Elizabeth Warren campaign autopsy

[brucejoel99]

A popular story is told about Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) when he was running for president in 1952 (or in 1956).

Someone heard Stevenson’s impressive speech and said, “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you.”

Stevenson replied, “I’m afraid that won’t do—I need a majority.”

Compounding the trouble, Warren's campaign was targeted more at midwits and Intellectuals Yet Idiots than at "thinking people." Far from being too smart for Americans, she was simultaneously bookish and ignorant, issuing policy platform after policy platform for the sake of showing that she had "done her homework" without bothering to acknowledge that the homework was done poorly.

But the most important criticism would hold even if her policies had not been a mess of pandering, bad math, shoddy research, and false certainty regarding costs and benefits. Mass politics is not about doing your homework.

e:Also -

6. "Big structural Bailey" will go down in history as a campaign-defining moment on the level of Monkey Business or the Canuck Letter.

  Who in elected government has a better grasp of issues plaguing the average American family than Elizabeth Warren and her couching tree? This is not a rhetorical question! I would be interested in knowing who ya'll think understands the areas of bankruptcy, medical debt, student loan debt, deregulation and consolidation in banking, and racist/class/gender based economic disparity than Warren. Maybe there are a few politicians who have expertise in some of these areas but who actually understands and is working towards fixing all of them?

I mean, Katie Porter, though, of course, her pre-political mentor was Warren, whom she literally named her daughter after.

[Starry Eyed Jagaloon]

A popular story is told about Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965) when he was running for president in 1952 (or in 1956).

Someone heard Stevenson’s impressive speech and said, “Every thinking person in America will be voting for you.”

Stevenson replied, “I’m afraid that won’t do—I need a majority.”

Compounding the trouble, Warren's campaign was targeted more at midwits and Intellectuals Yet Idiots than at "thinking people." Far from being too smart for Americans, she was simultaneously bookish and ignorant, issuing policy platform after policy platform for the sake of showing that she had "done her homework" without bothering to acknowledge that the homework was done poorly.

But the most important criticism would hold even if her policies had not been a mess of pandering, bad math, shoddy research, and false certainty regarding costs and benefits. Mass politics is not about doing your homework.

e:Also -

6. "Big structural Bailey" will go down in history as a campaign-defining moment on the level of Monkey Business or the Canuck Letter.

  Who in elected government has a better grasp of issues plaguing the average American family than Elizabeth Warren and her couching tree? This is not a rhetorical question! I would be interested in knowing who ya'll think understands the areas of bankruptcy, medical debt, student loan debt, deregulation and consolidation in banking, and racist/class/gender based economic disparity than Warren.

Very few people--which makes her campaign even more of a weird disappointment. '00s Warren was genuinely brilliant. She earned her accolades. The Two Income Trap was great stuff.

But the "big structural change" and "plans for that" she spitballed all over the place in 2019-20 were amateurish and just weird. She should have known better, but it would appear that her genius is more limited to identifying the very real and very specific policy ills that hurt everyday Americans. Her aptitude at identifying how to actually fix these problems seems comparatively lacking.

[GP270watch]

 I'm not buying this logic. The idea that she understands the various problems facing American families better than anybody else in government but then somehow her policy prescriptions are off base makes no sense.

 The bad math and big policy disruptions have actually worked against American families and they are accepted daily by a complicit media and millions of Americans who quite frankly suck at math and have been totally brainwashed towards "job creators" business first corporate lackey rhetoric.

 An example of this is Warren 2%-6% wealth tax on fortunes above $50 million and $1 billion. Which was ridiculed and attacked with the dopiest math in the press and even on this forum by so called Democrats. Warren prescribed a policy fix that would literally only effect thousands of the wealthiest families and would in reality have a negligible effect on their vast fortunes. We were treated to awful Warren puts a countdown clock on Bezos fortune type rhetoric by dumb pundits who don't understand how a fortune that large compounds astronomically.

 On the other side of Warren's policy prescription is the real and stunning truth that much of the America's wealthiest families have made large parts of their fortunes basically untaxable. This is where the ridicule and punditry should be focused but it's not. There was a full court press to cynically and dishonestly discredit her plans that goes missing when Trump and GOP passed a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans and corporations that would somehow "pay for itself".

 

[Kamala's side hoe]

I guess I'm one of the weird ones who was all-in on Warren for most of 2019 and then solidly flipped to Bernie by the Iowa Caucus. She lost me after the waffling on health care & lack of consistency.

There seemed to be quite a few Warren->Sanders types on Atlas. My high-engagement RL STEM graduate student friends were also Warren->Sanders.

Simpsons memes aside, my support for Warren was entirely based on her being the most viable non-Biden, non-Sanders candidate.

[GP270watch]

They're still scared!

President Warren’s Government: Her proteges are filling out Biden’s business regulatory team.

[QAnonKelly]

I would also add she played into the "white liberal" schtick that doesn't really play outside the very online cohort. Like telling a nine year trans child she'd only hire an Education Secretary he vetted, the "Black Womxn For" endorsement, saying "Latinx", etc. That's just gibberish to 99.999999% of the population and makes her come of as insincere.