Elizabeth Warren: "Or We Can Fight Back"

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

19 July 14

f you ignored the signs, and the buttons, and the plastic straw hats, and the people in every corner of the ballroom bleeding from the teeth at the simple possibility of it, there was no indication that anyone at the Netroots Nation hootenanny was entertaining the notion that Senator Elizabeth Warren might be running for president of anything. In contrast to Ramblin' Joe Biden's sprawling address yesterday -- which, admittedly, had its own peculiar charms -- the Senator Professor was brisk and brief and bristling. The speech ran as though it were a class at Harvard Law, bounded at either end by bells. But its pith did not undermine its passion. The Senator Professor has been sharpening her message again. The game is rigged, and, as she says, "We can whimper. We can whine. Or we can fight back."

Most significantly, the speech now contains a pointed passage on international trade, in which deals like NAFTA and the upcoming TPP deal are framed as yet another way the dice are loaded, and another example of there not being any pea under any of the shells. "These trade deals," she said, "are done in secret so big corporations can do their dirty work behind closed doors, so they can have their insider access while worker's rights and environmental regulations are gutted. You know, I've actually had people who support these trade deals come up to me and say that they have to be done in secret because, if they weren't, the people would be opposed. To me, if people would be opposed, then we shouldn't do the trade deals."

Even if she doesn't run, and I still think the chances she will are almost nil, this is a shot directly across the bow of the putative Democratic frontrunner. There is nothing more central to the history of the last President Clinton than the Eisenhower-lite economics with which he triangulated himself, whether that's repealing Glass-Steagall, signing the Commodities Futures Modernization Act as he went out the door, or shepherding NAFTA through Congress and fast-shuffling it past the general population. There is no way for Hillary Clinton to detach herself from that legacy even if she wanted to, and it's not clear at all that she wants to. If Warren doesn't run, she nonetheless has an obvious constituency that is growing, and to which whoever the Democratic nominee is must respond.

(It is also to be noted that Warren was cagey enough not to mention the TPP specifically, but that her condemnation was general, and it was limited to the secrecy within which the deals are struck. Thus are options kept open. She's learning.)

There is no question that Warren is one of the few politicians out there -- Rand Paul may be another -- who has a clearly defined base of national support. The Clinton campaign already seems like one that is willing to settle for a kind of amorphous and tacit approval; there's a sense of automatic pilot to the whole effort at the moment. The rest of the Republicans appear to be mystified as to how to tame the crazoids while not losing their support, and the opposition to Clinton among the Democrats depends on where Martin O'Malley is speaking today. (And, if he was smart, that would be here.) The field is still unformed, for which we can all thank god, it being 2014 and all. But there is a clarity around Warren that doesn't exist elsewhere. In fact, her message is so clear and sharp that I continue to think it better suits her in the Senate, and as a voice from the outside that pushes and prods and fights back. Like I said, I don't think she's going to run. Which doesn't mean she can't give campaign speeches.

Then again, she was signing books at 2:45 on Friday. People were lining up to buy them before noon.