Everyone knows that Democratic Senator Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren of Massachusetts falsely claimed to be Native American. But what do we know about her record? She announced a couple of weeks ago that she has formed an exploratory committee for president, and is considered one of the leading contenders for the Democratic ticket.
Don’t buy into her pseudo-populist rhetoric. She is no moderate Democrat. The Boston Globe correctly observed about her early campaigning in New Hampshire, “Elizabeth Warren’s N.H. swing is about poaching Bernie Sanders’ base.” The Guardian notes that “commentators often talk of a ‘Sanders-Warren wing’ of the Democratic party.” And New York Magazine points out that it was no coincidence that Sanders didn’t launch his 2016 presidential bid until Warren dropped hers. Additionally, her record is full of flip-flops and nasty statements.
While she claims to be “a capitalist to my bones,” who just feels the ideology needs more regulation in order to work, New York Magazine says the difference between her position and Sanders’ socialism is “(probably) of little-to-no practical importance.”
Warren initially supported school vouchers in a book she co-wrote in 2003 with her daughter, The Two-Income Trap. This changed as she became active in Democratic politics. By 2018, she was denouncing Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for “using her vast fortune to bankroll radical K–12 ‘school choice’ policies and private voucher programs.” Warren said voucher programs “further drain funds from public education and programs serving low-income and working Americans.”
Warren denounced “flipping houses” in her books for hurting the little guy at the expense of rich speculators. But she and her husband bought at least five homes in Oklahoma, two which were in foreclosure, then resold them. They sold one of the homes for nearly four times the purchase price.
She said in a speech around 2011 that no one becomes wealthy on their own, only with the help from others of an infrastructure set up in society. Barack Obama later used that viewpoint during an infamous campaign speech in 2012.
Warren first ran for Senate in 2012. The political director for the US Chamber of Commerce said “no other candidate in 2012 represents a greater threat to free enterprise than Professor Warren.’’ In 2013, Warren said the minimum wage should be $22 an hour.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Warren called Donald Trump a “loser” and “wannabe tyrant.” She has also called him a “small, insecure money-grubber.”
After President Trump signed executive orders in January 2017 to build a wall along the Mexico–United States border, address illegal immigrants, and remove federal funding from sanctuary cities, Warren said the occasion should be designated "the Trump Administration's First Anti-Immigrant Day." That same month, she referred to those working with Trump as “bigots.”
In February 2018, she said during a speech on the Senate floor, "On Jeff Sessions's watch, the Justice Department has promoted voter suppression. On his watch, the Justice Department has endorsed discrimination. ... And on his watch, the Justice Department has led an all-out bigotry-fueled attack on immigrants and refugees." She has previously said that Sessions was "a man deemed too racist to hold a federal court judgeship in 1986."
Last June, while running for reelection to the Senate, Warren said ICE should be abolished. She said Trump believes "the only way to have immigration rule is to rip parents from their family ... to treat rape victims and refugees like terrorists and to put children in cages." But during a debate against her Republican opponent, she flip-flopped and said ICE merely needed to be reformed.
In August, she called the criminal justice system “racist … front to back.” “Our prison system is something that America should be ashamed of,” Warren said.
Her lifetime rating from the American Conservative union is a 3. In 2017, it was 0. This is lower than most Democrats in Congress. Even former communist Kyrsten Sinema, who served in the House until being elected to the Senate last fall, has a higher lifetime rating of 13. The UK magazine New Statesman ranked Warren among the top 20 US progressives. America Rising PAC says she is “left of the far left.”
While Warren may be far to the left, don’t write her off. She is more careful than most Democrats in what she says, which makes her seem more moderate. The left-leaning media gushes over her likeability. She’s been plotting for years how to get elected president as a moderate and then govern from the left.
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