9 February 2019 — 2325 mst
Elizabeth Warren kicks off her campaign for President
from the site of the legendary Bread and Roses Strike
No surprise here. At 2018’s end, the Democrat from Massachusetts announced she’d formed an exploratory committee. Today, in Lawrence, MA, an ethnically diverse erstwhile textile town whose population peaked in 1920, she made her candidacy official (campaign website) at Everett Mills, the former cotton mill where Robert Frost once worked and the legendary IWW led Bread and Roses Strike of 1912 occurred. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy III, RFK’s grandson, introduced her. That powerful endorsement reminds one that eleven years ago, Sen. Ted Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton.
According to Politico, she came out swinging:
“This is the fight of our lives. The fight to build an America where dreams are possible, an America that works for everyone,” she said. “I am in that fight all the way. And that is why I stand here today: to declare that I am a candidate for President of the United States of America.
Warren directly attacked President Donald Trump as being part of a “rigged system that props up the rich and the powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else.”
“We are here to take on a fight that will shape our lives, our children’s lives, and our grandchildren’s lives, just as surely as the fight that began in these streets more than a century ago,” Warren said. “Because the man in the White House is not the cause of what’s broken, he’s just the latest — and most extreme — symptom of what’s gone wrong in America.”
Warren proved in 2016 that she matched-up against Trump better than Hillary. Today, she matches-up against Trump better than any of the other women seeking the Democratic nomination (Kamala Harris, Tulsi Gabbard, Kristen “the Queen of Hearts” Gillibrand, and if she announces, Amy Kolbuchar).
Working against her are her age (she turns 70 on 22 June) and being a woman. Historically, Democrats have won with younger candidates, and being a woman probably costs a candidate two to three points in the popular vote.
Her fascination with her roots, which as a young woman she pursued with more enthusiasm than evidence, will be background noise in the campaign, but I doubt it will be loud enough to drown out her message. In the meantime, I urge progressives to cut her some slack on the subject. The most important question for voters is not whether when she was younger she made dubious claims of indigenous ancestry (her DNA test proved her claim was true, but faint) or of membership in the Cherokee nation (she made no such claim), but whether she embodies the combination of policy savvy, sound judgment, and optimistic leadership, that we should require in a President.