2020 Presidential Candidates: Elizabeth Warren

[Lord Jim]

I have never liked Elizabeth Warren...

Mainly because of my intense disagreement with her policy proposals and core ideology...

But I can honestly say that over the course of the past couple of years I have come not only to disagree with her on policy, but to also find her to be fairly loathsome as a person...

I find her to be a highly divisive, demagogic character, animated by a dismissive self-righteousness. Obviously she's not as crude or childish about it as Trump, (nobody is) but I get the distinct impression from Warren that she has just about as much regard and respect for those who disagree with her as The Donald has...(As opposed to say, Pete Buttigieg, who comes across as a person who really does have respect for people who hold views different from his.)

Also much as Il Boobce seeks to exploit and foment fear and hate in people towards those who are ethnically different from them for his political advantage, Warren similarly seeks to exploit and foment fear and hate in people towards those who have more material wealth than they have for her political advantage...

Warren is also either a cynical and shameless liar, or a complete ignoramus...(Though again, no where near Trump's league on either count; but then nobody is...)

And I'm certainly not just talking about the whole Injun thing...(Though that early incident may be a window into the heart of her character)

Well I recall her waxing indignant at a Senate hearing about how, based on the increases in "worker productivity" the minimum wage would be 20 something an hour, and asking a panel of economists why therefore the minimum wage wasn't set at 20 something an hour...

Was that a result of her pandering and grandstanding to exploit the ignorance of others or is she genuinely so ignorant of economics herself that she doesn't realize that increases in "worker productivity" have almost nothing to do with "workers working harder" and are instead almost entirely attributable to technological advancements and other efficiencies brought about through capital investment?

In another more recent example of ,"Is she lying or is she ignorant of the facts?" she characterized the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri as a "murder"...

Was she cynically pandering in an attempt to improve her standing with African-American voters, or is she genuinely ignorant of the exhaustive investigation that was conducted by the Obama Justice Department which completely exonerated the police officer of any wrong-doing in that case?

And now, in a desperate attempt to continue the fiction that her goals can be achieved without a tax increase on the middle class, she's lying about the cost of her Mandatory Medicare For All Plan (or maybe she just can't add):

Can Warren Actually Avoid Taxing the Middle Class?

The biggest question surrounding Elizabeth Warren’s new Medicare for All plan isn’t whether she has produced a plausible pathway to raising $20.5 trillion over the next decade to fund it.

Rather, the biggest question is whether $20.5 trillion is actually a plausible estimate of how much her plan would cost.

Warren’s estimate is considerably lower than most projections for a single-payer system, as her team acknowledged in its own analysis of the plan. Even at a flat $20 trillion, such a plan would cost more than the federal government now spends on Social Security alone or on Medicare and Medicaid combined. Estimates from the nonpartisan Rand Corporation, the conservative-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and the center-left Urban Institute have each placed the 10-year cost of a single-payer plan at $31 trillion to $34 trillion.

That gap matters so much because it probably determines whether a single-payer plan can be financed without raising taxes on the middle class, as Warren has pledged. The financing proposals she outlined Friday did not directly hit middle-class taxpayers, but those provisions wouldn’t come close to covering the full cost of her plan if the actual price tag is closer to those other studies’ estimates.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... es/601315/

And of course in addition to lying about the cost, just to get to the number she does use involves massive tax increases on "the rich" (over and above the increases she was already proposing) and a draconian $800 billion dollar cut in defense spending...

I also believe very strongly that nominating Warren for the Presidency would be an EXTREMELY reckless and fool hardy move by the Democrats, given the stakes in this election (Assuming Trump survives his Impeachment)

As I've discussed before, to have the greatest possible chance of prevailing over Trump the Dems need a candidate who can assemble the same broad coalition that delivered them the majority in the House in 2018...

That sure as hell ain't the divisive, self righteous, dishonest, "If you like your plan go fuck yourself" supporting, class-envy warrior, Elizabeth Warren...

I can't see how anyone, regardless of their personal ideological inclinations, who accepts as the foundational premise that the existential imperative of this election cycle is the removal of Donald Trump from the Presidency, can possibly be supporting Warren for the nomination...

If you are a person who has allowed their ideological affinity for her positions to rationalize some fantasy conclusion that makes her the strongest available candidate to defeat Donald Trump, I implore you to think it through again...

Now then...

If all of the above sounds like something less than a ringing endorsement of Warren and her candidacy, congratulations on your reading-comprehension skills...

But all of that having been said...

I stand here today much closer to being prepared to vote for Warren over Trump than I was a few months ago...

At that time I had her on my list of Democratic candidates that would cause me either to not vote for President or vote third party; with the caveat that my position could change depending on how much worse Trump got...

Well guess what? Since then, (as unbelievable as it may seem given how godawful he was at the time) Trump has managed to get much, much, MUCH worse...

So now, despite the genuine loathing I have come to feel towards Warren, and my conviction that she would be a terrible pick for the nomination, and an horrendous President, I am now just a hairs breadth away from saying, "Yes, I will even vote for Elizabeth Warren over Donald Trump"...

And of course if it should come to this Reagan Republican having to make that sad decision, ( A decision that would make my decision to vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump in 2016 seem easy by comparison) and she should somehow win, I will fully expect to begin criticizing and opposing pretty much everything she says and does starting the day after the election...

But as awful a choice as I believe her to be, at least we would be rid of the greatest threat to our Constitutional system and the rule of law since the Civil War...

[RayThom]

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

[ex-khobar Andy]

I don't think Warren's $20.5 trillion for 10 years is so far off the mark.

2018 total US healthcare spending was $3.65 trillion, according to that loony left-wing rag, Fortune magazine. Assuming that one third of that money is billing (who pays?) costs - and I've seen estimates up to 50% - we are down to $24 trillion for the decade. (I am assuming that these are constant dollar figure: I have not checked.) And if we can get people out of the emergency room and into pre-emergency care (= prevention) it's not hard to see another 10 - 15%.

No, $20.5 trillion is not off the wall. Increase taxes on alcohol (I can buy a bottle of hard liquor for less than $10 and perfectly palatable wine for $5) and weed; improve public transport and increase cost of gas to something more like its real price which in my view is closer to $8 per gallon than $2.50. That might at a stroke do something to reviving city centers: it's ridiculous that gas and airplane fuel is so cheap that someone can deliver that book or bottle of hot sauce to my door for nothing.

Edited once to correct a tpyo.

[Lord Jim]

I don't think Warren's $20.5 trillion for 10 years is so far off the mark.

Estimates from the nonpartisan Rand Corporation, the conservative-leaning Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and the center-left Urban Institute have each placed the 10-year cost of a single-payer plan at $31 trillion to $34 trillion.

Well EKA, I'm certainly no expert in this area, but If I'm going to pick between the unanimous conclusions of three respected think tanks (Left, Right, and Center) and the word of a politician with a track record for being shall we say, "veracity-challenged" who has a huge political motive and incentive to cook and low-ball the numbers, I know which way I'm going to go...


Even Bernie Sanders has said his plan comes in with a price tag of 33 trillion...

Of course Bernie's also been honest about having to raise taxes on the middle class to pay for it: so while I can (and do) certainly take issue with Sanders' judgement on this and many other issues, I really can't question his sincerity or integrity...

The same of course cannot be said for Warren...

[Lord Jim]

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Man oh man, that has never been truer for me than in The Age Of Trump..

ETA:

If Trump forces me to vote for Elizabeth Warren, that will just be one more thing for me to hate him for...

[Darren]

Medicare for all would be a disaster for this country. At best we might end up with the VA model for all. That's a mixed bag if you're kind. Closer to death panels if you've been up close and personal with the VA.

The issues that make medicare for all impossible, with the expectation of timely and acceptable treatment, is the massive shortage of healthcare professionals, the current out of control medicare fraud and the best Congress that money can buy.

It didn't take a rocket scientist's intellect to wonder why all the health insurance company execs got their picture taken with Obama to support ACA. When the risk corridors became known, it was obvious. Who wouldn't sell their soul for a direct IV connection to the US treasury that's unaccountable.

If you expect less manipulation with medicare for all legislation, don't. The unintended consequences will be horrific as the best Congress money can buy is sold again.

Warren's numbers will not pan out. Have estimates ever been accurate for monster federal program budgets?

Compare the numbers with the country's GDP and it should be obvious there's another problem. Keep in mind consumer sending is two-thirds of that total.

Spending of that magnitude would only be possible with a huge increase in federal debt. Be prepared for $5 loaves of bread and greatly diminished consumer spending as the higher cost of necessities severely limit discretionary spending.

Warren is a world class snake oil salesman. With Biden limping and Sanders a convenience Democrat, Warren has the best chance to be the Democrat loser in 2020.

[Darren]

[img]warren2.jpg[/img]

[Econoline]

Somebody had to say it. From Charlie Pierce's Politics blog:

• • [note: if you don't already know it, Pierce routinely refers to Warren as “Senator Professor Warren”, or “SPW”]

  Not That You'd Know It, But Elizabeth Warren Was In Iowa, Too
  Nevertheless, establishment media persists in erasing Warren from the caucus results.
  
  Three years ago Friday, I was sitting in the press gallery of the Senate chamber, looking down at the top of Steve Daines’s head. Daines was presiding and it was late at night. The gallery and the chamber were practically empty. The Democratic minority was trying to delay — or to stop — the nomination of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions to be Attorney General. They were attempting to do so by holding the floor. Off to Daines’s right, Senator Elizabeth Warren rose to speak.
  
  She began to read a letter that Coretta Scott King had written years earlier opposing Sessions’s nomination to the federal bench. Ms. King had minced no words calling out what she’d seen as Sessions’s racism. As Warren read the letter, Daines ruled her remarks out of order because, at the time, Sessions was still a senator and that meant another senator couldn’t attack him personally, even through Dr. King’s widow from beyond the grave. Warren kept reading. Suddenly, Mitch McConnell strode down the aisle and formally silenced her. His explanation launched thousands of T-shirts, bumper stickers, and political bric-a-brac. “Nevertheless, she persisted.”
  
  On the third anniversary of that singular moment, I had to hear Donny Deutsch in Morning Joe dismiss Warren as “strident.” For the record, all the members of the MJ crew, male and female, seem to have a bug the size of a Land Rover up their collective arse about SPW — which leads me to believe that the elite political press learned sweet fck-all in 2016. Every regular at this shebeen knows by now that I hold SPW in great political and personal affection. However, that doesn’t enter into the fact that she has been virtually disappeared since Iowa ended, assuming of course that it has. She outperformed her poll numbers, beat a former vice-president like a drum, and finished a solid third in a race of which we were told relentlessly would produce “three tickets out.” Until, I guess, she won one of them.
  
  A cable chyron said it all — “Sanders, Buttigieg tied. Biden Fourth.” What exactly was the value of that ticket? Moreover, it should bother everyone that the same pejoratives used on Hillary Rodham Clinton — schoolmarmish, strident, unlikeable — are being used now to minimize SPW as a candidate. They are radically different people, although I don’t know HRC as well as I know SPW. But I know them well enough to know that their strengths and flaws are not identical, unless you want them to be. And if Donny Deutsch is nervous about women who are smarter than he is, he at least ought to be more imaginative in how he shows it. (The same stuff also has been aimed at Amy Klobuchar, but in a less concentrated form, probably because she hasn’t cracked double digits in the polls yet. But you wait. If she gains traction, Amy The Boss From Hell will reappear.)
  
  But I believe that the disappearing of SPW has more to it than sexism. I think the money power, including those elements of it that own media conglomerates, see her as a genuine threat. Unlike Bernie Sanders, whom they feel they can pink-bait out of contention, Warren knows their tricks and traps better than they know them. How do you think Mike Bloomberg or the powers at Comcast feel about her detailed plan to crack monopolies in our current economy? They don’t think Sanders can win — and they may in fact be wrong about that — but they know what SPW can do if she ends up with the power to do it.
  
  As for the Democratic Party, well, who is the only one of the top four candidates whose campaign came out of that banjaxed Iowa system without complaining about it, conjuring up conspiracy theories, or giving vainglorious victory speeches? Hint: it was the campaign that quietly offered it help to try and fix the mess without trying to take political advantage of it. And it persists.