Elizabeth warren

There’s a funny silence where the complaints about ‘money in politics’ used to be. The latest numbers on amounts spent on TV ads have billionaires Mike Bloomberg and Tom Steyer at $153.1 million and $116.5 million, respectively. Yet no viral pieces have been written, no passionate speeches given about their corrupting influence. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have given lip service to them, sure, but it’s been very muted. Warren told Rachel Maddow that Bloomberg is ‘skipping the democracy part of this’ because his lack of fundraising means he can’t participate in the debates. Of course, anyone who tells you they believe Warren actually would want Bloomberg in the debates is lying to you.

If you need help talking with the children in your life about the aftermath of the ethical collapse of most of the American media, here’s a guide to explaining the topic.I refer, of course, to TIME’s offer of scripts for concerned parents: ‘If you need help talking with the children in your life’ — as opposed to the children you’ve casually seeded in other people’s lives — ‘about the aftermath of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani’s killing.

It may be only the third time in American history the president has been impeached but it’s the first time no one gives a damn, not even the Democratic party itself. If that preamble didn’t perfectly set the tone for the last Democratic debate of the decade, a bubbling labor union dispute that nearly shut down the event at Loyola Marymount University this week in Los Angeles, certainly did. Couple that with the troublemakers who vandalized the LMU hillside monogram with large ‘Trump 2020’ letters, visible from the busy Pacific Coast Highway.Also ahead of the debate, a mopey splash on CNN’s front page, one of two networks to broadcast it, bemoaned ‘the smallest and least diverse Democrat debate.

Fear not everyone — there are only seven Democratic debates left this cycle. As if the prospect of a fifth in six months wasn't exhausting enough, the Atlanta bonanza kicked off after 11 hours of impeachment hearings. No wonder the spin room was more muted than usual. Host Rachel Maddow opened proceedings with an impeachment question, making the huge assumption that most viewers had watched them (they hadn't). Of the senators running, only Bernie Sanders didn't take the bait. 'We should not be consumed by Donald Trump', he said, 'we can deal with Trump's corruption, but we also have to stand up for the working families of this country.' Much of the night appeared like business as usual.

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. Absent the appearance of a last-minute deus (or dea) ex machina, and always keeping in mind Harold Wilson’s observation that a week is a long time in politics, the bookies are coalescing around the prediction that the Democratic nominee for president will be Big Squaw E. Warren, senator from Massachusetts, purveyor of authentically fake ‘Pow Wow Chow’ which experts reckon are 0.1024 percent Cherokee, the same as paleface Warren herself. It was only yesterday, it seems, that the Democratic field was teeming with candidates. Whither Spartacus Booker and his imaginary friend T-Bone? What price Kamala Harris? Who remembers Mayor Pete?

This article is in The Spectator’s November 2019 US edition. Subscribe here. How did Elizabeth Warren, a left-wing populist, become the candidate of Democrats who dislike left-wing populism? Why is it fine for Warren to menace the rich — but not for Bernie Sanders? With some polls placing her ahead of the former vice president Joe Biden, the Massachusetts senator is suddenly basking in praise from mainstream newspapers as well as ‘progressives’ like Emily Tisch Sussman, a ‘Democratic strategist’ who appears regularly on MSNBC. Led by its star hosts, Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow, MSNBC functions as the mouthpiece of an official Democratic party still dominated by the Clintons and Barack Obama.

Tuesday night’s presidential debates reminded Americans of the opposition party’s greatest superpower, shapeshifting, as the candidates we’ve come to know for race-baiting, fear-mongering, open borders and other Squad-inspired talking points took a dramatic turn toward discussing actual policy. It was the most pragmatic, and therefore least entertaining, of the four Democratic National Committee-sponsored debates so far and seemed to further prove the party’s absolute cluelessness in getting a foothold in this brand new style of wartime politics invented by Donald Trump.

The great ‘Bernie vs. Warren’ online wars have yet to fully commence, and the current state of affairs resembles something like an uneasy pre-conflict standoff. No tentative pact between the candidates themselves can last forever and early shots have already been fired from their respective squadrons: small skirmishes or drills that precede the outright warfare. Political prognosticators tend to lump Bernie and Warren into the same generic ‘progressive’ category, but for their most committed backers — the ones who will be in the online trenches — the differences are vast and unbridgeable. For the devout socialists, Bernie represents a once-in-a-generation (or even lifetime) opportunity.

Get your skates on! The Democrats on Ice roadshow rolls into Houston this evening, and the media are poised for a slip-up. Tonight is the night Brooklyn-based content creators have been yearning for: when Joe Biden finally lines up alongside the Anointed One, Elizabeth Warren. Surely it's here, they speculate, that Uncle Joe will commit one blunder too many and the era of Elizabeth will be ushered in. How's he gonna mess it up? Will he call Cory Booker 'Barack'? Maybe both eyeballs will explode this time? Gosh I can't wait! Liberals online are so fixated on the narrative of 'Biden gaffe-Warren competent', that they're not considering a series of other possibilities.

If you blinked, you probably missed it: a rather interesting 2020 presidential poll came out this week. Not one of the endless tracking polls that flood RealClearPolitics and FiveThirtyEight – websites anxiously refreshed dozens of times per day by political obsessives. This poll in some sense offers a more illuminating picture of the state of the Democratic primary race. Reporter Tom Lobiondo revealed the results of a secret survey gauging the sentiments not of the general voting public, but the party consultant class. Democratic operative types now overwhelmingly think Elizabeth Warren will be the nominee.

Like some Hobbit or Harry Potter film from 10 years ago, the Democratic debates this summer are so epic in length they must be divided into two parts, each an hours-long endurance test subjecting viewers to candidates 10 at a time, only two or three of whom per night have ever been heard of before. Tuesday’s most familiar faces were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the most left-wing of the serious contenders for the nomination. Pete Buttigieg and Beto O’Rourke were the almost-famous figures, the second-tier actors you know you’ve seen before but can’t quite place.

The DNC are ditching porn stars, yacht rides and Pitbull for rusty motors and the 8 Mile Road, as the Democratic primary circus rolls from one Art Deco metropolis to another. In Detroit as in Miami, 20 contenders will face each other in sets of 10 across two nights. Funnily enough, the debacle will take place in the Fox Theater, though of course CNN will be hosting. Anderson Cooper breathlessly announced which Democrats would debate each other on which night during an hour-long special Thursday. For all the complaints about Trump turning politics into reality television, the major networks don't half lean into it. Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg find themselves shunted to the undercard night with Elizabeth Warren, as they will take the stage on Tuesday July 30.

In recent weeks, Elizabeth Warren has emerged as the mainstream media’s favorite candidate – for now, at least. Warren’s polling has largely been stagnant over the course of the race for the Democratic nomination, but you wouldn’t know it from the fawning coverage – coverage that just so happens to consistently echo the Warren campaign’s exact talking points. The New York Times asks ‘Elizabeth Warren is running an ideas-first campaign. Will it work?’ The Washington Post writes, ‘Warren’s nonstop ideas reshape the Democratic presidential race — and give her new momentum.

In the outlandishly deep and diverse 2020 presidential field, Elizabeth Ann Warren cuts an anonymous figure. She’s female and running for the White House, but so are Tulsi Gabbard, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand. She’s a 69-year-old second term senator – not a green first-termer like Kamala Harris, but she’s no Joe Biden. She’s an economic populist, but so is, ostensibly, the president, not to mention her neighbor, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. The only distinctive moments of her political life in recent months are embarrassments: the much-mocked claim of Native American heritage and a cringe-inducing beer swilling exercise. Long talked about as a nominee-in-waiting, Warren’s campaign so far has failed to establish any great momentum.