The Very Real Possibility of President Elizabeth Warren
-- Can she beat Trump? There’s a plan for that
Not too many campaign websites first ask visitors if they are unsure about the candidate in question. But if you click the “I’m not sure yet” button on the ElizabethWarren.com launch page, you can enter your email before answering the question “What’s holding you back?” one of three ways. Two replies are typical for 160-some days before the Iowa caucuses: “I’m not ready to make a decision” and “I have questions about Elizabeth’s policy positions.”
It’s the one between those, though, that most captures the zeitgeist of the still-young primary contest for the Democratic presidential nomination: “I’m not sure Elizabeth can win.”
A few thousand people who disagreed with that sentiment piled into the Shrine Expo Hall on the University of Southern California’s campus early Wednesday evening. A good hour before Warren’s town hall began with a raffle to determine who would get to ask her questions later that night, the faint odor of spilt, fermented beer wafted through the lower level, stage left — likely some resilient residue from an earlier event. The smell itself didn’t fit the early-evening, family vibe of the Massachusetts Senator’s supporters, and frankly, they hadn’t been there long enough for it to smell like a post-victory celebration locker room. But the spirit it conveyed was a perfect match: Most everyone there to see Elizabeth Warren was as giddy as if the title were in sight.
There was, however, that damned specter of “electability” also was wafting through the room. It was much less odorous but no less repugnant. This phantom is conjured in virtually all discussions about the Democratic primary contest, derived largely from archetypes of older white men whom Americans are more accustomed to seeing run for office and therefore electing. It smothers critical thinking about the presidential race so much that it appears that many are convinced that “electability” is indeed a living, breathing thing when it is in fact an apparition, a hasty creation of the party elites and pundit classes that serves as a convenient substitute for the vetting that desperately needs to occur before a nominee goes up against President Trump next fall. Even though more than 160 days remain between now and the first Iowa caucus, this unanswerable question lingers more prominently than do major quandaries about candidate qualifications.
Warren communicates as much with her body language as with her words. Making a few jokes that land early, she exhibits a disarming manner — “Let me tell you a little bit about myself,” she says, before going into her family history and her college career, her limbs getting looser as she breaks down her points.
Her voice is invigorating all the way through, and even as she is breaking down a topic to its bones, it doesn’t feel like only rah-rah fodder for the NPR crowd. This is a fairly multiracial group who clearly gives a shit about whether they get a president who can do the job after winning the election, and she is respecting their intelligence.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politic...h4YcMjOz5l-Z0Q
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