Tag Archives: Elizabeth Warren

national news, political news, State news

Cruz didn’t expect sacrifice when running for POTUS?

cruz

Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren put a funny note out on social media this morning.

It concerns a fundraisingĀ message she said went out from the presidential campaign of her fellow senator, Republican Ted Cruz of Texas. It says in part, according to Warren:

“Yesterday, Ted Cruz sent a campaign fundraising email whining about the ‘significant sacrifice’ heā€™s made to run for President. He whined about facing constant attacks, nonexistent family time, his limited health and sleep, and having no personal time.

“Are you kidding me? Weā€™re supposed to pity him because trying to be the leader of the free world is hard?! Iā€™ve got two words for you, Ted: Boo hoo.”

She goes on to say that those who don’t work for a livable wage are suffering far more than Cruz; she added some other criticism as well.

I just want to focus briefly, though, on the “sacrifice” that Cruz is making while seeking the highest office in the land.

It is just this: He knew going in that he was going to give up family time and personal time, adequate sleep and, yes, he would face “constant attacks.”

He knew the price would be steep.

I’m guessing Cruz’s donors expected him as well to pay that price.

Presidential politics isn’t for the faint-hearted. It’s a tough business.

As another Texan — the late, great U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen — used to say, politics is a “full-contact sport.”

John Edwards, political news

OK, Mr. Veep, which is it? In or out?

biden

Vice President Joe Biden is driving me nuts.

Just when I think he’s going to jump into the 2016 Democratic presidential primary race, he makes me think he’s going to think twice and not go.

Then the guy hires a communications chief who once worked for former Sen. John Edwards’s — yes, that John Edwards — ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign.

Kate Bedingfield is her name. I won’t hold her former job as flack for one of recent political history’s more notorious marital infidels against her.

ā€œShe will be a key adviser to me, a terrific asset to our office, and an important member of the entire White House organization,ā€ Biden said in a statement. Of course he had to couch it in terms of her working for the vice president’s office and becoming such a key member of the “White House organization.”

She reportedly is a first-rate PR expert. That ratchets up the chatter about the vice president’s political ambitions.

Is he in or out?

Biden met this past weekend with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who’s the darling of the far left of her party. She, too, has been considered a possible presidential candidate, even though she has virtually eliminated any possibility of her running. I did say “virtually,” yes?

What was that meeting all about? Was he seeking her endorsement? Is he looking for further assurance that she’s really, really and truly not a candidate in 2016? Might he be sounding her out about joining him on a prospective Democratic ticket?

Only they know. They ain’t tellin’.

I made need a tranquilizer before this is all over.

Today — as opposed to just the other day — that fake trick knee of mine is telling me the vice president wants to make one more run at the Big Job.

He’s just got that one obstacle standing in front of him: Hillary Rodham Clinton. But now it appears she’s been damaged …Ā maybe, possibly. That e-mail mess is getting harder to clean up.

Is the vice president now poised to rescue the Democratic Party and from its far left fringe, which now seems enamored of Sen. Bernie Sanders?

Time is running out, Mr. Vice President.

We need a decision. Soon.

And my hunch is that is exactly what Kate Bedingfield is telling him.

 

national news

Obama a sexist? That's a good one

Barack Obama has been called a lot of things during his time as president of the United States.

Socialist. Islamic terrorist sympathizer. Kenyan. Weak-kneed liberal. Un-American.

What else? I guess those are some of the worst epithets hurled at him … mostly from politicians and talking heads associated with Republicans.

Now comes this. From a Democratic U.S. senator, Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

The president is a sexist.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/sherrod-brown-barack-obama-gender-role-elizabeth-warren-spat-117866.html?hp=b1_l1

Brown didn’t like the way Obama lectured Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., over her opposition to the fast-track trade deal the president favors with a dozen Asian nations.

The president was being “disrespectful” of Warren, Brown said.

Here’s how Politico reports it: When asked how Obama was being disrespectful of the Massachusetts Democrat, Brown replied: ā€œI think by just calling her ā€˜another politician.ā€™ā€ He continued, ā€œIā€™m not going to get into more details. I think referring to her as first name, when he might not have done that for a male senator, perhaps? Iā€™ve said enough.ā€

The dreaded “first name” reference is a sure sign of “disrespect,” according to Brown.

He needs to listen to audio conversations the president has had with many members of both legislative branches, members of both genders. He routinely calls people by their first name. There was that notable exchangeĀ during a White House budget negotiation early in his presidency when Obama lectured “John” on hisĀ concerns about how to come to a budget deal. “John” was none other than Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., who kept referring to Obama as “Mr. President.”

I agree that Barack Obama perhaps ought to reciprocate in these public exchanges with fellow politicians who adhere to using the courtesy title of “Mr. President” when addressing him. Use of the word “senator” or “congressman” or “congresswoman” would return the respect they show him.

However, it’s foolish to suggest that Sen. Warren’s gender makes it easier for this president to be “disrespectful” in the way he scolds those with whom he disagrees.

I’m waiting now for Sen. Brown to tell us what happened when his office phone rang. “Senator, the president is on the line for you. Hello, Sherrod … ?”

 

national news, political news

Intraparty squabble good for political soul

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President Obama says Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., “is wrong” to oppose him on a free trade proposal with a dozen Asian countries.

OK. So, the Democrats are now squabbling.

Meanwhile, Republican candidates for president are taking pot shots at each other over a wide range of issues, with tax policy and immigration leading the way.

There. Now the Republicans are fighting.

Is this bad? Do these intraparty squabbles harm our form of government?

Not in the least.

https://www.yahoo.com/politics/why-obama-is-happy-to-fight-elizabeth-warren-on-118537612596.html

So far it’s been mostly a GOP fight. Democrats have been fairly quiet in assessing each other.

Until now.

Warren has emerged as the far left’s champion — oh, maybe co-champ, along with independent socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, who ‘s running for president as a Democrat. A lot of lefties want Warren to run. She’s said everything but the categorical refusal to run for president in 2016. She keeps couching her intentions in the present tense — “I am not running” or “I have no interest” in running. None of those responses eliminates the possibility of her changing her mind.

She disagrees with a free trade deal with Asian nations. The president stands by his insistence that freer trade with our Pacific partners is a good deal for the country.

So, let’s continue to debate this issue.

It strengths our political process to have these fights within our respective major parties.

It’s going to test the mettle of the parties’ nominees when they emerge from their party fracases.

And, yes, that includes you, too, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

 

national news, political news

No diversity on Democratic bench? C'mon!

The Hill newspaper has a headline that shouts that actual and potential Democratic candidates for president lack “diversity.”

The Democratic “bench” is too, um, bland … or some such thing.

Hold on here.

http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/239460-democrats-have-no-bench-and-no-diversity-in

The trio of mug shots that accompany the news story attached here tell me something quite different.

* Hillary Rodham Clinton is, quite obviously, a woman. She was first lady for eight years from 1993 until 2001. She served in the U.S. Senate and then as secretary of state. Enough said there.

* Jim Webb is a former U.S. senator from Virginia. He’s a Vietnam War veteran. He saw combat as a Marine. He served in the Reagan administration, not exactly a bastion of progressive principles.

* Bernie Sanders is an independent U.S. senator from Vermont. He’s a card-carrying, say-it-loud-and-proud socialist. He makes no bones about his share-the-wealth philosophy.

I won’t mention Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who keeps saying she isn’t running.

Oops. I just did.

Those three individuals look pretty diverse to me. They each bring a different set of governing principles to a presidential campaign.

Only one of them, Clinton, has declared her candidacy.Ā Webb has formed an exploratory committee, while Sanders is keeping his options open.

I get what The Hill means, though, about the lack of “diversity.” It refers to the Republican field that so far has two Hispanic candidates — Sens. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. There well might be a woman, Carly Fiorina, in the mix as well. An African-American, Ben Carson, is likely to run.

Let us not dismiss the potential Democratic primary field as being bland and one-note boring.

Among the possible field of three — Clinton, Webb and Sanders — one can find plenty of ideological diversity.

national news, political news

HRC set to launch bid; now the fun really begins

You may take this to the bank.

The moment Hillary Rodham Clinton declares her candidacy for the presidency is when the campaign for the White House becomes really and truly a blast.

Clinton is set to announce her candidacy on Sunday. She’ll make known what almost every political junkie on Planet Earth has known all along. She wants to make history by becoming the first woman president of the world’s greatest power.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/exclusive-hillary-clinton-to-launch-presidential-campaign-on-sunday-en-route-to-iowa-%e2%80%93-source/ar-AAaFyvT

Why the “blast” factor?

Because the growing horde of Republican candidates are going to set their sights on Clinton. They are going to virtually ignore each other. They’re going to be talking to their party’s base voters, trying to persuade them that only they — and no one else — can defeat the Democratic nominee in November 2016.

As for Clinton’s possible Democratic primary rivals, a couple of them are beginning to show themselves in public. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has talked openly about running. Just this seek, former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, a one-time Republican who’s turned Democrat, announced plans to form an exploratory committee to help him decide whether to run.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mass.? She says she isn’t running for the White House, but she has yet to make that statement that she won’t run change her mind between today and, say, the day after tomorrow.

Many on the left and far left yearn for an alternative to Clinton. Meanwhile, many on the right and far right think the former U.S. senator, secretary of state and first lady is as evil as her husband, the former president and the current president.

Oh, boy. This campaign is going to be worth watching.

Go for it, Hillary!

 

national news, political news

Beware of big money, former Sen. Hart warns

Former Vice President Walter Mondale once asked famously of then-Sen. Gary Hart: Where’s the beef?

He sought to smoke out Hart’s position on the issues that were driving the 1984 Democratic Party primary presidential campaign.

These days, though, the former senator is giving us plenty to chew on as he warns of the influence of big money — as in really big money — on the upcoming 2016 campaign for president.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/gary-hart-hillary-clinton-2016-billion-dollar-campaign-116673.html?hp=l2_3

Hart’s target? Former Sen. and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who figures to raise as much as a billion bucks to run for president. Hart doesn’t like that kind of influence. While he expresses admiration and respect for Clinton, he sounds like he’s leaning toward a possible alternative candidate for president — say, Elizabeth Warren or Martin O’Malley.

As Politico reported: “The post-Citizens United campaign finance environment has sullied the presidential process, he said, benefiting establishment politicians who cater to financial backers. He pointed to his own experience, noting that he and his wife mortgaged their home for between $50,000 and $75,000 ā€” an amount that made a significant difference in his first campaign in 1984.”

Ah, yes, Citizens United.

That was the infamous Supreme Court decision that ruled in 2010 that campaign contributors cannot be limited in the amount of money they give. Why, it’s a free speech issue, the court ruled. President Obama then stood in the lectern at a State of the Union speech and scolded the justices as they sat right in front of him for their decision. Although the setting was inappropriate for such a tongue-lashing, the guts of what the president said hold up today: It is that money wields too much influence in the modern political process.

Those who suggest that enabling corporations to give mountains of money to candidates is simply allowing “free speech” do not seem to grasp that some speech is heard more clearly than others. Politicians are going to listen to those who can give huge sums of money more than they’ll listen to you and me.

Is their voice more important than ours?

That’s the kind of influence Sen. Hart is warning us about.

Gary Hart hasĀ found the beef.

 

political news

New folks hogging all the air time

Ted Cruz has done it. So has Tom Cotton. The two Republican senators,Ā  from Texas and Arkansas, respectively, have managed to muscle their way onto our TV screens and into our local newspapers with their actions, even though they’ve been on the job such a short time.

Same with Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic senatorĀ from Massachusetts. She’s been on the job about two years and she’s everyone’s go-to gal when the subject of Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy comes up.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/04/01/elizabeth_warren_dems_must_emphasize_differences_with_gop.html

I posted a blog earlier this week about the late Edward Kennedy’s adherence to Senate tradition, how he didn’t make a floor speech until he’d been in office for a year.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2015/04/01/r-i-p-ted-kennedys-u-s-senate/

All bets are off these days. The new folks are not bashful at all about hogging up media air time and space.

Cruz is running for president. Cotton drafted that letter to the Iranian mullahs and recommended they reject a nuclear deal worked out by the United States.

Now it’s Warren.

Didn’t she say she “is not a candidate for president” in 2016? Why are the media still digging around the roots of that story?

Is she going to challenge Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party primary or not? I thought she was declarative in her statement about not running. Oh, wait. She spoke in the present tense. “I am not running,” she said, if memory serves. That means the door is still slightly open for her to change her mind.

These new senators — and House members, too — are overshadowing the senior members.

Republican Orrin Hatch? He’s nowhere to be seen or heard. Democrat Barbara Boxer? She’s announced her impending retirement — and that’s been it. Republican Thad Cochran? He almost lost the GOP primary in Mississippi but got renominated on the strength of African-Americans who didn’t want the other guy to win. Democrat Patty Murray? She’s been as quiet as Hatch.

The new folks keep showing up. They’re everywhere.

The “new normal” in Washington is to let the newbies have the floor.

 

national news, political news

Morris 'thinks' a lot of things

Dick Morris has been “thinking” a lot lately.

He thinks Barack Obama wants Elizabeth Warren, not Hillary Clinton, to succeed him in the White House.

He thinks the White House leaked the Clinton email story to the press to torpedo the former secretary of state’s presidential ambitions.

He thinks the email controversy will linger the way the Watergate scandal did in 1973-74.

Obama wants Warren over Clinton, Dick Morris says

How does The Hill columnist, former Bill Clinton pollster and one-time Fox News contributor know all of this? Hard to say. He just thinks it.

This kind of peanut-gallery analysis slays me.

Dick Morris hardly is an insider in the Obama White House. He’s become a fierce critic of the president and, for that matter, of Hillary Clinton. Does he have some inside knowledge? He might be moonlighting these days as a mind reader, for all I know.

Warren says she will not run for president. The president isn’t likely to endorse a party nominee prior to the convention next year. As for the email matter, the only reason is will remain in the public eye is because critics, such as Morris, will ensure that people like me keep commenting on it.

How credible is Morris’s thought process on these political matters?

In the days prior to the 2012 presidential election, he thought Mitt Romney would win in a landslide.

It didn’t work out that way.

 

national news, political news

HRC's email tempest is going to build

Oh, how I was hoping Hillary Rodham Clinton would quell the unrest over her use of private email accounts while she was secretary of state.

Silly me. I knew it likely wouldn’t, but I was hanging on to a glimmer of hope.

Her press conference today likely guaranteed this tempest is going to follow her onto the 2016 presidential campaign trail, assuming that she makes the race — which everyone in the know seems to think will happen.

Clinton fails to calm email storm

She said something today about deleting tens of thousands of private emails from her server at home. She said she never breached national security with private communications. Clinton said she used the private account for “convenience” sake and said if she could do it over, she would have used the State Department account to communicate about State Department matters.

Her critics on the right — led by Fox News and other conservative mainstream media — will ensure that this matter keeps bubbling up.

Now, though, her critics on the left are likely to start beating the bushes for an alternative candidate to seek the Democratic presidential nomination next year. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts says she won’t seek the presidency.

Hmmm. Can she be talked into running? I’m betting some operatives are going to try.

This email matter hasn’t risen to the level of “scandal,” as some on the right have called it. But it does raise some questions — in my mind, at least — about whether Clinton kept public information away from public scrutiny.

This mess is far from being cleaned up.