The Elizabeth Warren Campaign — A Female Perspective
I’ve heard through the online grapevine that Baby Boomers are considered Happy Warriors, and I suspect the younger gens look at this moniker as naïve. I’d beg to differ.
Elizabeth is a Boomer and a Warrior, of course, and by God, thank God, because without her endless get-up-and-go-to-get-things-done attitude, no progress would ever be made in so many issues that plague American society today.
You don’t have to espouse all her plans, but you darn well have to be married to her initiative, her drive, her innovation and creativity, and her plain zest for life and ebullient pride in what America should stand for.
And none of her qualities have a single thing to do with her sex. None. And they don’t have to, and shouldn’t. Liz is all about bettering society for all her fellow citizens, from all walks of life, as the good and forthright human being that she is.
High tides lift ALL boats in a democracy, and for so long in the American Capitalist world, it was considered okay to drive down a shiny prosperous street, turn the corner, and see paper shacks, bloated bellies and no hope. Bobby Kennedy discovered this. I’ve seen it countless times in my own U.S. travels. This has been the weakness of the States for generations. It’s all about the almighty dollar and the American Dream funded by that dollar, and to look the other way when you’ve made it while your neighbor has not has been silently okay.
Elizabeth wanted, wants that to change.
You can call her vision progressive.
You can even call it socialist.
But I call it genuine democracy.
Where, if YOU do well, I’ll do well. If you receive a leg up to start a new business, so can I. If you get hurt or sick, I will pay taxes to help you get the healthcare you need, and you’ll be there for me, too.
These are not feminine ideals. These are humanitarian ideals. These are plans a well-educated, intelligent, reasoned and energetic American adopts. That with self-confidence, purpose and a lifetime of sorrow seeing the disenfranchised and under-represented mowed under, this teacher/mom/friend stood up, put her neck out, and faced the push-back to change hearts and minds. If that’s a Happy Warrior, I’m bloody-well All-In.
Elizabeth is a human EverReady bunny. I got dizzy watching her on the TV. I know she’s dying to see life be made all better, right now. And who can blame her? But that may have been her undoing, for change, improvements in a country of over 340 million — where the military defense budget gobbles up an unheard of percentage of the country’s taxation revenue — has to take time, building on top of existing good policies, not going so far to the Left as to throw the baby out with the bath water.
In essence, Elizabeth’s campaign became too Bernie-ite. Too all, or nothing at all. She would still be in this presidential race if she had taken a more progressive-centrist view.
I’m not saying that she had to become a Status Quo candidate, but she needed to realize that her plans needed to be dialed back a bit, more in quantity than in size, implemented as adjuncts to already-existing good policy that ALL rational Americans could get behind.
And, just as crucially, she needed to challenge Bernie’s campaign slogans far more than she did. She never called him out, asking the main questions: HOW does one actually find the 60 trillion to pay for his plans? HOW do you, Bernie, ever get moderate Democrats, Independents and classical Republicans on board to get the House and Senate votes needed to enact your plans?
Elizabeth never did this. She could have. She could have compared her doable plans to Bernie’s pie-in-the-sky bumper sticker-isms. But she never did.
Her kick-ass attack ability could have kicked Bernie to the curb, along with his radical views, and had her positioned as a far more favorable comparison to the moderate status quo candidates.
And that fight, had it been fought with as much intel and vigor as she showed when she happily Napalm-bombed Bloomberg would have proven to the American electorate that, okay, Elizabeth DOES have the backbone, the intelligence and boxing match muscle to take on the crass, woman-hater and mentally inadequate Trump, shedding once and for all the fear that by voting for any woman the electorate was risking ousting Trump. ALL Middle America would have been on her side. Fact.
I saw Elizabeth’s end coming. It was like watching a super slow train-wreck that you had no power to stop, and all because she was not ferociously differentiating herself from the radical Bernie Bros.
I knew that if she didn’t right that too-far-Left mindset, her ship would flounder. America — although it is slowly realizing that even Canada is not, and never has been, the evil “Socialist” nether-land — is still a far cry from shedding its Capitalist dreams. The States is still a democracy-in-the-making, still trying to form its identity, still trying to become less self-conscious in all its patriotic bravado. It’s a young country. It’s naturally experiencing growing pains. So, this is not the time to blow up the tub while you throw out the baby and the bath water. I think Elizabeth in her goodness and zeal forgot that American dichotomy: social benefits/civil rights for the disenfranchised and under-represented, sure, as long as it doesn’t kill my own chance at the money-palooza American Dream. There still exists a very fine line to walk in the good old U.S. of A.
Baby steps, Liz. Baby steps, is what I would have told her. Adding to the good that’s already there while distancing yourself from the radical Left. No good legislation is ever enacted espousing an extreme point of view. Ever. Neither Right nor Left. I would much prefer to label Liz as a Progressive-Centrist. That makes far more doable sense to me.
I am sad Elizabeth is out of the race.
Had I been able, I surely would have liked to have worked on her team, but her team, I fear, was possibly a bit too young and too inexperienced, wanting uber-change NOW, as the youth often want— in effect becoming a Bernie Bro campaign 2.0 — tipping her campaign too far Left, becoming indecipherable from Bernie’s balmy revolution; ironically a position, I dare say, was never really hers.
I don’t want Elizabeth to endorse Bernie.
I think for her long-term goals, and a second run at becoming president, she might have to endorse Biden. And if Joe were smart, he’d take her on as V.P. or at least put her in his cabinet in a financial capacity, maybe Fed Chair?
4 years is not long, Elizabeth, and we women, young and old, have waited forever already. We will still be here in 4 years, and your experience to pull off a knock-out fight will be a 100-fold then.
Next time, she will be a whole candidate.
Next time, there will be no more Trump.
Next time, all Americans can all throw their necks out and vote for good over Trump fear.
And next time, the President of the United States will be Elizabeth Warren. I know it. I can feel it. I can smell success for her, and for us all.
Persistence. Never surrender. The Churchillian way, and he was a man. Proudly remain the Happy Warrior, Liz, the younger gens moniker for you be damned, for it’s warriors like you who move all of us forward with your ideas and your energy, not your sex.
