"Elizabeth Warren is seen as ‘front-runner.’ But is it too early?" by Liz Goodwin Globe Staff August 11, 2018
WASHINGTON — Last month, New York magazine put a jogging Elizabeth Warren on its cover, with the headline “Front Runner?” blared across her middle.
They weren’t talking about her Senate race.
With Donald Trump continuing to dominate attention spans across the country, Democrats, political reporters, and even Trump himself seem uniquely unable to hold off on 2020 speculation.
More like the media in both instances, as they look forward to the day when maybe he won't be there.
The midterms are still three months away, but Democrats — who lack a clear leader after their rout in 2016 — are desperate to rally around someone who can defeat the president the next time around. Warren sates that appetite with her nationally known profile, devout liberal following, and strong presence near the top of some key polls — even though she claims not to be running, but anointing a front-runner for the party nomination, more than 18 months before the Iowa caucuses and 834 days before the election?
They are putting the cart before the horse.
“That’s a killer,’’ former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis groaned when told about the magazine cover. “Speaking from experience, the one thing you don’t want to be is a front-runner or a potential front-runner.”
And besides, Dukakis contends, the concept is mythical at this stage.
“This search for a front-runner is crazy,” he said. “There is no front-runner at this point and there won’t be for months and months.”
And it hasn't worked out well for candidates from Ma$$achu$etts for at least 60 years. Had a lot run, too. Country sort of caught on to the joke became and the caricature we've become.
While the early buzz will certainly help Warren with fund-raising, getting her message out, and recruiting top-tier staff, it could hurt her as well, by raising expectations, drawing extra scrutiny, and putting a target on her back, according to several former candidates for the Democratic nomination.
Dukakis recalls telling his campaign staffers to complain to newspaper editors about headlines declaring him a “front-runner” in Iowa after one poll showed him slightly leading the crowded Democratic field, but public perception is difficult to change and in an enormous potential field of 30 or more Democratic contenders, Warren — with her loyal liberal following and potent fund-raising power — has done little to dampen speculation that she has the inside lane in the early 2020 jockeying. Her only real competition for early front-runner status, according to polls, are former vice president Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Biden consistently polls better than Warren, and Axios and Politico have reported Trump fears running against the former vice president more than against Warren, but a Suffolk University poll in May showed Warren leading both men in a poll of Democrats in the crucial first primary state, New Hampshire.
I gue$$ we are getting a winnowing of the field already, and it looks like Trump is going nowhere.
“We see Elizabeth Warren as someone who meets this moment and would be the most viable Democratic candidate in the general election,” said Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal group. “She has achieved a remarkable feat of ever-increasing cred with the grass roots and also with the political establishment spanning Hillary Clinton supporters and Bernie Sanders supporters.”
The only thing that stands in her way, and why she won't win the nomination, is Wall Street.
For the first time in years, there’s no clear heir apparent in the Democratic field. In 2008, Clinton was the establishment favorite going into the primaries, a trajectory that was upended by Barack Obama’s meteoric rise. In 2012, Obama ran for reelection unchallenged. And in 2016, Clinton again was the presumed nominee.
The web added that recap, and not only that, she was presumed to be president.
What's worse is the whole elitist concept of the "heir apparent" -- a sexist term if there ever was one. It's HEirs, not SHEirs!!!! The other thing is, shouldn't the heir apparent be left up to the voters? The candidate isn't entitled to the thing, they have to earn it.
Beyond that, what I think happened was Clinton was supposed to win in 2008 and Obama f***ed it up. What would have happened then is six years of arguing over ClintonCare while the corruption for which the couple is infamous would have flowered to ghastly heights. So she waits her turn, wins the nomination, but can't get across the finish line thanks to the narcissist Obama's neglect. And they all hate Trump for it.
Okay, back to the printed stuff:
This new uncertainty, paired with a president whom Democrats loathe in historic numbers, has led to a hunger for a liberal leader and spokesperson to go head to head with Trump.
“It’s real and I respect the hunger, but it’s not going to happen until we have a nominee, so get over it,” said former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. His caution is well-founded. Dean led many early polls in 2003 but fell behind former Massachusetts senator John Kerry, the eventual Democratic nominee, once the voting started. He didn’t win any caucuses or primaries except for his home state.
Yeah, this is a guy who got a real belly drop in 2004 when he was supposed to finish first in Iowa and finished a distant third, thus causing him to unleash a tirade of all the states he was going to win going forward, yee-haw!
At the time he antiwar based on the backlash against Bush's lies. That's what vaulted him to front-runner status. Now he is a part of the Iranian fringe, and has joined with the pharmaceuticals to oppose Medicare for all.
Warren, however, appears unconcerned about emerging so early on as a buzzed-about contender — though she repeatedly says in interviews she’s focused on her Senate race and is not running for president, but she’s amassed a $16 million war chest [and] she’s chatting up key kingmakers in primary states, cried “Let’s run together!” during a presidential-campaign-type speech at the liberal Netroots gathering in New Orleans, and participated in the lengthy New York magazine profile, which called her the “de facto leader of the Democratic Party.”
There they go again, kingmakers!
Why not queen makers?
As for the rest, Schumer is technically the de facto leader due to his superior rank as Senate minority leader, and I'm tired of political war che$ts. The reporters have internalized the divisive terminology an all levels. Everything is framed in terms of war, thus a war pre$$.
Over the past few weeks, two New York Times columnists have written dueling meditations imagining a 2020 matchup between Warren and Trump. One prophesied a scenario in which Warren lost due to a strong economy; the other predicted she’d win.
They need help over there.
Even Trump appears to assume he’ll end up running against the Massachusetts senator. The president told his fans in Montana at a July campaign rally that he’ll toss a DNA test at her — a reference to her claim of Native American heritage — if they end up squaring off on the debate stage.
See:
"At Thursday’s rally Trump escalated his assault on the Massachusetts Democrat by again calling her “Pocahontas” and reminding the crowd of her claims of Native American ancestry, which Warren says are based on family lore but remain unproven. Trump’s demand for DNA echoed calls that others have made, but it was the first time the president himself made such a request, elevating the demand from the fringes to the national stage and he did so in his signature colorful style. “Let’s say I’m debating Pocahontas, right? I promise you I’ll do this, you know those little kits they sell on television for $2 — “We will take that little kit and say — but we have to do it gently, because we’re in the #MeToo generation, so have to be very gentle,” Trump said. “And we will very gently take that kit and we will slowly toss it, hoping it doesn’t hit her and injure her arm, even though it only weighs probably 2 ounces.”
He is an ass, and so is the pollster who worked for Obama and Clinton saying “he alienates people who will be essential votes in the midterm and the presidential elections,” when all is well in Trumpland and stop comparing him to Stalin!
What's worse is the who is in charge of the campaign, and ‘‘despite what you might have read, I’m pretty sure that I’m not the devil. So all the stuff that you’ve read about me, I urge you to take with a grain of salt — except the part about me keeping Elizabeth Warren up at night.’’
According to Dean, Dukakis, and other former presidential candidates and their staff, shooting to the top of the pack in the “invisible primary” long before voting begins can be both a blessing and a curse.
Dean’s experience could be especially instructive for Warren. He came out of nowhere to lead the Democratic pack in polls in the months before the first primary elections in the 2004 race, overtaking Kerry and John Edwards. All of a sudden, he was a serious contender.
I just want to point out that it was the tabloid Enquirer that nailed John Edwards for his affair with the campaign photographer, and the latest word is he impregnated a 19 year old waitress (#143). Can you imagine if he had become vice president and then president?
Dean’s candidacy flamed out after a disappointing third-place finish in Iowa, prompting his infamous “scream” speech that was mocked on a loop on cable television and by late night comedians. Dean blames his loss on the lack of organization in his campaign.
Also says it was a coordinated conspiracy by all his opponents.
Warren is already regularly attacked by the president — who calls her “Pocahontas” to mock her — and she hits back, often leading to “split screen” type coverage that is reminiscent of a presidential campaign and fuels speculation about her eventual run. This has given Trump months to drive home a negative message about Warren using his presidential megaphone, while leaving many other potential 2020 candidates relatively untouched. The president has tweeted just once about Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey for example, compared to more than 25 times about Warren since he began running for president.
She slams him for having the wrong values, and he's more sexist than bigot?
“If she is going to step out there and assume the mantle of front-runner, that means all the arrows will be aimed at her,” said University of Virginia political analyst Larry Sabato. “When you’re out there taking the arrows, you’re going to bleed. I just don’t think it’s a particularly good position to be in this early.”
Indeed, her political activities outside Massachusetts have caused trouble back home. Over the past several days two local police chiefs criticized her comments during an appearance at a historically black college in New Orleans, calling the criminal justice system “racist . . . front to back.” The visit was part of an effort to expand her base and reach out to black voters, but the police chief in Yarmouth, where an officer was shot to death in April, said the comment was an “insult,” and her GOP Senate opponents called Warren’s remark irresponsible.
See: Police chiefs criticize Elizabeth Warren for calling criminal justice system ‘racist’
I had stopped reading by that point, but I do remember Yarmouth.
Related: "Festering racial animus has been an open secret in the Massachusetts Trial Court for years....."
Looks like she was right.
The back-and-forth, however, also benefits Warren to an extent, firing up the Democratic base that strongly dislikes the president and helping the senator burnish her reputation as a fighter and counter-puncher long before the primaries begin.
All the scrutiny and early scrapping could also sharpen Warren’s skills ahead of a presidential race, revealing her strengths and weaknesses early on. Dean wishes he had emerged as a front-runner sooner in his race, so the heightened scrutiny and pressure could have improved him as a candidate.
Gary Hart, the front-runner for the 1988 Democratic nomination who dropped out over claims he was having an affair, said there were few drawbacks to being declared an early front-runner, aside from “losing all privacy.”
“Fund-raising becomes somewhat easier and political reporters are required to pay more attention to what you stand for and are saying,” Hart said in an e-mail.
Recruiting top-flight staffers also becomes easier, according to Ryan Williams, a former spokesman for Mitt Romney’s presidential bid.
“People want to support a winner,” Williams said.
And Trump IS WINNING!
Former senator Bill Bradley, who vied unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in 2000, said he thought it was an advantage for him to toil in front-runner Al Gore’s shadow, which allowed him to quietly fund-raise and recruit without press scrutiny.
“I didn’t have to deal with people constantly asking questions, I just went out and laid the groundwork for the campaign,” Bradley said, but of course, Gore, the heir apparent, ended up winning the nomination. On second thought, Bradley conceded, “Being a front-runner is not a bad thing.”
--more--"
Warren hasn't even won reelection to the Senate yet (page A1), and the Globe already has her running for president (same edition, page A2).
The Globe got started early when it comes pushing Massachusetts politicians for president with another front-page Sunday story (and how sad that the elite scum are consoling themselves):
"Could there really be five Mass. politicians running against Trump in 2020?" by Annie Linskey Globe Staff April 06, 2018
WASHINGTON — Massachusetts voters had only tenuous ties to the 2016 presidential crop — Hillary Clinton graduated from Wellesley College, and Bernie Sanders hails from neighboring Vermont. Now, thanks in part to President Trump’s deep unpopularity here, there’s a quintet of notable figures from the state showing up on political forecasters’ lists of possible 2020 contenders.
Count them: Senator Elizabeth Warren. Former governor Deval Patrick. Representative Seth Moulton. Even former secretary of state John Kerry and Representative Joe Kennedy III are often named. (And, as a bonus, some theorize — or fantasize — that Mitt Romney could jump in on the Republican side and offer a primary challenge to Trump, though the former Massachusetts governor is shedding his ties to the Commonwealth as he campaigns for the Senate in Utah.)
Kennedy might make a good vice presidential nominee.
This bumper crop of local proto-candidates is part of a larger national trend, where Democrats are coming out of the woodwork to run for president. Others hope to take advantage of a leadership vacuum in the Democratic Party after decades of domination by Bill and Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama.
Obama was a disaster for Democrats.
The flood of potential interest reflects a positive environment for Democrats; they’ve got energy and a vulnerable opponent, but there’s a downside, too. The left lacks anyone of obvious stature to be a real front-runner in the run-up to the 2020 presidential race. By some counts, there are no fewer than three dozen Democrats actively pondering a run.
They wrote this more than six months before the 2018 midterms!
“You’re going to have to have a double-reinforced debate stage,” quipped David Axelrod, the director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics and former adviser to Obama.
“Are all these people actually, at the end of the day, going to run?” Axelrod asked. “It’s going to winnow down. But it’s not going to winnow down to three. It’s still going to be a large field.”
Four months later, it's down to Biden, Warren, and Sanders.
MSNBC host Chris Matthews has taken to using commercial breaks during his show “Hardball” to ask on-air guests how many candidates their home state is likely to produce. New York also has five who draw regular mention: Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, billionaire businessman Michael Bloomberg, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, Governor Andrew Cuomo and, yes, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
The Clintons are no longer welcome at the annual fund-raising dinner in New Hampshire because there are no more excuses. Michelle Obama doesn't want to be president, as she pillories Hillary while telling “forward movements” require sometimes accepting that progress is slow when we feel we are going backward, but that is part of the growth.”
Did you notice there was someone she did not mention by name?
California also could field multiple candidates, including Senator Kamala Harris, billionaire Tom Steyer, and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Any of them getting you excited?
While Massachusetts politicians have a history of national ambitions, the country has, since John F. Kennedy squeaked by Richard Nixon in 1960, rejected Massachusetts candidates in the end. Candidates from here who tried but didn’t make it to the White House include Senator Edward Kennedy in 1980, Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988, Kerry in 2004, and Romney in 2008 and 2012, but political operatives in Massachusetts couldn’t recall a time when there were so many possible contenders all at once in the state.
I wonder if we will ever get the whole story (ask Bill Curtis).
“Trump is attacking so many fundamental progressive values,” said Doug Rubin, a Boston-based Democratic consultant who has worked for four of the five possible Massachusetts presidential candidates. “And in Massachusetts, our elected leaders are leaders on those issues. So it’s pretty natural that when those priorities are under attack, Massachusetts would be at the forefront of that fight.”
I've yet to see of hear one of them criticize Israel's actions in Gaza. That's the litmus test right now.
The logistics alone are fun to consider. Imagine five presidential headquarters in one seaside city? Consider the departure lounge at Logan Airport! The run-ins at restaurants! The search for office space! The inter-staff battles! “That would be awesome and unique and entertaining as hell,” offered Conor Yunits, a Democratic strategist in Boston.
I was under the impression that hell was not that entertaining, it being a place of eternal damnation and all.
None of the Massachusetts contenders have formally announced their candidacy, but some are dropping hints to known talkers or lurking in places like Iowa, prompting intense speculation about their ambitions.
Warren is by far the most obvious presidential prospect — and the only Massachusetts contender to register in polls of early primary contests. She’s already built the kind of national following among progressives needed to raise a presidential-sized war chest, and she’s been spreading her cash to others in the party.
“If she decides to run, Warren will be in a strong position to capitalize on a restive base that is looking for a champion to challenge the status quo,” said Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist who ran Al Gore’s 2000 campaign. “With a strong fund-raising base and a national profile, she will clearly stand out.”
She leaked debate questions to Clinton while working at CNN during the campaign, then wrote a tell-all book (not like the current pos being hawked) that brought threats down upon her, before securing safety at Fox News.
Brazile added: “But, the door is wide open. The base is also looking for new faces and fresh blood.”
Warren had a war chest of $14 million for her Senate race, by the last filing period at the end of last year. And she’s also provided about $330,000 to state Democratic parties since 2017, according to an aide familiar with her fund-raising.
Other boxes checked: A post-2016 book is out, and she has foreign policy experience via a new seat on the Armed Services committee. (That position has allowed her to share the occasional photo of herself aboard a military helicopter.)
Related: On Mideast trip, Elizabeth Warren polishes her credentials
In addition to meetings with senior figures in the Democratic foreign policy and defense establishment and protecting the defense industry in Massachusetts, she is now palling around with Lindsey Graham and Gaza was never mentioned.
Also see:
"For many years, the United States hoped China would be transformed by engagement with the international community and that, over time, the country would embrace economic and political openness, but by now it should be clear that this strategy has failed. For too long, policy makers in Washington have treated foreign and domestic policy as independent of each other, but these boundaries are increasingly fluid. This reality requires us to look beyond our borders, even as we prioritize the safety and prosperity of our own people. It also requires us to reconsider what is truly in our national interest and to pursue policies that work for all Americans, not just giant corporations. Even as we modernize our own military, we must set the conditions to stay competitive here at home by investing in science and technology, education, infrastructure, and other engines of economic and national security — and by asking those American companies who enjoy these benefits of America to pay their fair share to keep us strong. It means we take care of our returning service members, but it also means we must recognize that trade should serve our larger foreign policy goals, not the other way around....."
John Bolton?
Nope.
Liz Warren!
Here is another link to consider as she calls for a war to save democracy at all costs.
Her message of fighting income inequality resonates with the left’s energized base. “Democrats will have the best chance of winning the presidency in 2020 by running on an Elizabeth Warren-style message of fighting for the little guys against entrenched power,” predicted Adam Green, the cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, but a Warren candidacy faces hurdles — Republicans are already trying to define her as the leader of the loony left, which could turn off moderates; her six years on the national stage means some of her newness has worn off, and 2016 showed the misogyny any female candidate faces.
We get that the inequality message every four years, then it yawns wider in the interim.
Besides, women are seen as agents of change and can use their gender as a value-added credential in this, the ‘‘Year of the Woman’’ -- and if they don't win, they will holler fraud and Russian interference again!
Warren, who is up for reelection in Massachusetts this year, hasn’t dropped into early presidential states like New Hampshire or Iowa this presidential cycle, but her out-of-state travel has taken her to some of 2016’s battlegrounds, including Michigan (for an NAACP dinner), Georgia (to speak at the The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change), Ohio, and Wisconsin.
Though Warren has denied that she’s a 2020 presidential candidate, the former Harvard Law professor is careful to use present tense, which leaves open a future change in plans. During a town hall at the Boston Teachers Union Hall in Dorchester Thursday night, Warren said it is her “plan” to serve a full Senate term, should she win in November.
“I’m running for United States Senate in 2018,” she said. “I am not running for president of the United States.”
Others from Massachusetts aren’t being quite so coy.
“It’s on my radar screen,” Patrick told KCUR, a Kansas public radio station, recently when in town for an event with the very campaigny name: “An Evening with Deval Patrick: Reinvesting in America.”
He’s been conferring with members of the Democratic brain trust like Axelrod, who helped get Patrick elected governor in Massachusetts and is also part of Obama’s inner circle. He says he believes Patrick could provide a unifying message that would be a good antidote to Trump’s divisive rhetoric.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody better at campaigning than Deval Patrick,” Axelrod said, stressing his abilities in small settings. “He’s got good prospects.”
Until they shine a light on his record.
Patrick has a tactical advantage that few in the larger Democratic field possess: There’s a path for him through the early primary states, Axelrod said.
Patrick’s experience building support in his Massachusetts governor’s race via small sitdowns in living rooms across the Commonwealth translates well to Iowa, where similar skills are needed. He’s known in New Hampshire, which partially shares the Massachusetts media market. And he would probably hold an advantage in South Carolina, where the Democratic primary electorate is heavily African-American.
Look at the identity politics template they plan to use again.
Axelrod cautioned that he’s not the “driving force” behind efforts to recruit Patrick and is just offering casual and free advice. He’s also informally spoken with Warren over the years, and he considers her a friend after they lived in the same building when he was in Washington.
“I find her personal story compelling,” Axelrod said, referring to her working class upbringing in Oklahoma. “She’s less powerful on the rat-a-tat-tat of Washington, where she’s more formulaic.”
Patrick is popping up in an assortment of pre-presidential places. He spoke at black churches in Alabama on behalf of Doug Jones, the Democrat who won an upset Senate race in Alabama. He touched down at Temple University in Philadelphia in March for a meet-and-greet with college Democrats there. And he was spotted in Washington at the recent conference organized by AIPAC, the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the country.
Yes, I did see who popped up last month at a meeting in Washington of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the influential pro-Israel lobby to get their seal of approval.
Patrick didn’t reply to an e-mail seeking comment sent to his work address at the private equity firm Bain Capital. That employer could prove a weakness: Romney was a CEO and during the 2012 campaign and Democrats successfully painted Bain as a “vulture capital” firm responsible for buying up companies, dismantling them, selling them for parts, and leaving heartland workers unemployed.
And he has other points of potential vulnerability: His time as governor was rocked by management problems, from the flawed roll-out of the medical marijuana initiative to the costly crash of the state’s health care exchange website, to a new unemployment benefit system plagued by errors. All fodder for any Patrick opponent.
It’s also unclear whether Patrick has a natural base of support, beyond Obama acolytes who want him to run.
Under normal circumstances, the presidential list might stop there: a sitting senator and a former governor, but attentive observers say nobody should count out Seth Moulton, a politician and Marine veteran of the Iraq War with a proven impatience for waiting one’s turn. Moulton, who in 2014 mounted a primary challenge to a sitting Democrat to win his Salem seat in the House of Representatives, is also making the moves one expects from a potential White House occupant.
He already has a key endorsement.
He headed straight for Iowa a mere eight days after his September wedding. He said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” last year that he’s “been approached” to run in 2020, though he didn’t say by whom. And he’s been busy working to get Democrats elected, including most recently campaigning in Pennsylvania for Conor Lamb, who won a seat in a district that Trump carried by 20 percentage points.
He took office quietly.
On the polar opposite end is John Kerry — a former secretary of state, senator, and presidential nominee who has been tantalizingly close to the White House and has acres of experience. He’s planning to spend time campaigning this year, stumping for more than a dozen friends and former staffers who will be on the ballot, which will only stoke more questions about his ambitions.
Two people close to Kerry, who didn’t want to be named, said the former secretary of state is mystified that Joe Biden is surging in early 2020 polls in New Hampshire while Kerry is rarely mentioned as a potential presidential contender. After all, Kerry, 74, is a year younger than 75-year-old Biden, and Kerry has been crowned by the Democrats before, but there are mixed messages from Team Kerry. A third person close to him cautioned not to read too much into idle comments from Kerry or his campaign schedule. “It would be out of character if he didn’t help Democrats, even as he forges a new path outside government,” the person said.
The funny thing is, Kerry is someone worth considering. He's pissed off Israel in the past, and went ahead with the Iran deal even after they broke his leg.
Representative Joe Kennedy, too, sealed his place on the presidential speculation list after delivering the official Democratic response to the State of the Union address. He recently drove Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke around Houston to campaign events. The move attracted the notice of the press and the ire of incumbent Senator Ted Cruz, who quipped that O’Rourke would be a better candidate in Massachusetts.
Yeah, Bay-Staters don't do too good down there.
Kennedy’s reputation for biding his time makes a leap from the House to the White House less likely, but headlines can be tantalizing, like the first half of this banner from Politico Magazine: “Kennedy Could Be the Democrats’ Best Hope.” (The second half of the headline noted that he might not want the job.)
--more--"
How about a Warren-Patrick ticket (or vice-versa)?
"In Warren, Patrick, two ways to take on Trump" by Matt Viser Globe Staff July 07, 2018
As the former Massachusetts governor and the Bay State’s senior senator both seem to be positioning themselves for 2020 presidential runs — perhaps against each other — they could soon both need plenty of water as they shout themselves hoarse at campaign stop after stop, trying to stand apart from the pack — and each other.
On the issues, they are almost twins. But in the matter of style, their contrasting approaches offer a window into the debate coursing through the Democratic Party as a whole: how best to take on the strangely formidable force that is Donald Trump.
An eye for an eye? Or eyes on the prize? The party could turn to a challenger who makes no effort to conceal disdain for Trump, and counterpunches his every outrage. Or it could look for someone who offers a more positive message that can unite a fractured electorate.
Elizabeth Warren, whose most recent book is called “A Fighting Chance,” relishes her image as a fighter, always ready to battle with Trump and talk, even in the midst of a debate over financial regulations, of leaving “plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.” Patrick’s memoir was called “A Reason to Believe,” and he built much of his career as a hopeful politician attempting to bring together disparate viewpoints.
“This is a microcosm of the larger debate of what’s going to happen in the party,” said David Axelrod, the former senior strategist for Barack Obama who has also advised Patrick.
“There is that body of thought that to beat Trump you’ve got to be as pugilistic as Trump,” he added. “There’s another body of thought that an exhausted nation is going to be looking for someone who can restore some sense of values and civility and lift up these institutions that have been torn apart. And I don’t know where that is going to end up.”
There are other potential Massachusetts candidates — from US Representative Seth Moulton, who has already been to Iowa, where the first caucus vote is held, to John Kerry, who still muses about a presidential bid, but Deval Patrick and Warren at this point seem to be the ones most actively considering entering what is expected to be a crowded field. They’ve both met with Obama, and they have taken meetings with potential donors in Manhattan.
“I love her as a person and as a senator,” Patrick told the Globe. “I think she brings a ton to the Commonwealth and to the party. And whatever she does, or I do, she will be my friend.”
Warren was similarly effusive.
“Deval has a good heart and good ideas,” she said. “During his time as governor, his optimistic vision set a course for Massachusetts that has benefited millions of people in the Commonwealth. Bruce and I enjoy getting together with Deval and Diane, when we have time to talk at length about our families, our dogs, and our country. I’m honored to call Deval my friend.”
Especially well-connected concerns and cronies.
Sources close to each potential candidate say they will make their own decision to run, without regard to the choice by the other. They see themselves as each having a distinct and different pathway to the nomination, so they would not feel politically encumbered if their home-state ally also decided to run.
“Elizabeth Warren will be very much a ‘Let’s take the fight to the streets,’ forward-looking, this is what the Democratic Party needs to be. We’re not progressive enough, female enough, fighter enough,’ ” said Scott Ferson, a longtime Massachusetts-based Democratic consultant. “Deval Patrick will be very much a cool reflection of the recent glory days. ‘Don’t we miss the civility and the inclusiveness that Barack Obama brought to the country? Don’t you want to be there again?’ ”
What a revision of history!
Patrick and Warren have not had an especially close or long-lasting relationship, despite their shared Harvard ties and activity in progressive politics, sources close to each of them say, but those close to both also say this: She owes much of her early success to him.
When Warren began her first Senate campaign, she benefited from the grass-roots political network that Patrick had built across Massachusetts. She inherited many of his top advisers, including Doug Rubin and Kyle Sullivan.
Patrick also stepped in to help at a key moment, endorsing her at a time when she was attempting to fend off questions about her claims of Native American heritage. Their relationship has grown warm but not chummy. There is no tension, and they’ve never had reason to be suspicious of or competitive with each other.
They may soon enough be debating each other, but no one can recall them disagreeing or getting in an argument.
They occasionally text, and about once a year they get together with their spouses for a meal. One year was in Cambridge, near Warren, and another year in Great Barrington, near Patrick’s vacation home in the Berkshires.
They both rose seemingly out of nowhere, catapulting from private lives into a top statewide elected office in a state where the political system has often rewarded those from connected families or who spend decades building a political career.
Each of them ran the kind of upstart, grass-roots campaign in Massachusetts that could play well in the living rooms of Iowa. They both have a talent for fiery rhetoric that could rile up a crowd at the Iowa State Fair, and both are already well-known in neighboring New Hampshire.
Oh, they are allowed to do that?
Their politics are both liberal, but Patrick, a former corporate counsel who is now an executive with Bain Capital, is more pro-business and she is more confrontational.
“There’s no doubt that Elizabeth is very much a champion of the populist wing of the Democratic Party. She has I think the virtue of being a woman. And that adds to the appeal,” Axelrod said. “It’s not clear to me how Deval would present himself in a race, but he clearly has a different style. . . . He’s someone who by nature is a pretty unifying figure.”
Oh, all women are virtuous, okay.
One likely point of debate, should Patrick get in, is his ties to corporate America. He’s sat on boards of Coca-Cola and Ameriquest — connections that came up during his gubernatorial races — and since leaving office he has worked at Bain, a venture capital firm that came under attack when Mitt Romney, its former chief, entered politics.
“If Deval runs, I’m sure he’s going to have to place that experience in a context for people, because there will be those who will certainly try and use that against him,” Axelrod said. “What he’s doing at Bain, as I understand it, is social impact investing. There are a lot of good stories around that. But I’m pretty sure his opponents aren’t going to tell those stories, so it does become incumbent on him to do so.”
Yuh-huh.
Patrick has been having conversations and is soon planning to start campaigning for candidates in the midterms. If he were to run, he would have some catching up to do in building a fund-raising network and a national constituency. While Patrick helped Warren with his political network in Massachusetts, she has since built a national constituency — and donor list — that Patrick lacks.
“A lot of people contemplating running for president will be making the political calculus of who’s in and who’s out and who’s got what fund-raiser or what campaign manager,” said Tim Murray, who was lieutenant governor for much of the Patrick administration.
Wasn't he forced to resign due to political scandal?
So what is he doing now?
You know, “just throw everybody out there and have as many of them run as possible, and let Democrats around the country decide which person would be the best to beat Trump and we’ll see what happens.”
--more--"
Also see:
Former Mass. governor Deval Patrick to lend hand to campaigns in Texas
Deval Patrick swings through Texas to test a 2020 presidential bid
Deval Patrick said he will decide on 2020 run ‘in due course’
He's already charted his path to the nomination.
The real front-runner:
"Joe Biden is tough enough without the tough talk" b
JOE BIDEN took that low road last week, telling a group of college students that if he and President Trump “were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.” Naturally, his words triggered a typically repulsive Trump tweet that “Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me. . . . He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way.”
Biden, weak? Hardly, given what he has endured and triumphed over. As he writes in his book, while his beloved Beau was dying, Biden was juggling foreign crises involving Iraq, Ukraine, and Central America. He was also thinking about challenging Hillary Clinton, even though his boss, President Obama, was actively discouraging him. In the end, he chose not to do it, because he didn’t want anyone to think he was using his family’s crisis to promote a presidential run: “The idea that I would use my son’s death to political advantage was sickening,” he writes.
Trump’s christening of Biden as “Crazy Joe” is part of his usual MO to marginalize an opponent via insulting nickname. On one hand, Trump calling anyone “crazy” is crazy. But danger lurks in such name-calling. Biden suffers from what The Washington Post defined back in 2016 as an “Uncle Joe” problem. It covers a gamut of behavior that runs from quirky to awkward to what dedicated Biden critics consider outright creepy.
Again, when it comes to creeps in the White House, there can be no bigger creep than Trump. But do Democrats really want their 2020 campaign slogan to be that their candidate is less crazy and creepy than the one with an “R” next to his name?
That’s why Biden needs to cut the crazy talk now. According to some recent polling, he leads the hypothetical Democratic field — and Trump. Of course, it’s early. But those numbers do reflect Biden’s standing with Democratic voters, which is largely shaped by a favorable view of his tenure as vice president and the type of character he shows in “Promise Me, Dad.”
That’s the view he should be nurturing. No need to take Trump on in locker room fashion — and give women a chance to remember how he squelched Anita Hill’s accusations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas, in 1991, when Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. No need to give his enemies a chance to recycle the gallery of photos of him hugging women a little too closely — as if that is equal to what Trump brags of grabbing.
Trapped in Trump’s muck, people are desperate for a leader who is tough enough to pull the country to a better place. That’s the kind of toughness Biden writes about and what he promised his son he would strive to achieve.....
--more--"
It will all come down to districts and the will of the citizens therein, and Democrats are making sure all the illegals are allowed to vote and that they get their welfare payments, even though it is unconstitutional. Just taking care of you is all.
Related:
"The longest-serving woman in the history of the US House raised money for her first campaign 35 years ago by holding a bake sale. How Marcy Kaptur, the 71-year-old Democrat, a daughter of two factory workers, has managed to stay in office so long can be linked to an unwavering connection to her working-class roots. Now in the House just over 35 years, Kaptur last week set the mark for the longest tenure by a woman — surpassing Edith Nourse Rogers, a Massachusetts Republican who served until her death in 1960. ‘‘It sounds like a lot of time until you’ve done it, and then it seems like a wink,’’ Kaptur said Friday. Kaptur sits on the powerful House Appropriations Committee but never ascended to leadership positions in Congress....."
Because she went against party leaders on issues such as free trade and abortion.
Maybe she should run for president.
