On her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Monday, anchor Andrea Mitchell and USA Today’s Susan Page were positively giddy about the prospect of Senator Elizabeth Warren running for president in 2020. Promoting an interview she just conducted with the Democrat, Page excitedly recalled: “I asked if she was going to promise Massachusetts voters that she would serve all six years of her second Senate term. And she said, ‘Well, that's certainly the plan.’ That is not exactly a denial of interest in the 2020 presidential race.”
Mitchell enthusiastically chimed in: “At all. And she’s 67 years old. She is plenty young enough compared to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton to run four years from now.” Page gushed: “Yeah, she is. And she's got, of course, a huge base of support among liberals in the Democratic Party who feel like if only she or Bernie Sanders had been nominated last time around, they believe they would have had a better chance of defeating the kind of campaign that Donald Trump ran.”
James Pindell of The Boston Globe tried to temper their expectations:
...she, you know, pulls her punches on the Democratic Party and never explains exactly why she feels Hillary Clinton lost. She just says that they lost. She doesn't give any prescription as to where tactically Democrats need to go, more centrist or more progressive....what's going to happen, exactly in Massachusetts next year in 2018 if she has all of these national super PACS pummeling her – obviously not with the goal of maybe winning, she would probably still win here anyway – but making the experience so bad and so vicious that it potentially knocks her out from even running for president in the first place.
Mitchell promptly ignored his analysis and continued to fantasize about the left-wing bomb thrower making a White House run: “But Susan, she is a prodigious fundraiser. She out-raised most other Senate candidates.”
Page proclaimed: “She's already raised more than $9 million for this Senate re-election race, for a contest that we don’t actually think is going to be competitive in the state of Massachusetts.”
She then revealed: “But she told me the more serious reason she chose not to run last time was because she didn't feel like she had enough experience in government and politics and policy to be President of the United States.” “And you know, if she's a second-term senator, maybe she’ll – she’d feel like she had enough of that kind of experience,” Page hoped.
Mitchell urged: “Although it certainly didn’t hold back Barack Obama when he was a first-term senator.” Page followed: “Or Donald Trump.”
In her USA Today piece, Page described Warren in heroic terms: “Warren casts herself as a fearless champion of progressive causes against the charging bull that is President Trump. In This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class...she argues the federal government needs to do much more to reverse decades of decline among the nation’s working families, from raising the minimum wage to expanding aid to education.”
The journalist claimed that Trump’s “unexpected victory” gave Warren’s new book “a more apocalyptic edge” and served as “a rallying cry against the economic and social proposals” of the new Republican administration. Page concluded that it “has opened a world of political possibility for the senior senator from Massachusetts...”
Here is a transcript of Mitchell’s April 17 exchange with Page:
2:30 PM ET
(...)
ANDREA MITCHELL: And Susan Page – keeping it in Boston – Susan, you were in Boston over the weekend at Elizabeth Warren’s house, interviewing her. One of her first big interviews keying up where she stands going into 2020.
SUSAN PAGE [USA TODAY]: Well, you know, she's written a book. She originally thought this book was going to be a message to President Hillary Clinton to embrace progressive policies. It turns out to be a warning to Donald Trump. I asked her if she came close to running last time around. She says not really, not really that close to running, although she was urged to. But when I ask her if she was going to – you know, she’s running for re-election next year in Massachusetts – I asked if she was going to promise Massachusetts voters that she would serve all six years of her second Senate term. And she said, “Well, that's certainly the plan.” That is not exactly a denial of interest in the 2020 presidential race.
MITCHELL: At all. And she’s 67 years old. She is plenty young enough compared to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton to run four years from now.
PAGE: Yeah, she is. And she's got, of course, a huge base of support among liberals in the Democratic Party who feel like if only she or Bernie Sanders had been nominated last time around, they believe they would have had a better chance of defeating the kind of campaign that Donald Trump ran.
MITCHELL: But a lot of this, James, will depend on what kind of presidency we see with Donald Trump. I mean, it’s really too early to predict weather someone more centrist or more liberal and progressive slash, to use that nomenclature, would have a better shot against Donald Trump, if he's seeking re-election.
JAMES PINDELL [THE BOSTON GLOBE]: Yeah, there are two interesting pieces in this book relating to her potentially running in the future. Number one, she, you know, pulls her punches on the Democratic Party and never explains exactly why she feels Hillary Clinton lost. She just says that they lost. She doesn't give any prescription as to where tactically Democrats need to go, more centrist or more progressive. She does, obviously, get into the weeds on a few policy issues.
And second, I think when you saw why she did not run for president last time, that conversation she mentioned she had with her husband in her house in Cambridge, where he said, “Boy, that 2012 Senate election was really tough. The race for president’s going to be even tougher. So what's going to happen, exactly in Massachusetts next year in 2018 if she has all of these national super PACS pummeling her – obviously not with the goal of maybe winning, she would probably still win here anyway – but making the experience so bad and so vicious that it potentially knocks her out from even running for president in the first place. That could be a win for a lot of these people. And they read that line in that book, that page in that book, and they say, “Okay, here’s how we prevent Elizabeth Warren from running in the first place.”
MITCHELL: But Susan, she is a prodigious fundraiser. She out-raised most other Senate candidates.
PAGE: She's already raised more than $9 million for this Senate re-election race, for a contest that we don’t actually think is going to be competitive in the state of Massachusetts. In the book she does say that the toughness of her initial election was on her mind when she was thinking about the presidential race. But she told me the more serious reason she chose not to run last time was because she didn't feel like she had enough experience in government and politics and policy to be President of the United States. And you know, if she's a second-term senator, maybe she’ll – she’d feel like she had enough of that kind of experience.
MITCHELL: Although it certainly didn’t hold back Barack Obama when he was a first-term senator.
PAGE: Or Donald Trump.
MITCHELL: Or Donald Trump.
(...)
