When Bruce Braley ran for Congress in 2014, losing to Joni Ernst, my husband and I went down to Hotel Fort Des Moines to commiserate with other supporters. Elizabeth Warren was speaking. All I knew about her at that time was she wore sensible shoes and that she hated Hillary. For those two reasons I didn’t quite like her. Which was an odd thing for me, basing politics on footwear and rumors.
As our present presidential run began, she seemed tightly linked to Bernie Sanders, that whining old guy promising ridiculous things like free college to the younger voter. It was out and out pandering, pied pipering them all to the edge of a cliff as they happily and eagerly and so annoyingly passionately followed his call for universal healthcare. Universal healthcare and free college, and barely no one under the age of 25 seemed to stop and think how much that would cost. And how it was implausible.
But this Bernie guy had balls and kept on going and going and whining until he bashed the hell out of the Democratic Party – having joined mere months prior. I didn’t like him. I liked Hillary. I was a Hillary delegate last time around. She was going to be the first woman president – come hell or high water – and if Bernie and his side-kick, Elizabeth Warren, didn’t let that happen – well, I chose to dislike her because she liked Bernie. In much the same way I dislike Susan Sarandon for her bizarre allegiance to older independent men who believe, in the end, that they are better than the whole. After the Nader debacle I boycotted her movies and equally bizarre ping-pong fascination. Or is it fetish? Regardless I will never watch Bull Durham again. Which sucks. Because I really like that movie.
I was wrong about Senator Warren and I rarely am. And if I am, I rarely admit it. That’s just the stubborn sort of political animal that I am. Always left. Always right. She is no Susan Sarandon. She is no Bernie Sanders. She doesn’t whine. She’s feisty and she fights. She fights for those who need her and against those who are damaging our country.
When the California primaries grew closer she barreled her way to podiums all over and went after Trump the way no one else has. The way everyone should have. I fell in love with this strong centered woman. She called him out for all of his racist, sexist, misogynistic, remarks. For his call for violence and his absolute bullying of everyone and anyone who isn’t willing to give up their moral soul for him.
She went to town and keeps going. Then she endorsed Hillary for president on the day Bernie sort of said he might stop running, despite the fact he is so far ahead and so much more popular than Hillary is. Yawn. I watched Elizabeth Warren talking with Rachel Maddow and was chagrined. Was bowled over. Was in love. Pigs were flying, hell turned to ice – and a dozen other clichés I will spare – happened. This was a woman who pretty much declared in January she would not endorse Hillary. That her allegiance was to her progressive policies and agendas, aligning nearly perfectly with Bernie Sanders.
In a speech, given on the January anniversary of Citizens United, she said, “A new presidential election is upon us. The first votes will be cast in Iowa in just eleven days. Anyone who shrugs and claims that change is just too hard has crawled into bed with the billionaires who want to run this country like some private club.” So what happened between January and June 9th? How did she seemingly equate Hillary with the bad boy private club and then suddenly realize she had to fight for her?
Donald Trump happened. Surely she had figured like the rest of us there were enough GOP candidates to ball gag him into silence and primary loses. Certainly the majority of these political men would stand up to his Mexicans are rapists remarks, his sexist callous references and the repetitive name calling of each and every one of them: Little Marco, Lying Ted, Jeb a low energy loser. An embarrassment to his family.
They all stood next to the man with millions watching and took these verbal punches like nuns. Monks. Babies. I had to feel sorry for them. Being whipped into submission by the great land owner. But not too much. It pained me to watch the flinches, guffaws and the resignation that they were no David to Trump’s Goliath. A bunch of white guys hemmed and hawed and crouched in pre-adolescent fear of the milk-money grabbing bully who was as atrocious in manner and speech that it would end up taking the strongest of us all to wallop him physically, spiritually.
By Senator Warren’s endorsement of Hillary, I see a politician who is progressive and not either in awe or in hand with “establishment,” but one who has her feet planted and her brain on straight. Sure she would like Bernie’s agenda to come to fruition, but also knows that is not ever going to happen. Not all of it. That Hillary is actually more progressive and less established in her policies than the GOP and the Sanders camp want us to believe. Or even know. Who else has stood up against guns in any of their campaigns? Not one. And the “progressive darling” of the left has even gone to bat for the billion dollar gun industry, blocking the right to sue these businesses saying “If we allow that there will be no guns.”
Then there is the absurdity circling about the Bernie Opinion Club, lead by Sarandon, that Senator Warren is just out for herself, having been promised the VP in a Hillary administration. Really? One of the most powerful senators in Congress, with even more coming when majority of Democrats are elected in response to Trump and the spineless GOP – merely wants to be vice president. A benign position at best?
If it takes a village to raise a child, it seems to be taking two women to battle down that battleax. Trump’s degradingly racial and misogynistic moniker for Senator Warren – Pocahontas – merely continues to point out his inadequacies as a basic human being. But Warren fights back as she had been doing – with strong and honest words about that man who cannot be president, “Donald Trump is a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who has never risked anything for anyone and who serves no one but himself. And that is just one of the many reasons he will never be president of the United States.” Amen.
In a Word 