-funded super PAC—“Ready for Hillary”—bent on easing her way into the race. And then there is Clinton herself, who sounds increasingly candidential. Since leaving the State Department, Clinton has already delivered meaty, headline-grabbing orations on voting rights and Syria.

Yet for all the astrophysical force of these developments, anyone who lived through 2008 knows that inevitable candidates have a way of becoming distinctly evitable. With the Clintons’ penchant for melodrama and their checkered cast of hangers-on—one shudders to consider the embarrassments that will attend the Terry McAuliffe administration in Virginia—Clinton-era nostalgia is always a news cycle away from curdling into Clinton fatigue. Sometimes, all it takes is a single issue and a fresh face to bring the bad memories flooding back.

The last time Clinton ran, of course, the issue was Iraq and the gleaming new mug was Barack Obama’s. This time the debate will be about the power of America’s wealthiest. And, far more than with foreign policy, which most Democrats agreed on by 2008, this disagreement will cut to the very core of the party: what it stands for and who it represents.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115509/elizabeth-warren-hillary-clintons-nightmare

Bilge! In 2008, Hillary was battling History. This time, a female president will be history, thus negating any edge Ms Warren might possess. And, let's remember: In a majority of U.S. presidential contests, each party's front-runner going in does, eventually, end up being nominated.

[NoOneMan]

1. "In a majority of U.S. presidential contests, each party's front-runner..."

A big exception was in 2008 when Hillary Clinton feel behind a relatively unknown freshman senator. Does that suggest she could be a weak candidate for her to be such an exception?

[NYC_SKP]

2. If we are PROGRESSIVE, we will discard this candidate, this Clinton, this whole idea of dynasty.

Hillary Clinton is in many ways, the antithesis of Democratic Party Principles.

Our society and our system of selecting leaders requires that we insist on nothing less than integrity and adherence to Democratic Principles, not to concessions or bipartisanship.

The sooner we express this, the better.

[Chan790]

3. I'm prone to disagree...

I have every expectation that by this time next year, Clinton's far enough behind the 8-ball that she's announcing that she's not running.

Also, you seem to fail to note that Ms. Warren is also a woman...and if anything, her candidacy negates Clinton's "historic" motivating factor more than vice-versa. (Clinton's historic value is she's a woman. Warren's is that she's a woman and she represents a return to liberal economic values which guided America through its greatest period of economic prosperity.) If Warren jumps in or is drafted in and this primary becomes a referendum on economic policy and a choice between two directions for the economic philosophy of the future of the Democratic Party...Clinton can't win. She has no path to victory unless she's willing to break from her own previous economic positions, aggressively oppose those of the (Bill) Clinton-era White House and represent a change of course towards the ideological base away from those of this Presidency and the center. To put it another way, she'd have to repudiate the very issues, women's issues notwithstanding, that are motivating her to run. She'd have to adopt Warren's economic positions and run as a old-fashioned economic populist...but with foreign policy experience.

If Warren ends up in, even if she does not secure the nomination herself, she ends Hillary's career. There's a hunger for that kind of candidate in this party...if anything is inevitable in 2016, it's probably that.

[NYC_SKP]

5. The inevitable loss if the candidate is Hillary. I get that. You should write an OP.

In some ways, we lose more if we get behind her.

Women's rights, immigrant rights, workers rights, every loyal supporter of these rights will lose if we put our support behind a woman who, in the end, places global economics and trickle down economics above people.

[Laelth]

6. Spot on.

This part in particular:

she's a woman and she represents a return to liberal economic values which guided America through its greatest period of economic prosperity.

-Laelth

[hootinholler]

11. I disagree

Warren being a woman has less to do with her appeal than that she stands unbendingly for the little guy.

She demonstrates that the core principles of the party are part of her being and she can explain them in the simplest of terms.

That is why Warren would defeat Hillary. Being a woman is window dressing.

[longship]

4. Especially since Warren has already indicated that she is not interested. nt

[brooklynite]

8. ...and CALLED ON HILLARY TO RUN.

But, a strong fantasy life is apparently very healthy.

[Chan790]

10. You know who else said they weren't interested?

Barack Obama in 2004 and 2005. Repeatedly but most notably on Meet the Press and then a week later in the National Review.¹ He even went so far as to rattle off a few people he thought more qualified than him.

Do you know what he was doing in early 2005 quietly? Putting his ducks in a row.

So is Warren...she's probably running, it's just presumptuous to say so this early. She's doing the smart thing...deflecting and running the same playbook this far out as the guy currently in the office. Let Hillary be the lightning rod...let her draw all the attention again too many years out and build up a fatigue in supporters and resistance in an opposition. Then when you jump in and humbly say you're doing it because you're being called to it by the people, you become the rallying popular champion.

1: Barack the Blessed by Jim Geraghty National Review 27 July 2004

[Laelth]

7. "Hillary's Nightmare? A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth Warren."

I like Scheiber's original title better.



-Laelth

[Laelth]

9. This is a really excellent article.

I suggest reading it in its entirety.

-Laelth

[Laelth]

12. Kick. n/t

-Laelth