Before the 2012 election was even done there were many people in the commercial media that seemed to think that Hilary Clinton would be virtually guaranteed to get the nomination for president if she decided to run and they were providing a lot of coverage to indicate that some of them thought this would be great for the Democratic Party.
At the time I thought it was way too early to come to such conclusions and that Hilary has been exposed as a bad candidate numerous times which only became worse with some of her activities as Secretary of State. In fairness this isn't the first time I came to this conclusion and was wrong when I came to a similar conclusion about John Kerry, who did wind up getting the nomination, although he lost the general election.
However, this time it seems as if Hilary Clinton is a far worse candidate and it would be come even more obvious after four years of speculation and scrutiny. On top of that Elizabeth Warren appears to have a campaign of some sort promoting her over Hilary. As some of you might know I began taking a closer look at Elizabeth Warren in 2011 when I wrote a blog post,
"How sincere is Elizabeth Warren?" This was followed up by several other posts the most recent were
Elizabeth Warren is NOT a “consumer advocate!!” and
Elizabeth Warren's propaganda overlooks many flaws!
There seem to be an enormous amount of people that have come to the conclusion that she is a grass roots candidate that represents the majority of the public unlike the vast majority of the politicians that are in Washington and get coverage from the commercial media.
A close look doesn't support this assumption at all; she has been part of the establishment since before the majority of the public knew much if anything about her and she has indicated loyalty to the Democratic Party and Barack Obama since the beginning. The positive media coverage about her began before many people at the grass roots level picked up on her implying that they may have responded to that coverage; or in some cases her
grass roots supporters might not actually be grass roots supporters at all; instead they may be political operative acting at the grass roots level which has been quite common for a long time.
Elizabeth Warren clearly is charismatic and she has been coached like many other political candidates on how to appeal to people's emotion; and she has done this quite well.
As I have indicated before she has supported some token causes which are legitimate and this has received an enormous amount of positive coverage; but she has been unable to push much if any improvement in these issues. She still gets the credit for trying although I'm not convinced that she deserves it nearly as much.
Unfortunately on many of the other issues she has been supporting many of the positions that many populists oppose, although this has been much quieter and she has received credit for some things that she hasn't even done, like leading the opposition to Lawrence Summers in favor of Janet Yellin. The closer I look the more it is clear that she is more concerned about protecting the current establishment and taking the side of the Democrats against the Republicans even though it should be clear that neither of these parties is truly representing the public; instead both parties spend an enormous amount of time collecting money from the wealthiest people in the country and supporting their interests while pretending to represent the public.
She is following a similar pattern of behavior that many other politicians have done in the past including Barack Obama. He made many of the same promises that she did but as soon as he was elected president he started reneging on them. He was attacked as a great threat to business but when it came to to act on it he sided with Wall Street instead of standing up to them.
Elizabeth Warren has already indicated that she is doing the same. As I indicated in previous posts she is
supporting The Affordable Care Act instead of pushing for Single Payer Health Care; she supports voluntary disclosure for GMOs instead of passing required disclosure; she has taken on gambling lobbyists as advisers and remained silent on the issue; she has refuted what she calls Juliet Schor's "Over-consumption myth" despite the fact that it was her term not Schor's and many people are buying an enormous amount of things that they have no need for and that does nothing to improve their quality of life. Juliet Schor and other more reputable researchers have gone farther and investigated how marketing to children has contributed to an enormous amount of consumer waste and how it is having a negative impact on education; while Elizabeth Warren has been silent on this issue and many others.
And yet despite a close look at most of her position on the issues and the fact that she is also collecting funds from wealthy contributors as fast or faster than other politicians there seems to be an enormous amount of propaganda indicating that she is a grass roots candidate and some of this is even coming from alternative outlets that often do a much better job providing news than the traditional commercial media.
One of the latest examples is an article that has been posted on at least half a dozen of the most popular alternative news outlets,
"Elizabeth Warren Comes Down Hard Against Global Warming, Separates Herself From Hillary Clinton on Climate Change." How does she "Comes Down Hard Against Global Warming?" someone else writes a letter and she signs it along with about 20 other congressmen.
That's it. she doesn't start speaking out repeatedly on the subject nor does the article say that the authors, Henry Waxman and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, or the rest of the signers of the letters are "Coming Down Hard Against Global Warming."
This also happened with her
opposition to Lawrence Summers even though she appears to have been
Mostly Absent In The Left’s Fight Against Larry Summers; and she said that that Lawrence Summers "made terrific contributions to the field of economics," and ignored the fact that her candidate,
Janet Yellen also Urged Glass-Steagall Repeal And Social Security Cuts, Supported NAFTA.
This is just a small part of the efforts that seemt o be promoting a presidential run although there are also signs that she isn't including the fact that she
says she’s not seeking presidency, also "she has signed a letter urging Clinton to run." It is hard to see how this could be compatible, although this isn't that uncommon in politics. How is she going to portray herself as the alternative to Clinton while also encouraging her to run? regardless of how she might do this, it is just one more example where she appears to be supporting conflicting positions indirectly. By signing the letter she gets credit for opposing Climate change which is repeated over and over again and by supporting Clinton she does the opposite but this isn't repeated as often; also many of her other positions like her rebuttal of the "over-consumption myth" also contribute to pollution and climate change.
She also provided opposing views about Clinton previously in her book where she talks about how
Clinton initially opposed an "awful bill" as first lady until she raised money from the financial sector and supported the same bill as senator. This involved essentially criticizing Hilary Clinton for changing positions once she got in office which is typical of politicians and now Elizabeth Warren seems to be doing a similar thing herself. Now that she is office she is more interested in raising money for the party, serving the interests of her contributors and providing rhetoric for the public.
Just like most other politicians.
A close look at the following article which has a title indicating that Elizabeth Warren is a "populist," but may provide content to indicate that she is more interested in supporting the party than the public provides further indication of this.
One year in, Warren not shying from populist aims
WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Warren seems tired as she sits down in her straight back office chair at the end of a long rookie year in the Senate. But her voice suddenly rises when her favorite subject comes up, the populist ideas on which she has spent the last 30 years. ......
She also promised to spend more time fund-raising and campaigning for Democrats in the upcoming Senate elections, saying it is crucial that her party maintain a majority so she can continue to hold banks accountable. .....
They cheer her for pushing regulators to crack down, including an agreement in June by the Securities and Exchange Commission to force more financial institutions to admit wrongdoing when they settle cases. They credit her with pushing President Obama to nominate Janet Yellen as chairwoman of the Federal Reserve instead of Lawrence Summers, the former treasury secretary and Harvard president who many on the left saw as too closely aligned with Wall Street. ....
Some former critics have quieted down now that Warren is in the Senate. During last year’s election, the political director of the Chamber of Commerce, Rob Engstrom, said “no other candidate in 2012 represents a greater threat to free enterprise than professor Warren.” The Chamber declined to comment for this story and said its annual congressional score card would be out in March.
But Warren has worked with some Senate Republicans and has not generated the type of resentment in the chamber that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and other Tea Party Republicans have for their more provocative tactics. She called her time working on a proposal to regulate banks with Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has praised her command of the issues, “just plain ol’ fun.”
“My sense is that she thought some about how to present herself to her colleagues and to the country before she assumed office,” said William A. Galston, a Brookings Institution scholar and former adviser to President Clinton. “My sense is that Warren has done a pretty good job of balancing the visibility she has with buckling down and doing her job as a senator.” .....
Complete article
This indicates that she believes that it is more important to preserve the power of the Democratic party than it is to convince the Democratic party to support many of the issues that the public want. At times she and many other politicians criticize all the campaign contributions that are being collected and the selling of access, as if they're going to do something about it; but then she says that she is going to "spend more time fund-raising and campaigning for Democrats." Then when it comes time to pass legislation she represents the campaign contributors just like any other politician and she's having, “just plain ol’ fun,” doing so.
A common claim is that being outspoken might be good for getting elected but when it comes to "getting things done” politicians have to avoid upsetting each other and this often seems to mean don't rock the boat and negotiate behind closed doors as usual.
Then what is it that they "get done?”
The agenda of their campaign contributors?
So it would seem and despite all the propaganda that is being spread aobt Elizabeth Warren she isn't doing any more than any of the other politicians
representing the public. If she really did want to get things done that actually represent the public not the campaign contributors then she might need some help and the most effective way to get this help would be to wake up the public. She could do this by being much more outspoken about many issues and do more to educate the public. The commercial media would have a hard time ignoring her is she did so now.
The most important thing about her might not be the rhetoric that she is coming up with but many issues that she simply declines to discuss. For example, if she really was concerned about climate change and workers rights then she could bring much more attention to the fact that we
the U.S. exports more cotton than any country in the world thanks largely to government subsidies which benefit the corporations but provide little benefit for workers since they do it all by machine; then they ship it half way around the world to take advantage of low wages. When it is manufactured into clothes it is much lower quality than the merchandise that used to be made in the U.S. since they have been gradually cutting the manufacturing cost while increasing shipping lobbying and advertising costs over the past thirty years. The result is that wages are suppressed and consumers get low quality products so that they have to replace them much more often; which means that the only people benefiting from these practices are the campaign donors.
Or she could draw more attention to the fact that both the gambling industries and the insurgence industries operate on the same principles. This means collecting money from the customers in the form of either bets or insurance premiums; using some of it for their overhead and profit then returning the rest to the customer in the form of winnings or insurance payments. This means that the average customer can't possibly get a full return on their money, although a small percentage might make out better while the rest do much worse. If this is more widely understood then people would know they should minimize both these activities and when they have to do efforts should be made to minimize the wast.
But the opposite is being done. Instead of minimizing expenses so they can serve their customers both industries use a portion of the money they collect from their customers to lobby against the interests of their customers and buy up propaganda ads to convince more consumers that it is worthwhile even though it clearly isn't.
Or she could be more outspoken about many other issue which she remains silent about.
Why isn't she?
Could it be that she is representing her contributors?
If they thought they might not be able to rely on her to remain silent about exposing their propaganda tactics in a much higher profile manner would they have given her the coverage she needed to get elected?
Almost certainly not!
This is not just wild speculation; we have enough reason to believe this is the case, since many others have been consistently outspoken on some of these issues although they haven't all covered all the same material; and these people can't get any coverage from the commercial media even when they do get a lot more real grass roots support that doesn't start after media coverage of them. A modest sample of these people include Bill McKibben, Jill Stein, Susan Linn, Juliet Schor, Robert McChesney, and many more people that the CEOs of commercial media can't rely on to do their bidding, so they can't get much if any coverage to express their vies to a larger audience.
Many of these people drive the grass roots pressure to finally get things done; but when the politicians finally give in and provide a token amount of reform they give the credit to someone they promoted that didn't do nearly as much to push for it.
This isn't unprecedented; when it became clear that they couldn't continue to support the Vietnam war and John Kerry began considering his political career he switched positions and opposed it and received credit as a leader of the anti-war protesters even though it began while he was still supporting it. Now that he is the Secretary of Defense he is now back on the other side supporting arm sales around the world and promoting more wars, which, by the way, Elizabeth Warren either supports or remains silent about.
The reliance on charismatic leaders that often are made to seem like saviors or messiahs is standard operating procedure for the political establishment but it should be for a sincere democracy. Instead of relying on charismatic speakers more should be done to educate the public about the issues so that they could actually participate in the decision making process.
The fact that so many people at the grass roots level seem to be helping her is even more reason why people should learn to focus more on the issues than the sources. We could wind up with another situation where we get a token amount of reform and a handful of new reformers rise to power and then just start doing many of the same things with no more reform than they need to appease the public.
If we were going to have a
messiah come and save the day it would have already happened. If one came from
God as many people seem to expect then he might have to explain why
God didn't send him much sooner, assuming we actually allow scrutiny for our
messiahs; which is the problem with many charismatic speakers; in stead of checking facts many people just trust their leaders who routinely betray that trust, once they recognize they aren't being scrutinized properly. Before the last election there was a lot of propaganda that portrayed Barack Obama as the one that would save the day and they had a lot of satires about it too. He didn't turn out to challenge corporate power anymore than Elizabeth Warren and she is a strong supporter of him despite the fact that he doesn't come through for much at all.
The following are some additional articles on Elizabeth Warren including some that criticize her, or perhaps provide propaganda for her, even from some sources that are usually more reliable.
Elizabeth Warren comes down hard against Keystone XL, the Kochs—and Hillary
Populism Rising? Senator Elizabeth Warren
One year in, Warren not shying from populist aims
Thank you Elizabeth Warren boosters for reminding us how unappealing Hillary is
Elizabeth Warren obtained federal fee waivers despite high 6-figure income and 8-figure net worth
Worth $14 million, Elizabeth Warren thinks she's not a wealthy investor
Bernie Sanders on 2016: His Candidacy, Elizabeth Warren and the Clintons
Elizabeth Warren for President in 2016 movement Wiki
Daily Kos: Elizabeth Warren: 'Now, more than ever, the U.S. needs a strong labor movement' Propaganda from the Daily Kos for Elizabeth warren isn't surprising, as I found out when I had an account there and was
Censored at Daily KO which pretends its promoting democracy
Elizabeth Warren says she’s not seeking presidency also, Hillary's Nightmare? A Democratic Party That Realizes Its Soul Lies With Elizabeth Warren
Huffington Post Stephan Richter: President Elizabeth Warren
Candidate or Not, Elizabeth Warren Has the Right 2016 Message John Nichols
