Elizabeth Warren 2020 campaign megathread

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Another possibility is the fact that Virginia could legitimately be a competitive state in 2020.

Warren would win Virginia by the same margin Clinton did.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Her policy positions are almost as progressive as those of Bernie Sanders, but I suspect that she may be more prone to committing unforced errors than Sanders, which might hurt her.

Both have gaffe potential but can we stop pretending somehow Bernie "when you're white you don't know what it's like to be poor" Sanders never says anything monumentally dumb and damaging?

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I am still a big Warren supporter but free college and unconditioned debt jubilee are easily my least favorite proposals so far. These sound like rather lazy ideas. Even if you want to argue that this is about shifting the Overton Window, just the idea of having unconditioned debt forgiveness seems like a good way to turn away bond purchasers, etc. from whom the government gets to underwrite these (and all other) loans.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

https://twitter.com/thomaskaplan/status/1121584046935556096

DAMN.

Biden can ignore the rest of the field all he wants but he's going to be taking broadsides from Warren and Sanders, probably also at some point from Booker and Harris.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

All of the takes about "shutting out Fox News" are really small-brain takes.

She's not removing Fox staff from her press corps and she's not removing credentials from Fox reporters. She's just not making an appearance on their network and, if you actually read any of that Twitter thread beyond the first post, then you'd see her (claimed) primary motivation is advertising on Fox.

You can argue all day about whether you believe her stated motivation but to portray this as Warren limiting Fox's access to her campaign you are misunderstanding what she's doing. Fox has the same access today that they had last week.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

but what she's hinting here is that people who watch Fox News aren't good enough for her and she's not running to be their leader.

That's not true though. She literally hasn't said anything about Fox News voters. She did a town hall in West Virginia last week for goodness sake.

It's entirely about Fox News the platform and not getting people who would otherwise watch Fox News (i.e., Warren supporters and political reporters/junkies) to bolster Fox ratings and reassure wary advertisers that the station is a good place to place ads.

https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1128314856963227648

Read the entire thread. Interpreting it as a lack of interest in reaching out to Trump voters is both unsubstantiated and uncharitable especially considering she explicitly states she is keeping Fox staff in her press corps and will always be open to questions from them.

https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1128314858536153092

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

But she was on Fox a year ago and "legitimized" that. What happened that she changed her mind?

There's a difference between doing an interview and holding an hour-long event entirely devoted to you and with your name in the title. Also Fox is a constant generator of outrageous content and stories  so this could pretty easily be a case of the frog realizing the water is getting hot and jumping from the pot.

Also, the claim that it would have significant impact on Fox' ratings etc is pretty weak, no?

I'd say that she thinks that it will help her politically. As simple as that.

It's definitely possible that this is some strategic gambit. But that's different from saying that Warren thinks that Fox viewers are not worth reaching out to or beneath her, which is demonstrably untrue.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

If Warren replaces Sanders as the dominant candidate of the party left she could gain a lot of support as she is more acceptable to the rest of the party and to the establishment than Bernie. While I'm sceptical still about electability, if she can come from behind and win the primary that's a pretty strong case for her being a good candidate.

I'm still convinced that one of them will drop out soon after the primaries start to clear the way for the other.

This requires that both be team players. And right now I only suspect one of them is given past behavior of each.

I, too, was disappointed that Warren mostly chose to sit out the 2016 primaries rather than coming out with a forceful endorsement for Sanders.

It would have been a huge moment. She passed on a major opportunity to stand out, establish her credibility, and make it clear that she wasn't just another Democrat. But at the time she must have decided that it was more important to fall in line with rest of the party and not mark herself as an Enemy of what everyone assumed was an ascendant regime.

Very cute turn here.

It's very revealing that to many Bernie supporters, staying within the crony-sphere of the Clintons is the most likely explanation for why Warren didn't endorse Sanders, and the several other (more plausible and less conspiratorial) reasons are dismissed out of hand.

Given that Warren's approvals have been increasing and she's been garnering nearly universally good coverage in both mass media and on more individualized platforms like Twitter, I'd say she's still doing a fine job of establishing her credibility. Yes yes we all know you hate the debt jubilee but the majority of her public image among D voters right now is based on being policy wonk with a suite of well-received plans for major issues (not just being a single issue candidate) - very hard to argue she's not standing out and establishing credibility so far (especially given that credible Sanders hasn't gained any traction since Biden entered).

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

If Warren replaces Sanders as the dominant candidate of the party left she could gain a lot of support as she is more acceptable to the rest of the party and to the establishment than Bernie. While I'm sceptical still about electability, if she can come from behind and win the primary that's a pretty strong case for her being a good candidate.

I'm still convinced that one of them will drop out soon after the primaries start to clear the way for the other.

This requires that both be team players. And right now I only suspect one of them is given past behavior of each.

I, too, was disappointed that Warren mostly chose to sit out the 2016 primaries rather than coming out with a forceful endorsement for Sanders.

It would have been a huge moment. She passed on a major opportunity to stand out, establish her credibility, and make it clear that she wasn't just another Democrat. But at the time she must have decided that it was more important to fall in line with rest of the party and not mark herself as an Enemy of what everyone assumed was an ascendant regime.

Very cute turn here.

It's very revealing that to many Bernie supporters, staying within the crony-sphere of the Clintons is the most likely explanation for why Warren didn't endorse Sanders, and the several other (more plausible and less conspiratorial) reasons are dismissed out of hand.

There's nothing conspiratorial about it. I'm not suggesting that Warren's endorsement was a disingenuous choice, although it occurred late enough to suspect it wasn't an enthusiastic one. The 2016 battle lines were very clear. I also don't think that's a reason for anyone to rule out supporting Warren, just a cause for skepticism and, yes, amusing juxtaposed with accusations that Sanders is not a "team player." I suppose that depends on what team you're on.

Given that Warren's approvals have been increasing and she's been garnering nearly universally good coverage in both mass media and on more individualized platforms like Twitter, I'd say she's still doing a fine job of establishing her credibility. Yes yes we all know you hate the debt jubilee but the majority of her public image among D voters right now is based on being policy wonk with a suite of well-received plans for major issues (not just being a single issue candidate) - very hard to argue she's not standing out and establishing credibility so far (especially given that credible Sanders hasn't gained any traction since Biden entered).

I commented on a missed opportunity, not her popularity. Anyway, I expect Warren's campaign to do well over the next year. I also think that Sanders suffers from significant problems such as being nearly 80 and staffing his campaign with agitators and sycophants.

Of course, as of this posting, he continues to poll well ahead of her - including among crucual groups to turn out in the general election such as independents, non-whites, and non-degreed voters - outperforms her in match-ups, and has better GE favorability ratings. We'll just have to see what happens.

Fair enough. I think I projected the attitude I see from a lot of Bernie supporters (the "no true Progressive" argument) onto you. I wanted to make the point that Warren could have easily backed Clinton (and failed to back Bernie in primaries) for several reasons other than 1) insufficiently progressive beliefs 2) some sort of Clinton-machine boot-licking. I have very progressive values but hold candidates who bear the standard of progressivism to a high bar; Sanders didn't meet that bar for me and I considered a vote for him to be counterproductive. I would understand if Warren felt the same way. But perhaps that wasn't the point you were making? I think I was misunderstanding you.

I will say though that the distinction of team player (as izixs said) is an interesting one. Maybe it isn't so much what team you are on but where you think the battle lines are. The book "Identity Crisis" by Michael Sides and others demonstrated with polling data that how strongly a voter identified with the Democratic party was a much better predictor of whether primary voters supported Clinton or Sanders than any political or policy beliefs they had. In this sense I (and maybe Warren) definitely saw the "teams" as being any progress versus opposite-of-progress (Democrat vs. Republican) leading me to support Clinton. I suspect that, given the support Bernie got from people disenchanted with party infrastructure, people in the Bernie camp view the teams as progressive ideas versus non-progressive ideas. Using either view of what the teams are could lead you to suspect that both Bernie and Warren were being team players.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Adding to the busing discussion, they were able to find Warren's first law review article from 1975 which addressed this issue...

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1147543871804661760?s=20
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1147545469918355457?s=20

Wow. And she was a blatant conservative at the time, no?

She described herself as conservative but not politically engaged. Also this was a time when social conservatism and other types of conservatism (e.g., fiscal, judicial) were not so tightly connected.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Adding to the busing discussion, they were able to find Warren's first law review article from 1975 which addressed this issue...

https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1147543871804661760?s=20
https://twitter.com/KFILE/status/1147545469918355457?s=20

Wow. And she was a blatant conservative at the time, no?

She described herself as conservative but not politically engaged. Also this was a time when social conservatism and other types of conservatism (e.g., fiscal, judicial) were not so tightly connected.

I mean, you'd think that a staunch fiscal conservative would also oppose busing even then.

Fair point. I'll modify that to say that social conservatism (e.g. attitudes about race) and other strains of conservatism were probably not as cross-pressured as they are today. I.e., one could identify as a conservative but still prioritize racial sympathy over other positions on, e.g., government intervention? I'm spitballing here.

editing to add: this is part of why I think the whole "Warren was a Republican until the 90s" attack to be incredibly stupid. There are a couple of other reasons but this is an obvious one.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

My point is that if she calls out Biden for his record, he could just say, "well at least I was a Democrat." She needs to preempt that by owning up to it.

Dawg she was a private citizen then. She reevaluated and changed course. There's nothing really to apologize for.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

My point is that if she calls out Biden for his record, he could just say, "well at least I was a Democrat." She needs to preempt that by owning up to it.

Dawg she was a private citizen then. She reevaluated and changed course. There's nothing really to apologize for.

Yes absolutely. But if you voted for Ronald Reagan she should absolutely be disqualified in the mids of Dems voters.

Reagan was 100 times worse than Trump & he is the reason why there is someone like Trump today.

No. I can 100% guarantee that your obsession with Warren being a Republican until the 1990s is a way of rationalizing your support for Bernie.

It functionally has absolutely zero effect on how she would govern. You're looking for reasons to not vote for her because you're threatened by her.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Also, lol @ the notion that college is somehow an anti-indoctrination system.

It absolutely is if done properly, and for many top-tier colleges remains so. The problem is that standards of liberal education in America have slipped now that costs are so high and college is being sold as an 'experience' rather than an education - like any business, modern colleges which challenge students to think as they should tend to do poorly compared to those willing to cater to preexisting notions.

A shame that college is now just a way for liberals to indoctrinate students

It isn't and never has been. It's just seen that way since education about society is anathema to conservative dominion.

The overwhelming majority of college professors are leftists, and it'll be hard for you to keep a straight face while arguing that they don't let their beliefs bleed into their teaching.

Perhaps if the American conservative movement hadn't waged all out war on American higher-ed (up to, and including, ridiculous hand wringing about "free speech on campus") there would be more conservatives in the academy?

Also: as someone who has worked in a STEM department in a university, the majority of college coursework is apolitical. Good luck finding "indoctrination" in a course about plate tectonics, probability theory, or Charles Dickens.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Yes, and thank God for the STEM majors of the world. But sadly, we're already beginning to see the breakdown of objective science in realms such as economics and biological gender.

Isn't "biological gender" just sex? As somebody who works with a lot of developmental/organismal biologists I don't really know what you mean.

I hope I don't live to see the day when someone asserts that physics is a patriarchal construct.

My friend once found an essay that claimed i was chosen to represent the imaginary number because it was phallic. These theories exist but are treated as incredibly fringe and almost entirely unknown.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Yes, and thank God for the STEM majors of the world. But sadly, we're already beginning to see the breakdown of objective science in realms such as economics and biological gender.

Isn't "biological gender" just sex? As somebody who works with a lot of developmental/organismal biologists I don't really know what you mean.

Well, right here you've stated that there is an actual connection between gender and sex, which is more ground than some people are willing to give.

I don't know who these "some people" are. Not treating the two as identical doesn't mean you deny there is a connection between the two.

And for the record there are examples of sex in other living systems that break from the human, cis-normative paradigm. Take a look at plants. There are also plenty of interesting examples in insects and, if I am remembering correctly, even reptiles. Treating "biological sex" in the sense of man-and-woman is a good heuristic but it's not universally applicable.

There's really no working, universal system for the terms that "gender-as-a-social-construct" people want others to use, so any attempt to use the proper terminology will be met with vitriol from one person or another.

Bolded part is also untrue. People who obviously make good faith efforts but transgress are usually treated with kindness. People who trivialize, demean, and purposefully use terms that are not preferred are not.

And either way by conflating biological sex and gender identity you're moving outside the realm of STEM and into something different. STEM is concerned with gender identity inasmuch as they are concerned with making people of any gender identity feel welcome to participate in and contribute to the field, but not much else.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Very disappointing, but not something that dooms her campaign, and not something that is unique to the Warren campaign.

Not changing my vote.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

What type of dumbass who works at Goldman would donate to Warren?

I mean, I'm pretty sure most Warren/Sanders supporters would take a high paying position at Goldman Sachs if they were offered one, lol. It does not necessitate a change in ideology.

Plus a lot of hires by these firms are young elite university grads living in big cities like New York. Many of them probably do support Warren and Sanders. Sure they’re not voting for what many may perceive to be their economic self interest but neither are Cletus and Jimbo.

I think a more important point (rather than something nebulous like living in New York) is that a lot with the requisite skills begin their careers at Goldman (or Goldman-type places) because it's a way to rack up a lot of money to pay off their gargantuan loans. This is going to be especially true for a smart, upper middle class college grad who went to an elite school but didn't have the funds to pay for it out of pocket. I know several of these people and they're rabid Berniecrats/Warr boys.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

There's no pro-drilling, pro-fracking constituency in Colorado

Yes there is. Greeley and lots of eastern Weld County is pro-drilling. There's also some pretty high support for drilling in the south-southeast part of the state like in Las Animas County, Huerfanos, etc. As far as places that aren't full of swing voters drilling and fracking are immensely popular in Eastern Colorado. There aren't enough people pro-drill/pro-frack people in the state to swing it to Trump but acting like it isn't there is false.

Dems Passed A Law To Help Counties Tighten Drilling Rules. Weld Wants To Use It To Make Drilling Easier (June 2019)

Colorado Drillers Pumping Record Oil, More On The Way (Feb 2018)

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

There's no pro-drilling, pro-fracking constituency in Colorado

There aren't enough people pro-drill/pro-frack people in the state to swing it to Trump

Deleted the irrelevant stuff, don't be pedantic

Didn't you say you only post about states where you know what you're talking about and can sincerely add to the conversation? lmao take the L in stride my friend

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Even in a Warren-less field the odds of Bernie ever reaching 51%, especially in a crowded field like this, are basically zero. This isn't just because there aren't enough progressives in the primary field, or because the field is crowded. It's because there's a slice of the base that holds a toxic view of him (too far left, 2016 spoiler, angry white man, etc.) for him to get an outright majority in a field of 20 people.

Warren is popular because she's probably the best coalition builder in the field right now. It sure as hell isn't Biden, who has come as close to showing open disdain for the left as possible without actually punching Bernie Sanders in the face, and it sure as hell isn't Sanders, who is basically running an insurgency campaign. Kamala and Buttiegieg have their own flaws that make them less well-suited for this s Warren is.

So, if you're an advocate for actual progressive reform, and you sincerely believe that Bernie isn't going to be good enough at uniting the party, why not do it yourself? Warren is enough of a presence in the party to garner that respect for herself but not for other people (in fact there probably isn't a single person in the Democratic party who could reasonably move the needle appreciably for any other candidate). From this perspective her candidacy makes much more sense.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

The really bizarre thing about the critique that Warren is somehow in the pocket of third way billionaires is that she... has several decades-worth of evidence she clearly isn't.

Like, I get the arguments that other candidates are "bought and paid for" by special interests or wealthy donors. I think the truth is a little more complex and nuanced than that but there's something to the argument that these people are faced with some conflicts of interest that often cause them to deviate from what the base wants. For Biden, Harris, Buttigieg, etc. I can see that argument being plausible.

But Warren is pretty obviously not that, right? I can't see any other argument for how she is somehow corrupted that doesn't already assume the conclusion a priori. If you really think that Warren is a candidate who somehow is willingly courting rich-donor dollars so she can turn around and violate the basic premise of her campaign, then your brain is either mush or you have been paying zero attention to this election outside of listening to chapo (often these two things are related).

There's this really interesting dynamic among the hardcore Bernie fans where they spent four years whining about how the party had nobody else that was like Bernie Sanders. Then when somebody else came along who basically does what Bernie does, and in some ways does it better than him, then either that person is obviously corrupt (for... reasons) or they're a Bernie copy-cat, which is somehow a bad thing. It's easily the most cancerous part of a movement that has done a lot of good for the party in the last half-decade - the belief that nobody but Bernie Sanders, not even somebody who has been espousing Bernieism for the last two decades, can fix the country. God help us if Bernie actually gets elected and you people realize how little of this stuff he can get done, or how often reality is much more complex than he lets on.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

so... I will profess that I haven't been watching primary polls incredibly closely, and that goes double for watching cross tabs (has anybody compiled a meta-cross tab table to get aggregated results?)

But the claim that "Warren is the candidate of white people" smells funny to me. For one thing, we have polling data suggesting that Warren is doing just fine among non-white candidates

https://twitter.com/SteveKornacki/status/1174066194141405185

Even polling that suggests that Warren underperforms with non-whites can be explained in a couple of ways. The most compelling is that Warren outperforms Sanders with older voters and Sanders outperforms Warren with younger voters (seen in the same poll as above). Among voting-age people, the older you are, the more likely you are to be white. An analysis that doesn't account for the confounding of age and race will likely conflate an age-effect with a race-effect.

Another possible mechanism is even evident in the poll above: in polling where one candidate outperforms another in aggregated polling, in a race-related breakdown where there is no significant preference by racial groups, the better performing candidate is likely to outperform the other candidate among racial subgroupings by default. You can see this in polling above where Warren has an aggregated 14-point lead over Sanders. Sanders was ahead of Warren in aggregated polling up until only the last month or so. I would need some more data suggesting that there was a large, appreciable discrepancy within racial groups that deviates from patterns of the whole electorate before drawing any conclusions.

I'd be very happy to accept some serious cross tab analysis or aggregations showing Sanders consistently outperforms Warren with non-white voters when accounting for age but otherwise I can see the claim being misused.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Every other poll shows Warren struggling with minorities.

Did you read... any of my post?

Even if I took your claim at face value (it's debatable) I gave multiple alternative interpretations, including one which explains the exact poll I was citing.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Every other poll shows Warren struggling with minorities.

Did you read... any of my post?

Even if I took your claim at face value (it's debatable) I gave multiple alternative interpretations, including one which explains the exact poll I was citing.

I read it. The polls have been pretty consistent that Warren is struggling with minorities except the one you cited.

Okay, very cool. You very, very obviously did not read my post. My post does not claim that the poll I quoted is more representative than other polls. My post does not dispute the existence of other polls with the result that, marginalizing all other factors, Bernie outperforms Warren with non-white voters. My post does not even claim in the absolute that Warren is outperforming Bernie among non-white voters.

I'll try an exercise I use with my students (who are half your age): please address the claims in the second half of my post. Do this by directly quoting (or screenshotting) my original post. Please include the term "age" or the term "aggregate" in your post. If you do not follow any of these instructions I will not take your post and therefore your argument seriously and you will not get any points for this assignment. Due date is tomorrow evening. Thank you.