Last week the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, campaigned in Cincinnati with fellow Democrat, the Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. As the pundits said, Mrs. Clinton and Sen. Warren looked very much like a political ticket, and the liberal media is already salivating at the prospect of this supposed political dream team, with apologies to the “real” dream team, namely the 1992 U.S. Olympic basketball juggernaut. The media, who, after 20 years of hard labor, have finally convinced a bare minority of Democratic voters that Hillary is a legitimate presidential candidate believe that they have found the perfect complement to their candidate in another liberal Ivy Leaguer, who routinely engages in soak-the-rich rhetoric, while she, herself, lives very well and who falsely claimed Native American heritage for positive affirmative action points when pursuing teaching positions at highly prestigious law schools. Yet, the major media believe that a Clinton-Warren ticket would be a formidable pair, and who are we to judge otherwise.
Still, there are many reasons for the Democrats to worry and for non-biased observers to question the invincibility of a Clinton-Warren ticket. Most of the factors that the Clinton campaign has grudgingly admitted are true when discussing their candidate’s weaknesses can be seen in Elizabeth Warren, as well. Both of the ladies are inauthentic, pre-packaged, and contrived. Both are somewhat dislikeable, although to different degrees and for different reasons. Finally, as a ticket, they fail the gender diversity litmus test, as defined by the media and the Democratic Party themselves. Shall we take a look behind the curtain?
Last Monday, Clinton and Warren appeared together in Cincinnati, the Queen City of the Ohio Valley, looking like aging sorority sisters at a college reunion. They smartly turned out in their nearly matching blue suits, and their close-cropped hair-dos, bobbed in unison for the occasion. This joint appearance generated a lot of buzz about a Clinton-Warren ticket, although the pair have never been particularly close. Despite their newfound collegiality, Warren stayed officially neutral in the democratic race, refusing to endorse Hillary until June 9, two days after the California Democratic primary finished the Bernie Sanders campaign. When asked about speculation that Warren might be a potential running mate in the past Clinton spokespeople suggested that Warren was too far to the left, and now they worry that Warren on the ticket as a running mate might commit the cardinal sin for a vice-presidential choice: she might outshine the boss!
Many pundits, and professional Democrats, believe that these differences are merely cosmetic, can be scrubbed as easily as a Clinton e-mail system, and bring back happy days again. The issue that many refuse to see is the fact that Warren carries with her the same liabilities that have come to define candidate Clinton. The senator from Massachusetts reeks of inauthenticity, comes across as disagreeable and shrill, and has advanced herself very quickly through appeals to her gender, and supposedly minority status, in a party that prizes such attributes, even when they are of questionable veracity. As far as the question of Warren’s inauthenticity, the story of her stretching truth to claim Indian ancestry in order to burnish her legal credentials is now well known, and firmly established. Warren began claiming that she was 1/32nd Cherokee Indian in the mid-1980s, when she was 37 years old. She checked boxes on forms, stating that she was of Native American ancestry for legal reporting purposes at the University of Pennsylvania law school, and did the same at Harvard Law a few years later. She was listed on numerous websites as a “woman of color” or as a “Native American,” and was listed as a minority on the official Harvard Law website.
Eventually the future senator from Massachusetts earned tenure at Harvard Law and she then dropped the canard about being a minority. When she ran for the Senate seat against Scott Brown the story surfaced, and two professional genealogical search firms found no evidence of Indian ancestry in Elizabeth Warren’s family. Despite the debunking of her story and her admission that she had lied when claiming that she was an Indian, Warren stated that she thought she was an Indian because her family said so, and that she identified as a Cherokee woman. That should prove helpful as we segue into a new world wherein a person can change genders based on a daily “Identification.”
Telling little white lies about one’s ethnic heritage may be slightly off-putting, but is not necessarily dislikeable. On that question we have no less an authority than Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post telling us so. Ms. Parker wrote a puff piece last week saying that “… even when yelling across a surging crowd…she (Warren) seems warm, engaging, and non-threatening.” Perhaps, but political screaming is widely derided and the Democrats already have a shrill and strident yeller at the top of the ticket. Do they really want a carbon copy batting second?
Finally, we come to the question of gender equity. Maybe few Americans will bat an eye at a ticket consisting of only women, and for that matter, maybe they should not care! Still, the Democrats are the party of politically correct bean counters, as Hillary Clinton’s estranged husband once said, they are the people who have gotten a lot of mileage out of appointing unqualified people to positions that they have not earned, and the party that chastises the rest of America for not following their lead. One might well ask: Is this where affirmative action has gone? Where are the minority candidates, where are the Catholics and the Jews, where are the ethnics, and the blue collar workers? The Democratic Party will nominate as their “dream ticket” two late- middle aged, liberal, Ivy League ladies who know nothing of the struggles of the working class who they claim to represent? This time, due to getting caught red-handed, they will not be able to play the affirmative action card again!
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