Tulsi Gabbard provided some spark on a few occasions. She called out Kamala Harris for joking about being Jamaican and smoking pot while enforcing drug laws against ordinary citizens when she was a prosecutor and attorney general. She also called out Pete Buttigieg for saying he would consider using the military in Mexico to combat the violence associated with the powerful drug cartels.
With Yang and Gabbard both opting to use their resources differently than appearing on the most recent debate stage, Elizabeth Warren seems to have taken it upon herself to add some drama. A live microphone caught her telling Bernie Sanders that she thought he just called her "a liar" on national TV. He did not say those words, so her reference is presumably about him denying having told her that a woman could not win the 2020 election. Of course, by making the claim over his denial she is also calling him a liar, and so there is this hypocritical nuance that is missing in her comment to him that needs to be resolved.
Elizabeth Warren was once a person the progressive movement looked at as one of the swing people in the party. She came from a background of consumer advocacy and education. Despite a few flaws that created some splintering, she was a person of integrity who really did fight for the common person against special interest groups. She is still the senator who best understands the banking, insurance, and securities industries, and would be that person in all of Congress if not for Katie Porter getting elected in the House in 2018.
I wrote a post a while back about her loss of credibility within the progressive movement. In it, I said that I would personally vote for her if she were the nominee, but only because of the respect she earned from me as a consumer advocate and educator from the 1980s on. The article, however, is about why I do not think she can win if she is the nominee, and it has everything to do with her credibility within the progressive movement.
If you take my preceding statement and interpret what I said to "a woman cannot be elected president," then that is where the problem lies in our communication. I did not say that. The person I most want to be our next president is a woman. I think Tulsi Gabbard would be elected if she were the nominee. That is my opinion.
Something is not adding up. Elizabeth Warren made the claim. It is now up to her to either support her claim with evidence and full disclosure, or to drop out of the race.
Bernie's camp is saying that they talked about Warren trying to use identity politics, and that he thought it was not a good idea. I can offer an example of a recent attempt by her to do so.
Though she is younger than Trump, she would be older at her inauguration than he was at his. Trump was older at his than Reagan was at his. She was asked a question about whether age should be considered a factor, to which she replied, "I would also be the youngest woman elected."
Excuse me, Senator Warren, Tulsi Gabbard has that on you, too.
How does Warren justify making this both about defeating Trump and finally electing a woman to the office? If so, why would we not elect the best qualified woman to be Commander in Chief? If it is about getting Trump out of office, why does she not see that Bernie Sanders is the most popular candidate over the past four years? She cannot get the votes of his supporters, so why does she think she can defeat Trump?
The exchange between Warren and Sanders is the ultimate "he said/she said" debate. Candid words were spoken between trusted friends. Who is telling the truth?
To support his claim that it is preposterous to believe he would have said that a woman could not be elected president, Bernie's supporters have offered videos of him talking to school children in the '80s encouraging the girls to get involved in politics. There is a video of him in 1988 saying he thinks a woman could be elected president. He even offered the evidence that he campaigned for a woman who got the most popular votes in the last election.
It is now time for Elizabeth Warren to put up her evidence and support her claims with full disclosure so we don't later find out that she was merely misrepresenting the truth - again.
What we have learned so far through Elizabeth Warren's campaign is that when she said she supported Medicare for All, she didn't mean "support" or "Medicare for All." She was merely using these specific terms to convey a general idea about health care reform. When she said she wanted to get corporate money out of politics, she didn't mean she was going to take corporate money out of her political campaign. She was only talking about if things weren't as they are.
That is becoming a big problem with Elizabeth Warren becoming the nominee of the party. No one knows who she really is, or if she really means what she says. It is time for her to put up or shut up.
Senator Warren owes it to those of us who hold onto a shred of hope that she will display the same integrity to this election that she displayed in her opposition to bankruptcy reform. She needs to give full disclosure, including her recollection of the entire conversation, or she needs to drop out of the race and quit being a shill for the establishment.
