If you live inside the media bubble, you’ve probably heard that Elizabeth Warren, the progressive darling and self-declared non-candidate for 2016, messed up on Tuesday. Appearing on ABC’s “The View,” Warren said that Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the New Hampshire Democrat who is facing a tough challenge from Scott Brown, her Republican opponent, was “out there working for the people of Vermont.”
Cue a slew of tweets and a good deal of crowing on the right. “Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) gave an impassioned endorsement of senator Jeanne Shaheen (D., N.H.) on Tuesday’s The View,” the online Washington Free Beacon cackled. “The only problem was that she forgot which state Shaheen is from.” A story in the Washington Times said that “Warren looked like a political rookie.”
Since Warren, who represents the neighboring state of Massachusetts in the Senate, has spent quite a bit of time campaigning in New Hampshire with Shaheen, it seems highly unlikely that she had a true memory malfunction. It was a simple slip of the tongue. Sitting at a table with Whoopi and the other hosts, Warren was talking a mile a minute, as she invariably does, and she goofed. As the Boston Globe’s Bruce Wright noted, that’s also something she does sometimes. Appearing at the University of New Hampshire on Saturday, she said, “The people of Massachusetts are not taking Scott Brown, they’re taking Jeanne Shaheen!” Realizing her mistake, she said, “Sorry about that! Sorry about that!”
Warren isn’t infallible. But, if any Democrat is likely to emerge from the midterms as a big winner, it is she. Over the past couple of weeks, she has been barnstorming around the country, campaigning for Democratic candidates, sounding like a reincarnated Eugene Debs or (to cross party lines) Teddy Roosevelt.
“We can go through the list over and over, but at the end of every line is this: Republicans believe this country should work for those who are rich, those who are powerful, those who can hire armies of lobbyists and lawyers,” she said in Englewood, Colorado. “I will tell you we can whimper about it, we can whine about it, or we can fight back. I’m here with Mark Udall so we can fight back.”
“Republicans, man, they ought to be wearing a T-shirt,” she said in Des Moines, Iowa. “The T-shirt should say: ‘I got mine. The rest of you are on your own.’ … We can hang back, we can whine about what the Republicans have done … or we can fight back. Me, I’m fighting back!”
Even on “The View,” Warren came across as a political pugilist who loves nothing more than climbing into the ring with the Republicans. “Under President Obama’s leadership, we fight to raise the minimum wage, we fight to reduce the interest rate on student loans, we fight for equal pay for equal work,” she told “CBS This Morning.” “It’s really about whose side do you stand on? And, for me, that’s the whole heart of it.”
After six years of watching their President being kicked around by the Republicans—and, sometimes, seeming reluctant to fight them on their own level—liberals and progressives are thrilled to have someone who dishes it right back. At some of her public appearances, there are people wearing “READY FOR WARREN” T-shirts, which represent a cheeky response to the “READY FOR HILLARY” movement. Mother Jones, in highlighting five of Warren’s best lines, noted that she’s receiving “rock star treatment.” Eugene Robinson, the Washington Post columnist, said that Warren “has become the brightest ideological and rhetorical light in a party whose prospects are dimmed by—to use a word Jimmy Carter never uttered—malaise.”
Perhaps the most ringing endorsement of Warren comes from Hillary Clinton herself. Appearing late last week with the Massachusetts senator at a campaign event for Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate for governor of the state, Clinton said, “I am so pleased to be here with your senior senator, the passionate champion for working people and middle-class families, Elizabeth Warren! … I love watching Elizabeth give it to those who deserve to get it. Standing up not only for you but people with the same needs and the same wants across our country.”
In the headline of its report on the event, the Times noted that Clinton was trying to hold an adversary close. On previous occasions, Warren has criticized the Clintons for being too friendly with Wall Street. For now, at least, hostilities appear to have been suspended. Indeed, as Clinton makes _her _way around the country, campaigning for embattled Democrats, she is sounding more and more like Warren. Occasionally, she even goes further than her. During her speech in Boston, she praised Coakley, who is currently the attorney general of Massachusetts, for trying to hold accountable Wall Street and big business, adding, “Don’t let anybody tell you that, you know, it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” (Clinton later qualified those remarks.)
Assuming that Clinton does run for President, Republicans are sure to throw that statement back at her. By then, she’ll be prepared for it; she might even welcome it. All indications suggest that she’s preparing to run as Lunch Pail Hillary, the up-and-at-’em scrapper for the working stiff who emerged in the later stages of her 2008 campaign. But will Warren be content to let Clinton make her arguments for her? Everything she has said implies that she will. Around the country, though, a lot of Warren supporters are still hoping that she changes her mind.
Read more analysis and commentary at our 2014 midterms hub.
