Breaking news: Republicans plan to attack Sen. Elizabeth Warren about her past claims of Native American ancestry if she becomes the Democratic presidential nominee. No, really? You mean the same people who attacked John Kerry for getting three Purple Hearts, the ones whose job it is to defeat a Democrat, would attack Warren for a tired issue that’s been rehashed for years and where she’s apologized for her past actions? Surely not! But that is the basic takeaway of Bill Scher’s latest piece of concern trolling at Politico.
Scher’s piece is framed as being about how moderate voters will see Warren’s past, but it is conspicuously lacking in evidence or even much argumentation on that front. The lone piece of empirical evidence is that, uh, she lags former Vice President Joe Biden with moderate and conservative voters. That’s it. Otherwise, what Scher’s piece is about is how Republican and Democratic political operatives think voters will receive the issue, and the signs of danger are entirely that … Republicans plan to attack Warren. And even they aren’t unanimous that the “Pocahontas” attacks will really stick as anything meaningful.
But. Scher got his paycheck as Politico’s official “even the liberals say” concern troll, and he served up the headline—one that he may not have written but is an accurate representation of his claims and tone, if not of the evidence he presents—“’Pocahontas’ could still be Elizabeth Warren’s biggest political vulnerability,” tailor-made for future Republican attack ads. You know, the attack ads they would run against her no matter how they had to grasp at straws. The issue is not that Warren or any other candidate is above criticism. It’s that this is so damn stupid and trite and hackish and at the same time such a (stupid, trite, hackish) gift to Republicans, a headline that makes their attack for them while the article offers no evidence beyond the Republican intent to attack.