Esquire blogger and highly unofficial political consultant Charles Pierce has advised his fellow Massachusetts liberal Elizabeth Warren not to cast her pearls before swine by running for president in 2016.
In a Wednesday post, Pierce opined that a Warren presidential bid would be “a bad idea…because, on the very issues on which she built her career, the country doesn't have the analytical skills god [sic] gave a stone…And [voters] have been badly led. And they have been heavily -- and effectively -- propagandized.”
Pierce noted that according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, Americans, by a margin of 71 percent to 24 percent, believe that the economic system “generally favors the wealthy,” but that several other polls have found that a plurality of voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on economic issues. He then argued that a Warren candidacy would face an insurmountable “right message, wrong messenger” problem (bolding added):
[Warren’s] basic message -- There is no pea under the shells. You've been conned, hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amuck etc. -- has gotten through to almost three-quarters of the country. That's not bad for someone who wasn't even a politician six years ago. But, because of the effective campaign of vandalism run by the Republican congress, and because of the complete inability of the Democratic party to craft a consistent economic message that doesn't sound like warmed-over DLC hash, and (yes, dear friends) because the twice-elected Democratic president didn't choose to hold completely responsible the grifters and thieves who rigged the system in the first place, there is absolutely no way at the moment for any Democratic politician …to take full advantage of the success of [Warren’s] message. People want what Senator Professor Warren is selling. They just don't want to buy it from Democrats.
How can anyone possibly look at the past 14 years and conclude that the modern Republican party can be trusted to "make the economy favor regular people again"? The party of deregulation, privatization, obstruction, and Mitt Freaking Romney? Well, one reason is that there is no apparent opposition to it on the core economic issues. There has been lip service, and moans of impotent frustration, and Tim Freaking Geithner as Treasury Secretary…
…[T]his is about a kind of willful detachment and deliberately cultivated stupidity on the part of what is still allegedly a self-governing people. But it's also about every Democratic politician who made The Deficit more of a priority than stimulating the economy, all the Democratic politicians who fed Vaal on the Simpson-Bowles fiasco, and every Democratic senator in a "red" state, most of which took the brunt of the collapse right in the teeth, who chose austerity because that's what "my constituents" want. This is Creationism in a political context, true. But it's Creationism that both parties pitched to the country. Come next Tuesday, we may see the true triumph of calculated and crafted ignorance. Nice job, everyone.
