Good Reads 13/1/20

13/1/20 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 5
Portrait of American academic (and future US Senator) Professor Elizabeth Warren as she poses at the door to the University of Pennsylvania Law School's Silverman Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, early 1990s. (Photo by Leif Skoogfors/Corbis via Getty Images)

The Story Elizabeth Warren Isn’t Telling by Russell Berman

I’m not sure if this will become a recurring thing or not, but I’m finding some pretty good reads on the interwebs lately and want to get them in front of more eyeballs.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/01/elizabeth-warren-republican-electability/603178/

I think the point is well made here. Warren really shouldn’t worry about any kind of backlash from liberals over openly discussing her Republican background–but she could certainly get hurt by allowing someone else to use it as a “dirty little secret” against her by staying quiet on the subject. Those who may thumb their nose at her for not being a liberal from birth have pretty much already decided she’s not their first choice. However, I submit that there is a huge opportunity here for her to reach out to people by saying, “hey, I used to think like a Republican. I used to think that poor people were lazy and stupid and unmotivated, until I actually took a hard look at reality and realized that it was the system that I was promoting which was keeping them down. So, I changed my position to fit reality rather than trying to change reality to fit my position.” The reason why that argument didn’t work for Hillary is because she never really gave up her Republican core. Certainly not her Republican talking points. Not true for Warren, and I think that’s the key here. She could really be the one person who can not only have the backing of liberals, but also the backing of the other swing voters as well.

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About butcherbakertoiletrymaker 603 Articles
When you can walk its length, and leave no trace, you will have learned.

5 Comments

  1. …thanks for that – I think you (& the linked articles) make a series of sound points, as it goes

    …handled right it seems like a narrative of coming from a perspective of having bought in to a previous incarnation of the republican party only to buy out on reflection & campaign for the presidency against the current incarnation could be a persuasive narrative but equally if turned into a guilty secret has the potential to be distorted into the sort of amorphous “something about her” that apparently was all it took for some people to vote for a moron over a woman they had reservations about?

  3. I would be happy with Warren or Sanders. My fear with Warren has nothing to do with the Republican roots but more about how many idiots of both parties still won’t vote for a woman no matter how qualified. They might tell you otherwise but once they get to the privacy of the booth, they can’t do it.

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