Concerning the possible Dem nominees!

MONDAY, JULY 1, 2019

Kristof [HEART] Candidate Warren: In our view, the state of the possible Democratic nominees is poor.

The current front-runner is way too old, and it seems to be showing. One other (well-received) candidate is perhaps way too young.

(His relative youth isn't fully showing, in part because he's currently being given a pass by the mob. For a look at the South Bend police issues you aren't hearing about on cable, click to this CNN report.)

Candidate Harris has excellent presentation skills but rarely makes a presentation which is accurate or makes sense. We're sick to the soul of upper-end strivers who play it this way. (More on this in the days to come.)

Candidate Biden is way too old; Sanders is older than him! In his favor, he's still going strong. But by any rational standard, his age constitutes a large risk.

Candidate Skateboard was always a mystery. That leaves Candidate Booker, who we'll discuss some other time, and also Candidate Warren, whose stock was soaring within the mainstream press before the mob decided to settle on Candidate Harris as the most high-minded assassin since Brutus.

In our view, Candidate Warren is appropriately strong on the idea that our economic systems are "rigged." Until the mob decided that The Killing of Biden was all, they'd almost settled on "Warren Has A Plan for Everything" as their official group motto.

That brings us to the New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, who actually pursues serious issues all around the world.

Shortly before the assassin struck, Kristof wrote a column praising Candidate Warren, who was then the apparent group choice. His column ran beneath these headlines:

Why I Was Wrong About Elizabeth Warren
And her growing popularity suggests others are coming around, too.

Kristof was rethinking Warren. His column started like this:

KRISTOF (6/27/19): As the Democratic presidential campaign began, I was deeply skeptical of Elizabeth Warren.

My first objection was that she appeared to have parlayed possible Native American heritage to gain academic jobs (Harvard Law School listed her as Native American beginning in 1995). That offended me, and I knew it would repel huge numbers of voters.

Kristof started with the Native American madness, then listed two other prior objections to Warren. He then said that he'd changed his mind on all counts. We'll focus on what he said about his first point of concern

KRISTOF: Let’s examine my misperceptions. First, The Boston Globe conducted a rigorous examination of Warren’s legal career, and it is now clear that she never benefited professionally from Native American associations.

“The Globe found clear evidence, in documents and interviews, that her claim to Native American ethnicity was never considered by the Harvard Law faculty, which voted resoundingly to hire her, or by those who hired her to four prior positions at other law schools,” the newspaper concluded.

That was Kristof's full dismissal of his first point of concern—his concern about Warren's long-standing claim to Native American heritage. In our view, his analysis makes little sense.

Let's assume The Globe was right in what it believes it found. Let's assume that Warren didn't "benefit professionally" from her claims to Indian heritage. Let's assume that played no role in her hiring by Harvard or by anyone else.

Let's assume that Warren didn't benefit. That doesn't erase the impression that she tried to benefit, and something tells us a certain strongman will return to the "Pocahontas" attack one minute after Warren accepts the Democratic nomination.

If the strongman does any such thing, our team will all yell "racism." Sadly, it's the only claim our failing tribe knows how to make at this time.

We can't tell you how effective a return to that attack would be. But we were struck by the faulty logic of Kristof's absolution.

Did Candidate Warren ever think she was actually an American Indian? Since she isn't the dumbest person on Earth, it's hard to believe that she did. But she was filling out official forms that way, and it seems that Harvard was predictably hapless enough to identify her that way for years.

We don't know how well Trump's attacks would work against a Nominee Warren. Having said that, we leave you with two points:

Kristof's logic was strikingly weak that day. But a narrative was forming within the guild, and he may have wanted to clamber aboard.

That's a comment on the pundit. Here's a comment on the pol:

As Warren's basic critique implies, the rewards have been "too damn high" for a very long time at the top end of our culture. People will cut a lot of corners to haul in those rewards.

Among our two most progressive candidates, one honeymooned in the Soviet Union; the other claimed to be a Native American. There was nothing to gain from the honeymoon trip; there was much to gain from the phony claim about "race."

Meanwhile, our current front-runner has apparently wanted the top prize so badly that he's never been able to quit. In turn, Harris and Booker have now come along, claiming to be upset and hurt every time he opens his mouth.

The rewards are too damn high, and have been so for some time. Meanwhile, at least at the top of the pile, this crop of Democratic hopefuls can sometimes look scarily flawed.

The hopeful who just couldn't quit: In our view, Candidate Biden has pursued the prize beyond a point which seems to make sense. This is a very old story, of course. For a somewhat similar tale, just reread King Lear.

Might this suggest that Biden was the source, in 2016, of Maureen Dowd's ugly, treacly claims about his dying son's last few words, in which the dying son allegedly trashed the Clintons?

We might have thought it couldn't be true. Now, perhaps it was.

Unless Dowd just made that up, someone was grasping and clawing back then. In our view, Candidate Harris almost seems to be doing so now.