This is a political strategy? Don't vote for Elizabeth Warren. She's *too* smart . . .

[no_hypocrisy]

When Elizabeth Warren, the intellectual architect of the new federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), declares her candidacy for U.S. Senate on Wednesday, she’ll already enjoy a national media profile. But, assuming she gets past the Democratic primary, any attempt to use her background as a consumer advocate to run a populist campaign against incumbent Republican Scott Brown will be burdened by her day job as a professor at Harvard Law School. Even before Warren officially declared, she was already being accused of “Harvard elitism.” Her fortunes in 2012 may well turn on whether she finds an effective response.


There are two voter cohorts likely to resent Elizabeth Warren solely based on her status as a Harvard professor. The first is Massachusetts’ tiny but hard-core Republican base, which has a monopoly on talk radio and is already linking Warren’s Harvard connection with Obama, to say nothing of her recently vacated post as “Assistant to the President.” Todd Feinburg, co-host of one of Boston’s popular morning call-in radio shows, told me that “all my callers know about her is she’s a Harvard elitist. They see the country being run by Harvard elitists who don’t know what they’re doing.” Another staunch conservative, Barbara Anderson, president of the libertarian group Citizens for Limited Taxation and longtime weekly columnist for the Salem News, explained to me, “Harvard becomes a picture in the dictionary next to ‘overeducated liberals,’” adding that her son’s economics professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst had “kidnapped his brain.”

-snip-

The challenge to Warren will be to prove to a skeptical electorate that she’s not simply a bookish academic. All indications are that she’s not. As a consumer advocate on the national stage, Warren’s fire and brimstone toward Wall Street may have lost her the chance to head the CFPB in Washington. She’ll need it if she wants the people of Massachusetts to send her back.



http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/09/14/opinion/main20105964.shtml?tag=cbsnewsSectionsArea;cbsnewsSectionsArea.4

[Bigmack]

1. Intelligence is a handicap in today's politics in the US... we like 'em dumb! nt

[no_hypocrisy]

2. A co-worker once exhorted the virtue of "people smart" over "book smart".

[Whisp]

22. my sister is making some noises like that too

and it makes me go eyeball rolling crazy.

she's into this anti-intellectual shit too. I can't believe it, she's turning into a teabagger in some ways.

I have to avoid her more now, I can't hold back the retaliations against the gigantic stupidity of some of the things she says,
then she gets all pissed when I point things out to her and goes into the 'I don't wanna talk about it.' She always does that when she has no answer.

gawd.

for the most part I would let it be but if my daughter is around I sure don't want her to follow her crazy aunties thoughts

[formercia]

6. There is nothing harder than trying to buy off a smart Liberal

especially one with a Progressive agenda that is to benefit all of the citizens of this Country, and not just a few of the Demi-god Plutocrats.
There is nothing they can offer that she doesn't already have.

[Mass]

8. We have a few of those already in the primary,

[SharonAnn]

16. So is education. I never thought I'd see the day when this was true in America.

When I moved to East Tennessee, I found that intelligence and education were looked down upon and were considered disqualifiers for any politically related activity. So, I hide my background.

And, of course, we get the religious right running everything here (supposedly) but it's really the local power brokers in the background dividing up the pie. The religion is just the cover for their crimes.

Such a shame.

[white_wolf]

24. I feel your pain. I was born and still live in East TN. It sucks!

I really want to move.

[nomb]

3. She's a shoo-in. But Mass. does have a town/gown divide, but she won't have this issue as she is ...

She has a politicians ability to enthrall and animate an audience. If she was simply smart and academic, say like an Adlai Stevenson - she'd probably have been doomed.

[Jackpine Radical]

9. SHOO.

As when an animal is so willing and easy to get into its stall that you can just "shoo" it in.

[Enrique]

12. you must be a Harvard Professor

;-)

[nomb]

13. .

[Enrique]

11. do you like apples?

Mass. town/gown ;-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRe_fK7pbw

[Mass]

4. No, she has to show she understand everyday problems.

That she suffered when she was a teen is not a sign (or Scott Brown would be an uber liberal).

However, the primary will allow her to prove herself, and this is why it is so important. Either she can show this and she will be the nominee, or she cant and somebody else (Khazei most likely, but I would welcome any of the six others) will be.

[bluestate10]

27. Exactly. If Warren connects with a clear message, Scott Brown is done. nt

[DCBob]

5. the ignorant masses prefer candidates who ignore science and write messages on their hands.

sad.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. Sarah didn't write that note on her hand.

God did, just so she would know what to say at the right time.

She's that close to Divinity, you know.

[JoeyT]

25. At the rate we're going in a few decades we may well

have Republicans writing messages in their own shit.

So enjoy the hand messages while you can before endless news cycles questioning why the elitist Democrat refuses to get his hands shitty.

[existentialist]

7. What have we come to when stupidity is an asset

and intelligence a liability in politics?


But I do not completely despair on this point.


After all, Al Franken won.


I guess Obama did too, but his intelligence, (and his blackness) are definitely being used against him and through him against Democrats in general.

And Obama has not found an effective counter.


(Kissing Republican ass doesn't work.)

[frazzled]

14. There is a real antipathy toward Harvard in Massachusetts

Not to people who went to school or got their degrees there, but to the institution itself, which is seen as having eaten up all the real-estate in Cambridge and Allston tax-free and having given nothing back to the community. Since Warren is a professor at Harvard, not just a graduate, they will indeed try to paint her as part of the elitist, money-grubbing Harvard institution. I doubt they'll succeed though.

But believe me, Harvard is not well liked by the surrounding communities.

[Davis_X_Machina]

15. She wins in a walk, if she does two things...

...a.) buy a truck. It has to be older than Brown's, or bigger, but need not be both.
...b.) live on the Dennis and Callahan show. Be on it to the point that people think it's "Dennis and Callahan and Warren".

Do that, and it's a 60-40% rout.

[saras]

18. Given nothing to the community? Okay.

I'll make them a deal. Give up every modern item that research from Harvard has contributed to (i.e. go live like the Amish), and we'll find a way to move Harvard to another state.

[CTyankee]

20. Oh, that Harvard! Evil bastards...

Go Yale Bulldogs!

[former9thward]

17. This is exactly the same language Daley used against Obama in 2000.

In the 2000 election Obama was running against Bobby Rush for Congress in Chicago's 1st District. The Daley machine said that Obama was a "Harvard elitist". People bought that and Rush crushed Obama in the primary.

[hfojvt]

19. seems to be a lack of understanding here

THe complaint is not that the Harvard elite is too smart, it is that they THINK they are so much smarter than the rest of us.
"Harvard elitists who don’t know what they’re doing."

Harvard, after all, is a place that many of us cannot AFFORD to go to. Nor can we afford the expensive prep schools that are pre-Harvard. Then with their million dollar educations and jobs they get from their power connections, they think they are better than us.

[Davis_X_Machina]

23. Anyone can go to Harvard.

...it's $1.70, the stop after Central Square.

[WI_DEM]

21. Too many voters apparently want their reps to be just like them--uninformed, stupid but arrogant

[AverageJoe90]

26. She deserves all of the support she can possible get, and more! n/t

[Modern_Matthew]

28. I think there should be a litmus test on intelligence to even run for office.

Science deniers should not even have a chance at winning an office.