During an extended interview on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 Wednesday night, things got a little heated between Cooper and Senator Elizabeth Warren. The almost 25-minute-long interview grew tense when Cooper grilled Warren on how out of touch the Democratic Party is with Middle America. “When you look at that electoral map, I mean, there is blue on both coasts basically, and there is a lot of red in the entire rest of the country,” he noted before asking, “Do you feel like you are out of touch?”
Warren quickly went on the defensive and tried to hide behind the popular vote: “Out of touch when 2.3 million more people voted for the democratic candidate than the Republican candidate.” She went on to point to how the Democrats picked up seating in the House of Representatives and the Senate. But the facts is, that before the election every liberal commentator predicted that the Democrats would take back the Senate and possibly the House.
By those standards the left greatly underperformed by most measurements. The desperate sounding Senator then declared, “We are not the minority here. We are the party of opposition, yes.” But Cooper pressed on almost slighting her for the declaration, saying, “But it sounds like you are saying you won. But you didn't. So what went wrong?” She again retreated to arguing about the popular vote margin growing for Clinton.
Cooper seemed to rub salt into the wound that was Hillary Clinton’s so-called Rust-Belt “firewall,” which was comprised of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin (all of which Donald Trump won):
But you are talking about an economic message that is not resonating with voters in rust belt states. Even the term rust belt is offensive, but I mean in those states where people are hurting your message is not resonating.
The senator became irritated and exclaimed: “[T]hat for more than 30 years has been effectively a trickledown economy. This economy has been full of deregulation so Wall Street could do better.” What Warren failed to mention is, that for more than half of that time Democrats were in charge. And one of them, Bill Clinton, was responsible for cause the housing market to collapse. She went on to condemn Trump’s pick of Steven Mnuchin to lead the Treasury Department because he was from Wall Street.
The CNN host called out Warren for being condescending to those who voted for Trump:
Sounds like you are telling those workers who are out of jobs who voted for Donald Trump in Ohio and other spaces that they were just mistaken. That they were sold a bill of goods or they just don't understand what's in their best interest.
Warren then snapped at Cooper, “I’m sorry Anderson, did you just hear what we said about Donald Trump?” “He promised that he was going to run this government for the American people and not for Wall Street,” she argued, “And what he's just done is he's just put a Wall Streeter in charge of the treasury!”
But Cooper did make a great point though. The election did show just how out of touch Democrats are with the “fly over country” of America. Clinton often campaigned in the suburbs of Philadelphia, wrote-off Wisconsin as in the bag, barely touched Michigan, and thought blue collar workers wanted job training classes. And it didn’t help that they regard Trump’s supporters as deplorables.
Transcript below:
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CNN
Anderson Cooper 360
November 30, 2016
8:21:20 PM Eastern…
ELIZABETH WARREN: We now have an economy that is working great. It’s working great for those right at the top. And everybody else in this economy is being left behind. This isn't just about the poor. This is about working families. This is about middle class families. This is about upper middle class families. This is about people who worry that they can't afford to educate their children. This is about people who worry that they can't afford to retire. This is about people who see no economic future for themselves and others like themselves.
We have to do better than that as a country. We want built an America that worked, not just for those at the top. It worked across a full range. We weren't perfect. But we were bending it in the right direction. And for 30 years now we've done trickledown economics. And it has been an ugly mix of deregulation and just writing one law after another that helps those at the top. Tax cuts for the big guys, no spending for anybody else. We have to reverse that.
ANDERSON COOPER: But, as you know though, when you look at that electoral map, and that’s my final question. When you look at that electoral map, I mean, there is blue on both coasts basically, and there is a lot of red in the entire rest of the country. Do you feel like you are out of touch? Cause that is what Republicans say about you, that you are out of touch.
WARREN: Out of touch when 2.3 million more people voted for the democratic candidate than the Republican candidate. When the Democrats picked up seats in the Senate and the Republicans lost. When the Democrats picked up seats in the House of Representatives and the Republicans lost. You know, let's be clear. We are not the minority here. We are the party of opposition, yes.
COOPER: But it sounds like you are saying you won. But you didn't. So what went wrong?
WARREN: Look, what I'm saying is that more Americans agreed on -- with the democratic candidate for president than agreed with the Republican for president. And not by a little bit. She won by a substantial margin indeed as the numbers keep coming in. That margin continues to grow.
COOPER: But you are talking about an economic message that is not resonating with voters in rust belt states. Even the term rust belt is offensive, but I mean in those states where people are hurting your message is not resonating.
WARREN: And that’s what I was just talking about. We're talking about an economy that for more than 30 years has been effectively a trickledown economy. This economy has been full of deregulation so Wall Street could do better. And what's happening? Donald Trump is turning around and appointing the ultimate Wall Street insider. I think he's called Mr. Wall Street, to come in and have the keys to the treasury. We need an economy that works across the range, that produces good jobs, produces a future.
COOPER: But it sounds like you are telling those workers –
WARREN: All across the range.
COOPER: Sorry to interrupt. Sounds like you are telling those workers who are out of jobs who voted for Donald Trump in Ohio and other spaces that they were just mistaken. That they were sold a bill of goods or they just don't understand what's in their best interest.
WARREN: I’m sorry Anderson, did you just hear what we said about Donald Trump? He promised that he was going to run this government for the American people and not for Wall Street. And what he's just done is he's just put a Wall Streeter in charge of the treasury. And not just a random one. A guy who actually helped package all of those toxic mortgages. A guy who bought a bank that made its fortune by squeezing people hard on foreclosure. That is the person who's going the chief economic officer of the United States. Donald Trump is the one who said one thing during the campaign and now has reversed that by 180 degrees by what he is actually doing.
