Reflections on the Warren/Brown contest

This election campaign could be filled with important issues, but it's been a disappointment, both nationally and in my state, Massachusetts. In the Warren/Brown contest, the biggest issue has been trying to figure out how wrong it was for Elizabeth Warren to list herself as part Native American. In no way can I understand why this is a major issue.

Maybe Scott Brown is pushing this issue, and he is, to play on class resentments. Now that's an issue with some meat on it. Elizabeth Warren represents a liberal/academic elite that supports higher taxes to fund ever more government programs. Personally, I'm not sure whether Warren in fact supports higher taxes, but I've met enough academics who do, so why should I check out her actual positions? That may not be my attitude, but I bet it's a common one.

 The Real Massachusetts

I realize the Massachusetts is supposed to be a true-blue state where these liberal views should win hands-down. However, Massachusetts actually has a lot of blue-collar workers. (All states do--they perform those important service jobs.) We often elect Republican governors, including from 1990 to 2006. We have a flat state income tax, not a progressive one.

The election of Scott Brown in the special election in 2010 showed that our habit of electing Democrats to the Senate wasn't unbreakable. Brown won a clear victory over Martha Coakley, a decent Attorney General (in that she hasn't had a major embarrassing scandal), but a cold-fish as a campaigner and a typical, uninspiring liberal.

Pluses and Minuses

Elizabeth Warren has a better resume than Coakley as someone who understands financial issues and headed up the reform for consumer credit. However, her academic career and her talking points make her sound like another hack liberal. Nonetheless, I don't think she is. With her solid understanding of financial issues, she could be quite an asset in the Senate.

This isn't to say that Scott Brown doesn't have strong points too. He has been a swing vote on some issues, like the repeal of DADT. However, on other core issues like budget discipline (the sequester) and repealing Obamacare, Brown talks just like any other Republican. He's not a bridge to compromise on those weighty issues, so he's better than a typical GOP senator, but not by much.

So who has more appeal in Massachusetts? If it was a race of a garden-variety liberal against a truly independent moderate, I think the moderate would win. We don't have a majority of true liberals here--just 30.3% according to Gallup. However, Brown isn't as moderate in his votes as he pretends, and that may be his undoing.

The race may hinge on personality, not issues. If that's the case, Brown will win if Warren continues to sound like a hectoring liberal academic. But Brown's supporters better stop acting like spoiled frat boys with their mocking war whoops. I doubt that's the way to convince independents.

Campaign roundup:

• Warren issues
• Brown issues
• Warren assassination
• Stances on the budget and the defense cuts

Elizabeth Warren's stupid lies

I'm happy to shed light on local issues that may have national interest, like Romneycare, but I wish our Senate race wasn't one of them. Besides, being local doesn't make this issue look much different, except compared to a locality, say Texas, where an old-line liberal like Elizabeth Warren would never have a chance at a Senate seat.

The story swirling around her, that she parlayed a family story that she's 1/32 Cherokee into a professorship at Harvard Law, reeks of liberal privilege and hypocrisy to those that have a sensitive nose for that kind of stuff. I'm a little more understanding because my family has its stories too--that the unusual shape of my eyes (and my son's eyes) came from a Cossack raping a woman ancestor, probably in Ukraine. Lovely story, isn't it? So I'm attuned to family lore as lore, not as a lie used for advancement.

Story or Non-Story?

However, to others it stinks of the special favors that the liberal diversity police hand out to minorities and those white liberals who'll talk the diversity jive and even lie to claim some of the spoils for themselves. So if you're a libertarian or conservative partisan, you may love this story.

Me, I hate this story. It's a reminder of a dirty little secret in academia (which is my background), that it's hard to tell which professors are great because there's too much hype about too many of them; most of it undeserved; and all of it deeply envied by professors not benefiting from false hype. I grew up in this hot house world, and happily escaped it for industry at the first possible moment. So this has been a regrettable reminder of that world. (To be fair, it's often hard to tell which executives are good, and which only middling, which employee should get the promotion, which candidate should get the nomination, etc. So this problem isn't just a problem in academia.)

Those Little Lies

This story is also a reminder of how stupid little lies can cost you. Warren should have said that Harvard was (or might be) calling her a Native American right after she talked nationally about having a little Cherokee blood. Instead, she let the doubts surface and grow, whatever those doubts are.

So what are those doubts? That Elizabeth Warren isn't qualified for her position? She has quite a resume, especially work on consumer credit and bankruptcy law. So she herself has provided the easiest ammunition to use against her, distracting from her qualifications.

It reminds me how Bill Clinton gave the Republicans their best ammunition when he got that blow job from Monica Lewinsky. No blow job, no year long distraction, no impeachment. Ms. Warren, please come clean faster, don't fight it, and don't hand anymore noisy stories to the GOP. Hopefully you and Scott Brown can get back to the issues, please!

What's really behind this plain face?

Photo: salon.com

NY9: Defeat of the hack

It's dangerous to write about a politics in a polity I don't have direct knowledge of. So I tread carefully into a discussion of NY9. Yesterday, the Republican candidate for the House seat won 54-46 over the Democrat in the heavily Democratic district. I won't say, as the RNC chairman did, that this election in Brooklyn and Queens "proves yet again that Obama is failing our country." Oh well, I guess that's what party chairman are paid to say. I haven't liked things coming out of the DNC chair's mouth either.

I have recent experience with unexpected special election upsets. In August 2009, Senator Edward Kennedy died, leaving his seat open. A party hack, Martha Coakley, won the Democratic nomination. Scott Brown, a moderate, won the Republican nomination. Brown got a lot of attention and support from national Tea Party groups, which have since labeled him a RINO.

So in the NY9 race, we have Weprin, a Democratic party hack who doesn't even live in the district. On the Republican side, we have Bob Turner, a conservative Catholic standard-issue Republican. I applaud NY9 for not electing the hack, and wish all other districts would elect the most sensible, moderate candidate.

Whoever picks the party's candidates, whether primary voters or party bosses, should consider this when making their choices. The election isn't going to be just a referendum on Obama. The next Congress will have a lot of work to do, but voters only get to choose from what is offered. Give them the best candidate you can, and try to decrease the deadlock in US government.

Throw the bums out

The problem with "throw the bums out" is that voters need an alternative. It's not unlike choosing a consumer good. If Brand A stinks, Brand B just got crappy, and there's no Brand C or D, you're kind of stuck. The '06 brand alternative was the Democratic House. The '08 alternative was Obama and an even more Democratic Congress. The '10 alternative was the Tea Party. Who is happy with those alternatives now?

I know the Ron Paul people think that he's the alternative this time, but I'm not buying it for a variety of reasons.

What I hope is that maybe, finally, we'll get some centrists back. Ideally, I'd like: fiscally realistic, wanting to gradually reduce the deficit starting now; socially modern; politically open to bipartisanship. I live in Massachusetts, and I've been happy with Scott Brown, probably for the same reasons the Tea Party consider him a turncoat.

I'd like to see centrists on both the Republican and Democratic sides and especially in the House. The Democrats may think the electorate will turn to them, but they also have a lot to apologize for, the first being their avoidance of the deficit issue.

Does anyone else think this is a possibility? If centrists aren't the alternative this time, I hate to think what-on-earth will be.