Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has never been shy about her sense of moral outrage—in fact, it's the main driver of her campaign.
"I'm angry, and I own it," Warren exclaimed at a Holyoke town hall last year where she revealed that she was exploring a run for president. At the time, the Capitol had been in the throes of a rending debate over the controversial nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. As the Boston Globe noted following Warren's declaration, she certainly isn't the first woman to eye a run for the Oval Office, but she's likely the first woman who kicked off her campaign by acknowledging how incensed she is.
This week, Warren returned to owning her anger after two of her male Democratic rivals dusted off the sexist tropes we've all been waiting for and dragged them into the public square. South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg charged that Warren is "so absorbed in the fighting that it is as though fighting were the purpose," while Biden argued that Warren's approach reflects “an angry unyielding viewpoint that has crept into our politics.”
"If someone doesn’t agree with you — it’s not just that you disagree — that person must be a coward or corrupt or a small thinker," Biden wrote in a Medium post. Biden was responding to Warren's jab that he might be "running in the wrong primary" as they sparred over their opposing views on health care policy. Biden continued, "It’s representative of an elitism that working and middle class people do not share: 'We know best; you know nothing'. 'If you were only as smart as I am you would agree with me.'”
Impressive. Warren is both "angry" and "elitist." Let's face it, perhaps she's just not the likable, amirite?
Personally, I've never witnessed a moment when Warren has frowned upon the electorate. She has definitely argued that she believes Democratic presidential candidates should aim high and "think big.” That's called leadership, not elitism. Warren believes this political moment calls for "big structural change" not the incremental steps that most Democratic politicians have been advancing for the last couple decades. This week Warren named the first three bills she wanted to sign into law as president as being: 1) An anti-corruption bill; 2) a bill abolishing the filibuster; 3) a wealth tax. (Note: it seems unlikely that a president would have any authority over the Senate filibuster, but a President Warren registering her strong desire to see it go would certainly boost the cause if Democrats controlled the Senate). Overhauling the economic system that has yielded excessive income inequality and power disparities while leaving an unconscionable number of Americans desperately struggling to stay afloat is Warren's central theory of the case. She's not looking down on voters. Quite the opposite, she's both empathizing and sympathizing with them and calling on our future leaders to reform the system, not simply tinker around the edges of it.
After African American Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley endorsed Warren on Wednesday, she joined the senator at an event in North Carolina Thursday aimed at wooing African American voters, a crucial Democratic voting bloc. “I’ve known Elizabeth Warren for a decade," Pressley said, "As smart as she is, and she is… she’s also an empathetic and intentional student of the people. And that is what this country needs."
Warren is indeed willing to 'fight' for the ideals she's espousing because they are worth fighting for in her view. In fact, one could easily argue we are in a once-in-a-generation fight for the very existence of this country as Democrats work to wrest control of the republic from Trump and his craven GOP enablers. Most Democrats, in fact, want a fighter to take on Trump, with many believing that trying to stay above the fray didn't work well for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Personally, I want a fighter who, instead of wasting all their time hitting back at Trump, has a grand vision for the nation to both focus on and captivate the attention of voters. It's not necessarily just "going high" as Michelle Obama once imagined, it's choosing to play on your own field rather than getting dragged into Trump's filthy arena.
But Biden and Buttigieg took time to remind us this week that women aren't allowed to be fighters because angry women aren't electable. Thanks for your input, fellas. The 60% of us ladies who will make up the Democratic primary electorate will just take a seat now until you greenlight our input.
This pile on by Warren's white male rivals brought me back to a 2016 piece I read in which a female columnist pondered the deceptive dodge that a lot of voters were open to voting for a woman, just not "this woman," meaning Hillary Clinton. Reflecting on Clinton's unparalleled experience as a First Lady in the White House, a U.S. Senator, and a Secretary of State, the columnist wondered, If not this woman, then which woman? Well, now we know the answer to that—no woman, because no candidate can win the presidency without a fight and any woman willing to fight for her strongly held beliefs is just, well, icky.
In a fundraising email to her supporters this week, Warren called out the "angry woman" criticism for exactly what it is—an effort to put women in their place and make them play by the old rules that have been used to keep women in subservience for centuries in modern times.
"This isn't really about anger, or emotion, or civility," Warren wrote. "It's about power — those who have it, and those who don't plan to let go of it."
"Over and over," she noted, "we are told that women are not allowed to be angry. It makes us unattractive to powerful men who want us to be quiet."
"Well, I am angry and I own it," she continued, in a reprise of her declaration last year. "I'm angry on behalf of everyone who is hurt by Trump's government, our rigged economy, and business as usual."
Warren being a woman would be bad enough. But on top of that, this woman wants to disrupt the very power structures that have advantaged the rich and powerful in this country (i.e. mostly white men) ever since the nation’s founding.
We are entering the heart of the campaign now in the run up to the first contests early next year in Iowa and New Hampshire. If Buttigieg and Biden think they have better ideas that are more inspirational than Warren's, great. Warren's policies are all out on the table and she has taken a lot of heat since she laid out her Medicare For All plan. Now we will see who best captures the imaginations of Democratic voters, their struggles, and their hopes for the future. If Biden and Buttigieg think they're that candidate, then they may want to stop making character assessments of their female rival and get back to their own policies.
May the best candidate win.