Gary Wills: Don't Run, Elizabeth!

[MBS]

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/may/12/dont-run-elizabeth/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR+Elizabeth+Warren+Iran+Frei+Otto&utm_content=NYR+Elizabeth+Warren+Iran+Frei+Otto+CID_bfd83be128debddef4730a48e906b56c&utm_source=Email%20marketing%20software&utm_term=Dont%20Run%20Elizabeth

Believers in the good and true have for some time been urging Elizabeth Warren to run for president. They don’t, most of them, expect her to win—just to hold Hillary Clinton’s feet to the fire on populist issues she is beginning to endorse. Warren might even pry loose some of Wall Street’s cephalopod arms wrapped around Hillary. But Warren is already doing that, by her stellar work on the concrete issues that have long animated her—jobs, wages, bank excesses, mortgages, student loans. All the things she is doing in these areas pose a challenge to Hillary, which is why Hillary has been adopting some of her positions.
. . . .
I would never compare Elizabeth Warren to Nader. She is more profound and more human than Nader, the furious ascetic; and people prefer a genially learned preacher to a desert father. She is probably proof against the delusions that campaigns instill in their captives. But I would hate to see her wasting her valuable time on what I think of as visionitis, the concocting of airy nothingnesses to show you have a big message, a dream, that you want to share with Americans. In the 2012 campaign journalists called on candidates to “go big, not small,” which meant getting higher and emptier. . . .

Warren has better things to do than fool with such ventures into lyrical nonsense. She has become a force by sticking with what she knows better than anyone—the obscenity of banks’ high profits and workers’ low wages. She understands the concerns of ordinary people with jobs, health care, and student loans. While Republican governors are trying to learn who is the president of Uzbekistan, she has better things to do.

[djean111]

1. Whether Warren runs or not, and I love her, and I think not - any movement of Hillary to the left

is a sad and cynical farce, and guaranteed to cause disappointment for those who are naive enough to believe her, if she gets to be president.

[swilton]

2. 'Holding Hilary's Feet to the Fire'

total theatrics.......we've been there and done that with the campaign Dr. Jeckyl and 'once-in-office Mr. Hyde' shenanigans.