Fauxcahontas’s Claim of Discrimination Is — Surprise, Surprise — Almost Certainly a Lot of Bunk
[guest post by JVW]
The woman who many of us believe is on the fast track to becoming the Democrats’ nominee for President is once again caught peddling self-aggrandizing flim-flam. Senator Elizabeth Warren, notorious for using a bogus claim of Native American heritage in order to jump-start a career in legal academia which took her all the way to a endowed chair at Harvard Law School, has been spinning a yarn in her stump speech about how she was fired (or, to be perfectly accurate, not retained) in her position as a public school teacher in the Riverdale (New Jersey) School District. According to Lieawatha’s account, after teaching there in the 1970-71 school year she had intended to return in fall of 1971, but upon seeing that she was “visibly pregnant” the principal of her school “showed her the door.” Her daughter Amelia was born on September 2, 1971. Having allegedly been dismissed on account of her maternal status, young Mrs. Warren decided to attend law school and the rest, as they say, is history.
To be sure, once upon a time in America it was common for female public school teachers to be required to be single and/or childless. My next-door neighbor in my boyhood, born in 1901, had been a school teacher in our town in the early 1920s and was required to resign when she got married in 1927 because the school board’s policy back then was that only single women could teach. But I have a difficult time believing that the same sort of archaic policy existed in New Jersey nearly a half-century later even though, as Sen. Warren points out, federal law didn’t officially prohibit this sort of discrimination until a few years later.
Today, the Washington Free Beacon is calling out Senator Warren for her lies. They dug into the archives of the Riverdale School District, and made an interesting discovery in the school board meeting minutes from Spring 1971:
Minutes of an April 21, 1971, Riverdale Board of Education meeting obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show that the board voted unanimously on a motion to extend Warren a “2nd year” contract for a two-days-per-week teaching job. That job is similar to the one she held the previous year, her first year of teaching. Minutes from a board meeting held two months later, on June 16, 1971, indicate that Warren’s resignation was “accepted with regret.”
This version makes a great deal more sense in light of how Mrs. Warren herself described her teaching days over a decade ago in a speaking engagement at the University of California, Berkeley. Back then, the future candidate described the end of her teaching career coming when she appears to have soured on a career as a K-12 educator. Here’s how she characterized her brief teaching career back then:
“I went back to graduate school and took a couple of courses in education and said, ‘I don’t think this is going to work out for me,’” Warren said in the 2007 interview. “I was pregnant with my first baby, so I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years, and I was really casting about, thinking, ‘What am I going to do?’ My husband’s view of it was, ‘Stay home. We have children, we’ll have more children, you’ll love this.’ And I was very restless about it.”
Back then she was content to cast her future ex-husband as the caveman who encouraged her to stay barefoot and pregnant, but in the hyper-grievance world of 2019 that story is not interesting enough for the super-woke, so a sexist cro-magnon principal who can’t accept the idea of a working mother is assigned the role as the new villain. Like Barack Obama before her, however, this predilection for turning oneself into a martyr for civil rights comes at an unfair cost to the ancillary players in the story. Just as Mr. Obama unfairly maligned his high school basketball coach for denying him playing time because, according to the future President’s first autobiography, the coach thought young Barry’s game was “too black,” only to have biographer David Maraniss reveal that the lack of playing time was due to Barry’s shortcomings as a player, so too has Sen. Warren now unfairly maligned a flesh-and-blood person by turning him into an old-fashioned sexist in order to cast herself as a victim. I do sort of hope that the principal has gone on to his Heavenly reward and is not alive to see his reputation be so cynically shredded by a dishonest and calculating shrew.
Elizabeth Warren has thus far managed to get away with her phony use of affirmative action, her double standards, and her pretend populism largely because she has been for the most part a regional figure and the dominant newspaper in her market, The Boston Globe, tends to avoid any stories that shed an unfavorable light upon their Golden Girl. But now that she is firmly in the pantheon of national movers-and-shakers, the risk of her being exposed for her mendacity have increased. Sure, the Globe is as of his writing still silent on this particular story, but CBS News has picked it up in full as of last night, and other national outlets are following along. Here’s hoping that the Senator is at some point called on her hokum and bunkum.
[Note: Please don’t decide that a real elucidating comment on this post would be “Well, Trump lies all the time too, so there!” For one thing, we all know that the President habitually prevaricates about all things large and small, and will continue to do so until he takes his last breath on earth. Nobody but the most Trumpest Trumper would try to defend him on this, and the last thing we need is to have yet another post discussion hijacked by whataboutism. I thank you in advance for your consideration.]
– JVW
Riverdale? Clearly the staff member tasked with that one is either way young or pawned the job off on their daughter. Let me guess, Veronica Lodge’s family was the one behind her dismissal.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 10/8/2019 @ 12:18 pmKamala Harris, who grew up in progressive Berkeley and Montreal, has had to manufacture stories about neighborhood white kids not being allowed to play with her and being the Rosa Parks of school busing. Pete Buttigieg, who didn’t come out as gay until well into adulthood after he was already well-established in the South Bend community, has been forced to pretend that Mike Pence hates him for his sexual orientation. Joe Biden tells so many stupid self-aggrandizing stories that we have all lost count by now.
What a sad reflection on our country where Democrat candidates have to all play some form of the victim in order to survive the Woke Primary of 2020.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/8/2019 @ 12:19 pmLet me guess, Veronica Lodge’s family was the one behind her dismissal.
Veronica was a hottie.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/8/2019 @ 12:20 pmJVW got a type!!!
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 10/8/2019 @ 12:22 pmAnother fact mitigating against Sen. Warren’s version of the story is that she was teaching on an emergency credential (hence the line in her Berkeley speech at about needing to take grad school classes). That suggests that Riverdale had a shortage of teachers, especially perhaps in young Mrs. Warren’s field. If that’s the case, how stupid would a principal be to run off a young teacher who had already taught a year at the school?
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/8/2019 @ 12:25 pmThis “Wokiest Primary of 2020” is going to turn off everyone who’s not in the “rabid base” bucket. Whomever survives that Democratic primary is going to be so damaged that Trump would have ample ammo for the General Election.
The phrase “the ads write themselves” comes to mind… no need to outright fabricate “Romney gave a woman cancer – Romney tortured a dog – Romney put women in binders”. That statements during the primary gives Trump’s campaign strategist all the materials they’d need. (it’s starting to crop up already via Trump’s campaign Tweets, further forcasting that his campaign is in perpetual “trolling” mode).
whembly (fd57f6) — 10/8/2019 @ 12:26 pmCBS allows Ms. Warren to respond to the story, and adds some additional color to the story. I don’t think it’s clear she’s lying. Some exaggeration is possible.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/warren-stands-by-account-of-being-pushed-out-of-her-first-teaching-job-because-of-pregnancy/
Appalled (1a17de) — 10/8/2019 @ 12:41 pmPlease. Can’t help but chuckle over ‘CBS News’ “picking it up in full.”
Back in the day–[the rah-rah-Reagan ’80’s, not just the 70’s or late 60’s]– the “double standards” at CBS itself were still in full bloom– not just at Black Rock but up at the more isolated West 57th. It was the ‘unspoken’ rule amongst the male execs who still ran the shop. Ask Lesley Stahl– or better still, tagged and bagged Les Moonves, who got caught up in the changes. It wasn’t in stone, but, for instance, even w/a good resume we’d screen female secretarial staff not on their skill set–but their looks. No frumpies or ‘Plain-Janes’ at desks and work stations outside of executive offices. Image over substance still ruled in the Reagan Days. If a Warren-type had to be hired, she’d have been hidden in payroll, accounting– or personnel.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 10/8/2019 @ 12:52 pmNew details that support Warren.
https://www.mediaite.com/election-2020/new-details-support-elizabeth-warrens-claim-she-was-let-go-from-teaching-job-for-being-pregnant/
The Massachusetts senator did not dispute a recent report by the Washington Free Beacon, which found the local school board voted unanimously to renew her contract in April 1971. However, she told CBS News that neither her principal nor the school board were aware she was pregnant at the time her contract was renewed: “She had been hiding her pregnancy from the school.”
“I was pregnant, but nobody knew it. And then a couple of months later, when I was six months pregnant and it was pretty obvious, the principal called me in, wished me luck, and said he was going to hire someone else for the job.”
I don’t see a lie here. At the time a non-tenured, pregnant employee like Warren would have had little job security at Riverdale in 1971, seven years before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed,” CBS reports.
Montage (1e6ae2) — 10/8/2019 @ 1:02 pmIn her own mind perhaps she’s not lying, but her exaggerations have the effect of painting a picture that is at best entirely misleading. On April 21, 1971, towards the end of the school year, the school board voted to renew Sen. Warren’s contract and extend her emergency credential through the next school year. If her daughter was born close to the typical nine-month gestation date on September 2, Mrs. Warren would at that time have been approximately four-and-one-half months pregnant. I’m far from an expert, but according to this poster it would seem that her pregnancy would have been pretty obvious at that time, unless she was actively trying to conceal it. And if there is any truth to the claim that she was let go, why didn’t she characterize it that way in 2007 and why do the school board meeting minutes from that summer note that her resignation was accepted “with regret”?
One thing I would be willing to believe is that the Riverdale district found a speech teacher who actually had a valid credential, and perhaps union rules or some other such policy dictated that a credentialed teacher take precedence over a non-credentialed teacher. In that case, if Mrs. Warren was let go, this quote from her would be partially valid: “All I know is I was 22 years old, I was 6 months pregnant, and the job that I had been promised for the next year was going to someone else. The principal said they were going to hire someone else for my job.” But of course that’s way different from the contention that she was let go merely because she was pregnant, which I find nearly impossible to believe.
The only other possible way that I think she might be telling a version of the truth is if the school district discovered that she was due in early September (again, assuming that the baby was born on time) and determined that it would not be in their interest to have her miss the first 6-8 weeks of the school year on maternity leave. Because Mrs. Warren was not a full-time teacher in a permanent position, they decided to hire someone else. But if that were the case, why wouldn’t she have mentioned it in 2007? Her claim that she is just now coming to grips with whatever happened or whatever implausible excuse she is coughing up seems to me to be quite the stretch, especially given the fact that she plays fast and loose with the truth as it is. Plus, as far as I know, companies (and, presumably, school districts) are still allowed to require a minimum term of service before an employee is eligible for maternity leave.
But at the end of the day, I would place my bets on the idea that Mrs. Warren did what my own teacher mother did when she and my dad started a family, and voluntarily left her job in order to be home with her baby. But given the wokedy-woke sentiments a half century later and Warren’s need to bond with as many victim groups as possible, this becomes another feminist legend of how the patriarchy wanted to keep them barefoot and pregnant.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/8/2019 @ 1:06 pmRich democratic donor base on wall street and silicon valley say they won’t vote or donate to warrens campaign. Too bad she is not taking money from them in the first place. Sanders heart attack victim joe biden.
lany (1c57a0) — 10/8/2019 @ 1:09 pmThere is no evidence that EW was lying about this aspect of her biography.
Lying would indicate that she knows the truth and is deliberately not telling it. It is not lying if she does not know the truth and say something that is not true. Human memory is not a video recording. It gets re remembered every time you think about it. Obviously the older the memory, the more opportunities for not remembering accurately.
With that in mind, you need to ask how long ago was itand how important is it. This is decades ago and not that important.
I am sorry but you need a scale to judge against and a reason for caring about it.
The reason to care about it, is to determine her fitness to be President. And the only scale that you can use is to compare her to others. Is she more or less honest that Lindsay Graham who made specific statements at the impeachment of Clinton and very different from statement today. The change in statements is important. Is Warren more or less honest than Bill Clinton? Is Warren more or less honest than Dubya and Cheney who had facts before them and told lies.
And of course, is she more or less honest that the stable genius.
Sheldon Sheps101 (c1f6df) — 10/8/2019 @ 1:09 pmAgain, if she truly was let go because she was pregnant then why didn’t she note that at Berkeley in 2007, instead of strongly suggesting that it was her ex-husband who encouraged her to stay home with the baby? At worst the principal hired someone who either had a full teaching credential or who wouldn’t miss the first few weeks of school on leave. If she had been telling that story in 2007 then I might give her the benefit of the doubt. But as I wrote above, I am going to assume that she and her ex-husband made the decision that she wouldn’t come back to the school (again, recall that the school board minutes characterize her as having resigned from her position) and this folderol about the principal “showing her the door” is rube-bait for the feminists.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/8/2019 @ 1:12 pmWelcome to all of the Elizabeth Warren defenders who are new to the site and must have somehow heard that their hero was being criticized here!
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/8/2019 @ 1:13 pmToo bad she’s not a Republican, the msm would be having a field day.
Instead we get lol tripe:
The New York Times
@nytimes
Senator Elizabeth Warren further detailed her experience of losing a teaching job because of pregnancy, refuting a conservative news site’s challenge of her account. “I had an experience millions of women will recognize,” she tweeted.
__ _
.💀.Badaisè
@DBadaise
“I was on an “emergency certificate,” it was called. I went back to graduate school and took a couple of courses in education and said, “I don’t think this is going to work out for me.” I was pregnant with my first baby, so I had a baby and stayed home for a couple of years”
__ _
trick-or-treater
@neontaster
Replying to
@nytimes
That’s not what “refuting” means.
__ _
Stephen King’s RG Jordan
@RGJordanWords
Replying to
@nytimes
Let me know if y’all need a copy editor. I’m pretty cheap and words should be important to a large news organization like the NYT
_ _
Chris Smith
@PlutoniumPecker
It’s true!! Her experience mirrors my aunts. Aunt used to play cowboys and Indians with me as a kid. Pretended to be a Mohican! But aunt lacked foresight to parlay it into a career in academics.
harkin (58d012) — 10/8/2019 @ 1:17 pm_
Well at least we have all new defenders of leftists lying for the cause instead of the usual suspects.
NJRob (71791b) — 10/8/2019 @ 1:34 pmare we sure she’s not an android, or a zygon,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/8/2019 @ 1:38 pmTelling the truth by following the sequence of events as they have been reported is not defending Warren or being a ‘leftist’. It’s defending the sequence of events as they have been reported. As it has now been understood, Warren had her contract renewed before they learned she was pregnant. Once they learned she was pregnant they wished her well and let her go. This was common in that era. Pregnancy was considered a liability because a pregnant woman was considered not up to task and once she gave birth she would likely be out of work unless she had a wet nurse. So employers decided it was easier to let women go. And so long as women understood the arrangement it was not an issue. We’ve learned it is an issue because losing a job – especially with a new born – is an economic nightmare. And no one should tell a woman they should not get pregnant. Or they need to decide between one or the other.
Montage (1e6ae2) — 10/8/2019 @ 2:18 pmnice try, but that’s not what the minutes state,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/8/2019 @ 2:20 pmnarciso (d1f714)
Montage (1e6ae2) — 10/8/2019 @ 2:39 pmThanks for mentioning the Minutes. I agree it can look like she is stretching the truth. But note that it says she resigned and they accepted it [with regrets]. This doesn’t mean she wasn’t pressured to resign. Warren said, “the principal called me in, wished me luck, and said he was going to hire someone else for the job.” At which point there are only two options: get fired or resign. If the minutes are correct she resigned. But it could have been a mutually accepted resignation. [“Sorry to see you go but you’re pregnant – so you understand…”] Her daughter was born in September. The meeting was in June. This would mean she had no job. No one who needs the money quits 5 months before a child birth unless they have another job lined up. Maybe she did? Let’s see if there is more data.
there’s no indication of that, in fact, they were perfectly willing to hire her, another fraudulent representation of events, even farther back than 1986
narciso (d1f714) — 10/8/2019 @ 2:50 pmIt was the principal of the school and not the shaman of the River clan?
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2019 @ 3:11 pmapparently not:
https://www.investors.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-overtakes-joe-biden-democratic-presidential-nomination-race/
you win a prize, a poison chalice,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/8/2019 @ 3:25 pmI really dislike Warren and I have no idea if this is a lie, an example of discrimination that wasn’t captured in meeting minutes, or just bad human memory. But it’s hilarious watching Narciso stand up for accuracy for once.
Time123 (52fb0e) — 10/8/2019 @ 3:26 pmTo play devils advocate:
If I wanted a full time job and it was unanimously decided I would get to work 2 days a week, I would leave and consider it “getting the boot.”
Further, the fact that she had a contract the year before for 2 days a week may also have been less than she was looking for and due to the fact that she was pregnant.
Or not. But I don’t find this overwhelming evidence of a lie.
Nathan (5efffe) — 10/8/2019 @ 3:48 pmMontage:
As it has now been understood, Warren had her contract renewed before they learned she was pregnant.
No, that’s Sen. Warren’s claim and not an established fact. She was likely 4.5 months along at the time of renewal and it might have been apparent that she was pregnant. And frankly I will not take her at her word, based upon her past deceptions.
Warren said, “the principal called me in, wished me luck, and said he was going to hire someone else for the job.” At which point there are only two options: get fired or resign.
That does not follow at all. Remember that she’s a part-time teacher working on an emergency credential. It could be the case that she didn’t have a contract for the next year yet, and the principal called and told her that she wouldn’t be receiving one. But in that case why would there be any language about resignations in the school board meeting minutes at all? And how does Sen. Warren justify claiming she was “fired” if her contract was not renewed? It simply doesn’t add up.
We’ve learned it is an issue because losing a job – especially with a new born – is an economic nightmare.
You are evaluating what happened in 1971 by 2019 standards. There were millions of us back in those days who had mothers who made the decision to pause their careers when their children arrived. As many on both the left and the right are fond of reminding us, that decision was easier to make back when one income could generally support a family. (Her husband worked at IBM, by the way.) I agree that nowadays it is a tougher decision than it was then, but considering that Elizabeth Warren was able to attend law school once their daughter turned two, I kind of doubt they were living on food stamps or WIC in those years.
For what it’s worth, her Wikipedia page, which was more likely than not written by a fan, characterizes her years this way (emphasis added by me):
This language of “decided to stay at home” comports pretty nicely with the explanation she gave in the Berkeley speech. It’s only now that she has decided to run for President that suddenly it’s a bad guy principal who derailed her teaching career. As I said before, to me she has not earned the benefit of the doubt and I am not going to believe her new politically convenient narrative.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/8/2019 @ 3:53 pmI didn’t realize that Sen. Warren had a daughter who was so old. If elected, on Inauguration Day she will have a daughter who is 48. Has there ever been an older Presidential child on the first inauguration day? I can’t think of one. Maureen Reagan was 40 when her dad took the oath of office, and George W. Bush would have been 42. Elizabeth Bassett Harrison was around 45.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/8/2019 @ 4:03 pmJVW,
Time123 (52fb0e) — 10/8/2019 @ 4:04 pmThe important thing to remember about Warren is that she’s a populist with a protectionist trade policy who has support a weak dollar fiscal policy in the past. Combine that with being smart, hard working, experienced, and ruthless and no one that supports economic freedom, small government or the free market should give her the time of day.
Liewatha have two tongues. One tongue for when she powwow with soccer moms to say she “decided to stay at home to care for their daughter”, and another when she powwow with young working women to say she was fired when she became pregnant. I’m waiting for the story of how her parents had to drink cider for their wedding toast because the law prohibiting alcohol to Indians was not repealed until 1953.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2019 @ 4:22 pmyes she’s been shilling that firewater on oprah, camelbert and dr. phil, shes the one who came up with the ‘you didn’t build that’ which turned 2012 into an occupy election,
narciso (d1f714) — 10/8/2019 @ 4:32 pmJVW
Even if she ‘decided to stay home’ it does not mean that she was not let go from her teaching job. I’ll concede the economic reasoning is likely not correct. That was speculation on my part. Thanks for the wiki info. Since some teachers in 1971 did lose their jobs when they became pregnant it stands to reason that it could have happened to Warren. Did she create this story to pad her resume? Maybe. But two other retired teachers from the same district told CBS she would have been a target for dismissal once she became pregnant.
At this point, it comes down to believing or not believing Warren based on how one [dare I say] feels about her and her use of facts in the past. I have not liked some of her past prevarications but this one is not as easy to debunk as some of the others. I’m simply giving her the benefit of the doubt until facts show otherwise. Thanks.
Montage (1e6ae2) — 10/8/2019 @ 4:33 pm(anecdote, so make of it what you will) My mother was a special ed teacher in the early 70s and got pregnant in the spring of 73. It was her first year of teaching in the district (military moves young officers around a lot) so she was not tenured. When she told her principal she was pregnant, he told her she had two choices. She could either resign and retain the possibility of being rehired or she could choose not to and he would not reelect to hire her, which would make it difficult for her to be hired anywhere later. She chose to resign.
Do I have trouble with either of her stories? Not really. Both could both be true, neither could be true, either could be true. I’m more concerned about her policies than with a truthie story that certainly happened to a lot of women in a similar situation, whether or not it actually happened to her.
Nic (896fdf) — 10/8/2019 @ 4:52 pmNobody likes Warren, or cops to it in polite company. This could be a reverse Bradley and that’s scary.
urbanleftbehind (f6300a) — 10/8/2019 @ 4:59 pmAt this point, it comes down to believing or not believing Warren based on how one [dare I say] feels about her and her use of facts in the past. I have not liked some of her past prevarications but this one is not as easy to debunk as some of the others. I’m simply giving her the benefit of the doubt until facts show otherwise. Thanks.
Fair enough. Thanks for commenting.
JVW (54fd0b) — 10/8/2019 @ 5:00 pmI think the fact that her contract was renewed (in April) doesn’t necessarily mean her account is false. She was only four months pregnant then, and her pregnancy might not have been known to her employers.
What I don’t understand is: if she was having a kid at the beginning of the school year, how could they NOT hire a replacement for her. As I understand it, she was on a temporary, fill-in type contract and not in a permanent position. If she was giving birth in September, she would have been unable to fill-in and would have had to be replaced.
Dave (f7ed81) — 10/8/2019 @ 5:15 pm“Nuance.” The Democrats invented it in 2008, to replace “it depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is, and it’s still going strong.
nk (dbc370) — 10/8/2019 @ 5:25 pm@34 Assuming the terminology was similar in the 70s, a temporary employee is one that is on a year to year contract. Someone who is only short term is a substitute. So, they would have hired a sub to cover the part of the “temporary” 1 year contract that she would have been under.
Nic (896fdf) — 10/8/2019 @ 5:31 pmMaybe she was only 1/1024th “let go”.
If she was a Republican she would be crucified just for this:
https://images.hamodia.com/hamod-uploads/2019/02/06154033/eda18b9c-Untitled-2-1024×679.jpg
harkin (58d012) — 10/8/2019 @ 8:18 pm_
Living around idiots that voted for her to be senator without slapping them should be worth a nobel peace prize.
mg (8cbc69) — 10/9/2019 @ 2:29 amWarren is dishonest and scary and very angry. She and Bernie both snarl their way through every debate.
Patterico (115b1f) — 10/9/2019 @ 7:37 am39. Isn’t Warren the odds-on favorite at this point? Jeebus…that’s a sad commentary on the Dem electorate.
Gryph (08c844) — 10/9/2019 @ 8:49 amScott Brown lost to Warren the same way McSally lost to Sinemax, but by a larger margin reflecting a far more liberal state.
urbanleftbehind (5eecdb) — 10/9/2019 @ 8:56 amMeanwhile……..
PG&E and CA.gov making huge power play (pun intended) by shutting of power to a HUGE area of NoCal. Saying hot temps (53 right now) high winds (0 mph) were too dangerous to let the grid remain active. IMO this is just a ploy to raise rates and write in new indemnity features after horrific fire in Paradise (blamed on faulty PGE equip) forced them into bankruptcy.
Got a phone message yesterday that power could be out FIVE DAYS. We lost our power at 2am this morning.
If the state lets them get away with this it has to because they’ve already agreed on a split of the proceeds.
harkin (cc5504) — 10/9/2019 @ 9:22 amI do sort of hope that the principal has gone on to his Heavenly reward and is not alive to see his reputation be so cynically shredded by a dishonest and calculating shrew.
I’m sure he has, or he could easily sue. Warren isn’t stupid.
Kevin M (19357e) — 10/9/2019 @ 9:22 amWarren is a world class liar. I was going to say Trump is a poor liar so maybe lying skill isn’t a big advantage, but she’s at the top of the heap, and so is he, so I suppose the most important skill in either political party is willpower to lie, and not necessarily skill.
Warren is better than Hillary as a politician. She’s much smarter and healthier. She probably actually has a plan for what to do if she wins office, rather than scratching some itch to break a glass ceiling for the sake of being first. Conservatives may have a hard time appreciating this, but she’s going to have a lot of the same energy Obama 2008 had.
Trump 2020 is a much weaker politician than the Trump 2016 that lost to Hillary by millions of actual votes. He’s got a really well proven and stubborn base that will donate and work hard for him, even if Trump literally imposes communism and is caught in bed with children, but he’s so scandalized. He’s done so much for Putin, damaged so many alliances, managed the budget so poorly, and struggled to get some part of a wall built on executive action. He has no lasting legislative accomplishment, and most of his grand promises that got him in office promised sweeping deals and triumphs that ‘politicians’ lacked Trump’s ability to reach. Clearing the nation’s debt, eliminating ISIS (we’ll probably see hundreds of freed ISIS now, thanks to Turkey and Trump), fixing the immigration problem, eliminating Obamacare… Trump said he would do it in 2016, but even his fans know he can’t do anything. We used to bash Obama for only having one major legislative accomplishment, but that’s one more than Trump has.
If the GOP is very lucky, Pelosi gives the Senate a chance to convict him before it’s too late, and the GOP runs someone interesting like Nicki Haley, it’s hard to see why that’s not a really good thing.
Dustin (6d7686) — 10/9/2019 @ 9:47 amReading the CBS piece it does seem like she has some wiggle room, and that will be all it takes for Her Inevitability to wriggle out of it. Again.
Kevin M (19357e) — 10/9/2019 @ 10:12 amWarren is a world class liar. I was going to say Trump is a poor liar so maybe lying skill isn’t a big advantage
Until recently, Trump has never had people around him who dared to call him on his lies. He never had to learn — he lies like a five-year-old. The rest of us have had to refine our skills over time, as when we have to lie (as seldom as that may be) it matters that they believe us.
Kevin M (19357e) — 10/9/2019 @ 10:15 am“Trump 2020 is a much weaker politician than the Trump 2016 that lost to Hillary by millions of actual votes.“
Too bad they didn’t understand how the election worked. More people might realize she lost. Or she might have actually cared about Wisconsin.
harkin (cc5504) — 10/9/2019 @ 10:23 amTrump beat Hillary by beating her in a bunch of blue-collar union states. It is amazing the lengths that people will go to ignore that central fact of the 2016 election.
Hillary lost because the Democrat Party had lost blue-collar labor. Instead of trying to win them back, the Democrats have doubled down on open borders, trade with China, and weird sex.
Trump won the GOP nomination because the GOP was ignoring US workers as well. But the GOP (to the consternation of those who champion fully open borders for labor and goods) has been dragged to the light and seems likely to retain that US labor vote. The only thing that will stop that will be the media convincing blue-collar workers that they benefit from having their manufacturing jobs shipped to China.
Kevin M (19357e) — 10/9/2019 @ 2:05 pmVery good point, Kevin. Step one to recovering from Trump is not to recognize the democrats are terrible. That’s just lazy partisanship. Step one is recognizing that the Romney wing of the party has been ignoring a lot of important issues.
We can all agree with this without supporting Trump. In fact, we can largely agree that Trump has cynically exploited this opening. A lot of people are just frustrated with PC politics, immigration electioneering, and deficit spending, and wanted to send a loud “EFF YOU” vote, knowing Trump would fail.
It is amazing to me that they took this path, but the democrats are in disarray. They are as divided as the GOP is. They all hate eachother. Any candidate trying to be moderate is laughed out of the room. I think Joe Biden is as moderate as they can do, and that’s amazing.
Dustin (6d7686) — 10/9/2019 @ 2:11 pmNo one is arguing Trump isn’t the legitimate president, but millions more American voters rejected him, and that does mean something to his mandate. There’s a reason Trump has zero legislative accomplishments. Why would anyone work with someone who A) is a con artist and B) most of the country rejected?
Trump had a poor showing against Hillary, who no one likes. And he’s much more scandalized now, running against someone who is probably a better candidate by a wide margin. I know these facts aren’t helpful to Trump… it’s kinda like that whole collusion thing. Maybe it wasn’t anything they can prosecute, but it doesn’t feel very honest.
Dustin (6d7686) — 10/9/2019 @ 2:15 pm“Trump 2020 is a much weaker politician than the Trump 2016 that lost to Hillary by millions of actual votes.”
I know someone had already pointed out the weirdness of this much bandied about leftist talking point, but Clinton won California by 3M votes, she lost the rest of the US by 2M votes, or some such.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 10/9/2019 @ 2:36 pmIf chosen, Warren will be the cantdidate that shows where the US voters are on socialism.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 10/9/2019 @ 2:41 pmNot socialism at all because the grand promises to take care of everybody were lies.
Dustin (6d7686) — 10/9/2019 @ 3:14 pmRepublicans have never been thought of as honest. Bend over and take it is the picture they have been projecting for decades.
mg (8cbc69) — 10/9/2019 @ 3:23 pmOT, but of interest… Sen. Tom Cotton unloads on ICIG Michael Atkinson:
“Your disappointing testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on September 26 was evasive to the point of being insolent and obstructive… Despite repeated questions, you refused to explain what you meant in your written report by ‘indicia of an arguable political bias on the part of a rival political candidate’… this information is, of course, unclassified and we were meeting in a closed setting. Yet you moralized about how you were duty bound not to share even a hint of this political bias with us.”
“But now I see media reports that you revealed to the House Intelligence Committee not only that the complainant is a registered Democrat, but also that he has a professional relationship with a Democratic presidential campaign… I’m dissatisfied, to put it mildly, with your refusal to answer my questions, while more fully briefing the three-ring circus that the House Intelligence Committee has become.”
https://www.cotton.senate.gov/files/documents/IG%20Letter.pdf
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 10/9/2019 @ 6:00 pm…and if this is true, then truly “none of the above” is worthy of consideration: http://twitter.com/kausmickey/status/1182023029955555328?s=20
urbanleftbehind (290829) — 10/9/2019 @ 6:05 pm13. JVW (54fd0b) — 10/8/2019 @ 1:12 pm
Well, actually, in the 2007 version, that would have been a decision, sometime later, maybe even two or three years later, after the baby could be put into day care or nursery school, in fact after she had already had another child, not to seek another job.
Not a decision she would not come back to the school. A decision not to go back to teaching, MADE SEVERAL YEARS LATER!
At that point, she was “casting about” – wondering what to do with her life now, and was not satisfied with the idea of teaching. And her husband told her: Just have more children; we don’t need to stop at two; you’ll be happy; but she wanted something else more.
In her 2007 event, she says nothing about why she no longer continued as a teacher, but seems to indicate it was the natural result of having just had a child.
What was the date of her resignation? June 16?
Now this could have been a polite lie, and for that we’d have to know what happend with other pregnant women, but if she didn’t get special severance, why would she give up her right to unemployment insurance? If a person quits a job voluntarily, they don’t get unemployment insurance.
Sammy Finkelman (5b302e) — 10/10/2019 @ 9:14 amThe fact that her story in 2007 is not really acontradiction, because it’s about why she didn’t go back to teaching after her children were no longer so small, but it doesn’t make her story true about not leaving her job in Riverdale voluntarily. In 2007, she didn’t find it necessary to explain why she didn’t have a job after her fist child was born.
Sammy Finkelman (5b302e) — 10/10/2019 @ 9:17 amGet PSC Result 2019
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