Senator Elizabeth Warren is moving forward with her presidential campaign, but she keeps failing to project two things that will be essential if she is to have any chance to succeed: honesty and authenticity. It's very early in her efforts, but if things don't change quickly, it will be a very short effort.
First, she made her debut with a chat over the internet from her home. Fans could sign on and see Warren tell them who she is and what her beliefs are. All candidates give such speeches. The problem for Warren, though, is that she was trying to become a folksy neighbor rather than a long time law professor (at Penn and Harvard Law Schools). The only memorable thing about this debut was when she stopped in the middle and announced, "I'm gonna get me a beer." That's a sentence that, it's safe to say, Warren hasn't uttered ever before in her life in the Ivy League or the Senate. She may drink beer, but she doesn't say of anything that she is "gonna get me" anything.....EVER.
When Warren said these words, it immediately occurred to me that the beer she was going for must be "Hillary Lite". No doubt, the interruption for the beer was pre-planned in consultation with her advisers. The phrasing must have been focus-grouped as well. Warren's attempt to use improper grammar was a move to make her seem one of the common people, you know, those common people who voted for Trump in 2016. Warren was trying to connect with the common folk by misusing the English language just like, she thinks, these common folk do. It was insulting. What it manifested was that rather than being herself and presenting that to the people, Warren decided that she would present a phony façade so that she would be like the uneducated oafs that she considers the common people. It was a big mistake.
Second, Warren held her first event in Iowa to kick off her campaign. It was at a bar in Council Bluffs. To announce what a success the event was, Warren put a short video on social media. It said she had an "overflow line" at the entrance to the bar and scanned the people waiting to get into the bar in a continuous loop. The video was run at double speed so that the people went by in a blur and one couldn't really see what was happening. Today, the day after the event, it turns out that Warren held her debut in a room at the bar that could hold 150 people at most and that the room was not completely filled. Warren drew maybe 120 people for her debut. The tiny turnout is not the point, though. A year before the Iowa caucus, there is not a big group of people in Iowa who are clamoring for yet another campaign. No, the big problem is that she put out the video to make it look as if she had drawn a huge crowd and had to turn people away. It was a lie, and it was a lie that need not have been told. When given an easy choice, Warren still chose to lie.
The funny thing about these two items is that they reinforce Warren's greatest weakness among those who are not already big fans: Warren is perceived as a phony who has no love for the truth. Remember that Warren claimed to be a Native American to help her get hired as a highly paid law professor at both Penn and Harvard. When challenged on the claim once she went into the Senate, Warren said that it was based upon her grandmother saying that Warren had "high cheek bones" and that it was proof that Warren was descended from Cherokees. Warren also denied using her Native American heritage to get the jobs at Penn and Harvard, even though both law schools promoted her hiring as a big step forward for diversity with the first female Native American professor.
Last year, Warren tried to buttress her claim to being part Native American by releasing the results of a DNA analysis done by an "expert". The problem for Warren was that the results showed that Warren had only about half as much Native America ancestry as the average for all whites in the USA. In other words, if Warren is Native American, then so are about another 200 million people in the USA. She turned out to be maybe 1/1024 Native American. It was about as conclusive a bit a proof as one could find to show that Warren was NOT Native American. Nevertheless, Warren released this DNA test result and thought it could fool the "common people". Once again, Warren was displaying her disdain for the truth and the intelligence of the average American by pretending to be something that she is not.
There will be those, no doubt, who say that Warren is getting bad advice from her consultants and will have to reinvent herself in a different way. That's nonsense. The problem, I fear, is that Warren is just revealing her true self with these moves. She is dishonest and thinks that she can pretend to be something she is not while fooling a majority of voters. She seems to believe in P.T.Barnum's statement that "there's a sucker born every minute." Sadly for Warren, that is not usually a slogan that plays well when running for president.
First, she made her debut with a chat over the internet from her home. Fans could sign on and see Warren tell them who she is and what her beliefs are. All candidates give such speeches. The problem for Warren, though, is that she was trying to become a folksy neighbor rather than a long time law professor (at Penn and Harvard Law Schools). The only memorable thing about this debut was when she stopped in the middle and announced, "I'm gonna get me a beer." That's a sentence that, it's safe to say, Warren hasn't uttered ever before in her life in the Ivy League or the Senate. She may drink beer, but she doesn't say of anything that she is "gonna get me" anything.....EVER.
When Warren said these words, it immediately occurred to me that the beer she was going for must be "Hillary Lite". No doubt, the interruption for the beer was pre-planned in consultation with her advisers. The phrasing must have been focus-grouped as well. Warren's attempt to use improper grammar was a move to make her seem one of the common people, you know, those common people who voted for Trump in 2016. Warren was trying to connect with the common folk by misusing the English language just like, she thinks, these common folk do. It was insulting. What it manifested was that rather than being herself and presenting that to the people, Warren decided that she would present a phony façade so that she would be like the uneducated oafs that she considers the common people. It was a big mistake.
Second, Warren held her first event in Iowa to kick off her campaign. It was at a bar in Council Bluffs. To announce what a success the event was, Warren put a short video on social media. It said she had an "overflow line" at the entrance to the bar and scanned the people waiting to get into the bar in a continuous loop. The video was run at double speed so that the people went by in a blur and one couldn't really see what was happening. Today, the day after the event, it turns out that Warren held her debut in a room at the bar that could hold 150 people at most and that the room was not completely filled. Warren drew maybe 120 people for her debut. The tiny turnout is not the point, though. A year before the Iowa caucus, there is not a big group of people in Iowa who are clamoring for yet another campaign. No, the big problem is that she put out the video to make it look as if she had drawn a huge crowd and had to turn people away. It was a lie, and it was a lie that need not have been told. When given an easy choice, Warren still chose to lie.
The funny thing about these two items is that they reinforce Warren's greatest weakness among those who are not already big fans: Warren is perceived as a phony who has no love for the truth. Remember that Warren claimed to be a Native American to help her get hired as a highly paid law professor at both Penn and Harvard. When challenged on the claim once she went into the Senate, Warren said that it was based upon her grandmother saying that Warren had "high cheek bones" and that it was proof that Warren was descended from Cherokees. Warren also denied using her Native American heritage to get the jobs at Penn and Harvard, even though both law schools promoted her hiring as a big step forward for diversity with the first female Native American professor.
Last year, Warren tried to buttress her claim to being part Native American by releasing the results of a DNA analysis done by an "expert". The problem for Warren was that the results showed that Warren had only about half as much Native America ancestry as the average for all whites in the USA. In other words, if Warren is Native American, then so are about another 200 million people in the USA. She turned out to be maybe 1/1024 Native American. It was about as conclusive a bit a proof as one could find to show that Warren was NOT Native American. Nevertheless, Warren released this DNA test result and thought it could fool the "common people". Once again, Warren was displaying her disdain for the truth and the intelligence of the average American by pretending to be something that she is not.
There will be those, no doubt, who say that Warren is getting bad advice from her consultants and will have to reinvent herself in a different way. That's nonsense. The problem, I fear, is that Warren is just revealing her true self with these moves. She is dishonest and thinks that she can pretend to be something she is not while fooling a majority of voters. She seems to believe in P.T.Barnum's statement that "there's a sucker born every minute." Sadly for Warren, that is not usually a slogan that plays well when running for president.
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