Tag Archives: Elizabeth Warren

Well Okay, So I Guess I’ll Take Warren.

Posted on by

The rule of thumb is that in primaries you vote your heart and in general elections you vote your head. This means I have a problem tomorrow.

Almost at the exact moment I was going to start abusing the keyboard with my deep thoughts for why Pete Buttigieg was going to be my choice on Tuesday he dropped out. Ironically, the bottom line gist of my rant was going to be young Mayor Pete’s “judgment” — based on scholarship and thoughtfulness. And wouldn’t you know judgment, which is to say accepting he had no chance in 2020 and that the Democratic faithful will look more favorably upon him in 2024 or 2028 for stepping aside now, is what he showed in “suspending” his campaign.

So Mayor Pete is yesterday’s news. Now what?

Conventional wisdom says Amy Klobuchar will win her home state. You haven’t forgotten she’s from the Midwest have you? Or that she’s been “in the arena”? Or that she has “the receipts”?

Already at this point — eight months before the real election — every candidate’s operative cliches bang in my ears like a cheap tin drum. But somehow Amy’s cliches seem even more canned than most.

She’s been an effective Senator, at least on the level of constituent service, (provided by her terrorized staff), but there are just too many big, double-edged fights she’s avoided, and avoided IMHO out of calculation for her longer-term career goals. It’s wonderful she’s authored and passed far more bills than Bernie Sanders, (not a difficult thing to do). But on close inspection most of them fall into the category of requiring us to be kind to animals and eat our vegetables. The big fights … in the main arena … where the flak gets thicker and risk gets higher, is not a place she’s spent a lot of time.

The race is clearly moving to a Bernie v. Joe contest. Two nearly octegenarian white guys with the highest name recognition. Jesus.

Both come with barge-loads of baggage and an unconvincing forecast of what happens if they’re elected. Bernie is promising a near-total overhaul of 15-20% of the American economy, along with billions-to-trillions in fresh spending for a wet dream list of social programs, all while waving off the stark, ugly reality of Mitch McConnell and a federal court system every day stocked with more McConnell-knighted Federalist Society judges. Each of whom is committed to suffocating Bernie-ism before he gets directions to the Oval Office rest room.

Joe, meanwhile continues to assure us that since he’s been everywhere and met everyone in his 500 years in D.C. he’ll reach a collegial, cloakroom accomodation with Mitch and … you know … I guess … convince the Mitchs and Ted Cruzes and Lindsey Grahams of the world to give us all a win from time to time. Maybe roll back the 2017 tax cuts, stabilize Obamacare and throw some ching at climate change.

So … the heart being what it is, an emotional thing, prone to lapses of good judgment, I’ll be joining my lovely wife in voting for Elizabeth Warren tomorrow.

Warren has no chance at the nomination. And her “wealth tax”, where she basically takes the change she finds in Mike Bloomberg’s couch cushions to turn the US of A into a 3000-mile wide version of Denmark still makes no mathematical sense, while also dreamily ignoring what we’ll just call The McConnell Reality.

But what she does offer, and this is delicious, is the sharpest remaining contrast to the corrupt, semi-literate, sexist-racist vulgarian that is Donald Trump. Startlingly industrious, studious, diligent, energetic and … female, she more than any of those left standing offers an image of profound change. Also, unlike Amy, Warren is practically Spartacus when it comes to jumping into the high-profile/high risk arenas. The woman’s got fight in her. And damn … I like a gal with fight.

By Wedneasday morning though, it’ll all be Joe and Bernie, and maybe just Bernie. And with that decided, I’ll send a check to the winner, knock doors, paste bumper stickers all over my vehicle and, hell, stand on street corners– right here in Edina — and rant regularly about “a pox on the millionaires and billionaires.”

It won’t be pretty, especially if I’m still in my pajamas with a bad case of bed head. But it’s where we’ll be.

When Amy Got Pissy with Pete

Posted on by

Well, that’s was, um, lively, wasn’t it? My hunch that Mike Bloomberg’s presence would turbo-charge the tenor of the Democratic debates proved true. Obviously, it didn’t take Nostradamus to forsee that a guy who is the living embodiment of everything two fire-breathing progressives despise about American power politics would play the role of prime rib tartare to a pack of hungry wolves.

Elizabeth Warren is the trending meme this morning, and she was clearly up for the fight. Her repeated taunt to Bloomberg that all he had to do — right then and there on live TV — was release every ex-employee from the NDAs they signed, for whatever reason, would have been enough to make him look like the arrogant (albeit smart and arguably visionary) boss he is. But then she shifted to the country’s obscene tax structure … .

So yes, a bit of a revival for Warren. (Her fund-raising spiked during the debate.)

But my eye kept returning to the fight at the other end of the stage. Post debate, former Obama advisor David Axelrod commented that last night’s debate was as bad for our senator, Amy Klobuchar, as the New Hampshire debate was good.

Moving up in politics is exhilarating. When you get to upper tiers, it gets harder.@AmyKlobuchar‘s performance has been as bad tonight as she was good in New Hampshire.— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) February 20, 2020

As they say, the optics (and tone) were not good. In fact, they were bad. Klobuchar was clearly rattled by Mayor Pete. She looked and sounded like someone, who if they were meeting away from witnesses in a dark alley, would have stuck a shiv in him.

Klobuchar and Buttigieg both need the other to go away if they’re going to gain enough traction to slow down Bernie Sanders. I get that. But what I don’t get is how someone making such a loud and persistent point about their “experience in Washington”, their time in “the arena”, their ability to “work together” and all those other homey Midwestern values, (Amy’s from Minnesota, you know) could allow herself to lose any pretense of cool and presidential decorum responding to an entirely predictable line of attack. The one about not knowing the name of the president of Mexico.

She had the right game plan. Make a quick, self-effacing apology. Stuff happens. A matter of a simple brain fart. (Not that Amy would ever use such crude language in public.) But instead of that, as Buttigieg persisted noting her positions on committees overseeing Latin America, (i.e. “experience” in “the arena”), she got visibly, palpably prickly and personal.

By stark contrast, Buttigieg standing inches away, remained poised and on message. The cringe factor may not have hit Code Red, but it was definitely in the range of, “If You See Something Say Something.” And Amy looked defensive and angry.

Much was made of her New Hampshire debate performance as a key driver of her recent surge. But William Saletan at Slate had a compelling analysis of a Klobuchar tactic in the closing hours of that primary.

Says Saletan, “In a dramatic exchange, Klobuchar rebuked Buttigieg for belittling the Senate impeachment trial. In the debate and in subsequent TV interviews, she used his impeachment comments to portray him as unserious. It was a clever attack. It was also deceptive.”

He lays out how several times in the days leading up to the vote, Buttigieg in New Hampshire made the comment, “If you’re like me, watching this impeachment process is exhausting. It’s demoralizing. [It] makes me want to change the channel and watch cartoons.” And then quickly adding, “The cynics win if they get us to switch it off. [But] that’s how we win: To refuse to walk away. How they win, how the cynics win: if they get us to switch it off.”

Several reporters on the scenes noted that the audience understood quite well what Buttigieg was saying. “As discouraging as the impeachment process was, you can’t walk away. You have to stay involved.”

But … Amy, as part of a strategy to make Buttigieg look, you know, “inexperienced” and too callow to understand “the arena”, conveniently left off the part about staying involved and fighting through the temptation to throw up your hands and walk away.

Saletan: “Klobuchar, by taking his reference to cartoons out of context, inverted the meaning of his words. In an NBC interview, she described his message as “Let’s turn off the TV or go flip the channel and watch cartoons.” She contrasted this glib remark, as she presented it, with her own solemn responsibilities. ‘I have a job to do. I am in the arena’, she said. After the interview, Klobuchar’s communications director tweeted out her jab about cartoons.“

This sort of stuff is of course standard politics. But that doesn’t make it any less cheesy … and contradictory of “Midwestern values.” Everyone likes a fighter. Excuse me, an “arena”-tested fighter. But what we admire far more is someone who can play and win by making legitimate criticism.

… and not get flustered and pissy when your target needles you for something that plainly happened.

What Was Elizabeth Warren Thinking?

Posted on by

I still don’t understand the purpose of Elizabeth Warren “letting it be known” that Bernie Sanders told her a woman couldn’t get elected president. If she wasn’t prepared to contradict him to his face and say, “That’s what you said, Bernie” in last night’s debate, why bring it up at all?

The story of Warren and Sanders having a private conversation in 2018 and Bernie saying what she claims he said pretty clearly originated from her campaign, yet her prepared response when asked at the debate brushed it aside and spun off into how Amy Klobuchar and her have never lost an election.

What am I missing?

It may just be a personal thing, but I’m appalled by people who engage in private conversations only to hit the PA system when what was said — between friends — serves their greater purposes. It’s a fundamental violation of “trustworthiness.” If you’re truly a friend, you retain that confidence … no matter what.

Warren’s too-slick by half non-response to being asked (essentially) if Bernie said what she said he said contrasts with Sanders’ response, which was a lot more digestible. Namely, that given Hillary Clinton’s three million popular vote plurality two years earlier, what sort of fool would ever say a woman couldn’t win?

There’s an interesting debate discussion to be had with the various candidates breaking down the particular pitfalls facing: the kinda doddery old professional DC animal, the billionaire(s), the really smart but pretty damn young gay dude, the you-can-smell-the-ambition-through-her-pores Midwestern Mom, the old socialist and the up-from-hard-scrabble-professor … who doesn’t seem as trusted a good friend as her advertised scruples would otherwise suggest.

But we didn’t have THAT debate.

Elizabeth and Amy vs. “The Mayor”

Posted on by

I hear her saying it, but I’m not convinced “experience” makes all that much difference anymore. In last night’s debate, our senator, Amy Klobuchar, sunk her teeth into “Mayor” Pete Buttigieg, arguing in so many words that he hasn’t been around the Washington political circus long enough to be as credible as she is.

Amy, who is “from the Midwest” in case you haven’t heard her say it a couple thousand times, seems to believe this is an effective diminishing attack on the very young “mayor”. (She pushed the “mayor” business often enough to let you know she doesn’t think running a city of 120,000 compares well to representing a state of 5,000,000.)

But really? Experience? After Barack Obama in 2008 and Donald Trump in 2016? In what world is experience still a primary criteria for the White House?

In 2008 John McCain was clearly the more “experienced” candidate. But raw charisma withstanding, astute voters didn’t have a hard time deciding whose fundamental judgment they found more appealing/reassuring. McCain’s long DC experience was pock-marked by dozens of examples of truly suspect judgment on key issues. In his case “experience” translated to “more of the same FUBAR.”

Klobuchar isn’t John McCain. But as hard-working and as tough a competitor as she’s proving to be on the campaign trail, I still have no sense that she has the quality of judgment to play the game as it has been designed and is being played by the likes of Mitch McConnell, Bill Barr, the Federalist Society and their vast network of very wealthy, influential benefactors.

At this point I can’t say for sure if Buttegieg does either. But he continues to display a depth and quality of thinking and judgment that suggests he understands pretty damn well how the country actually operates and what to do — and not do — to get where you have to be to make some changes.

The past few weeks — and again last night — “Mayor” Pete has been taking shots from the progressive wing for his coziness with … well, really rich progressives. This business about his fund-raiser in a California “wine cave” is bad optics in the minds of those applying the kind of sack cloth and ashes standard to progressive politics. But besides the (mild) hypocrisy of Elizabeth Warren poking him for snuggling with billionaires, he isn’t the one demonstrating bad judgment by accusing his rivals of something they all have done to one degree or another. (Bernie less than others.)

Despite their obvious tenacity, Warren and Klobuchar, both of whom are currently trailing the inexperienced “mayor” in Iowa, haven’t demonstrated to me at least that they have the fully-thought out perspective on American politics 2020-style. At least not as well thought out as, “a gay dude from Mike Pence’s Indiana,” to quote the “mayor”.

Huffington Post progressives and others seem to see Buttigieg as more somber and studious version of Bill Clinton. Another (white, though not straight male) too comfortable in schmooze mode with the tycoon class, and therefore less likely to ram through in his first 100 days all the major reforms the country needs.

They could be right. But what that ignores is that Clinton, for all his slickness, canoodling and all the dry tinder he laid at the feet of the rabid dogs of talk radio Republicans, produced indisputable improvements for women, the middle-class, science and international relations. (I’m open to the debate over welfare reform.)

Point being, as a “middle-laner” rightfully skeptical of promising voters all sorts of dreamy and wonderful things that have zero-to-no chance of so much as a hearing in a Republican Senate, Buttigieg is showing better judgment — certainly of the real world realities of 2020 America — than Bernie and Warren.

As for fellow “middle-laner” Klobuchar’s accusation that the “mayor” doesn’t have sufficient experience, those of us here in Minnesota, (which is in “the midwest” as you might know), are well aware that after 13 years as a solid, workman-like Senator, Klobuchar’s judgment has not produced the reputation of being an acknowledged leader on any of the biggest issues of our era.

The difference between listening to Buttigieg and Klobuchar talk about the country’s foundational problems is this: with Buttigieg you’re listening to someone who has impressively cross-referenced the demographics, the science and the raw vagaries of human nature and is making unique, well-considered and strategic distinctions between noble aspiration and pragmatism.

There’s an inspirational factor there.

While with Klobuchar, the sense is of someone with plenty of battle-tested experience, but whose judgment is regularly deferring to standard political positioning and protection.

Handicapping the Democrats 18 Months Out

Posted on by

[Correction included]. Even if his name is not mentioned directly, every Democratic candidate entering the 2020 race is being measured and labeled on how much of a response they are to Donald Trump, or “Trumpism”. Which is to say, what degree of repudiation are they offering? Total? A bit here and there? Whatever they can get from “across the aisle”?

As of this morning Bernie Sanders, now 77 years old and grumpy as ever, is back in the hunt. Say what you will about The Bern, he isn’t shy about calling it as he (and most of us see it). Trump is a career low-life and criminal (laundering money for Russian gangsters to sustain his “brand” being the least of it), and establishment Republicans like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are guilty as sin for greasing the skids for every absurd-to-vile thing Trump has promoted.

Personally, I don’t feel the need to throw myself on any bandwagon (or funeral pyre) this early in the circus performance. But I am telling myself to keep the radar up for what people like Yuval Harari think of as a fundamental breakdown of traditional politics. In other words, we could be seeing a large-scale disruption on the left in response to the disruption of the chaos and criminality of Trump and enabling Republicans on the right.

Put another way, it may be a feeling among comparatively well-informed and rational people who believe “the old way” is too timid and under-powered for the threats against decency and logic presented by Trumpism.

I can’t say how real it all is at the moment. But to mangle Gertrude Stein, there’s definitely some kind of there … there.

The wag-nerds on Nate Silver’s 538 podcast have broken down the Democratic field (as of last week) into a small handful of “lanes”. For example, our gal, Amy Klobuchar, and Kirsten Gillibrand are described as running in “the beer lane”, trumpeting mostly unexciting, traditional values that have satisfied collegial Democrats for decades. By contrast, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris, are described as contenders in “the wine lane”, riling up the passions of mostly well-educated (and female) voters. That crowd can also be described as upscale, (in terms of smarts if not money) and extraordinarily upset with the numbskull, mysogynistic antics of the right as any specific policy position.

But then, by way of fine-parsing, 538 suggests a possible candidate like Beto O’Rourke, defies both of those appeals by splitting the difference with a “craft beer lane”. You know, lots of traditional stuff — blue jeans, rock’ n roll, drive through hamburgers, rural Texas, pickup trucks — all whipped together with a thick, rich hipster sauce of “stop the [bleeping] madness!”

As I say, I have no specific favorite in the hunt here 18 months or whatever before the next election. But I’ll do a bit of my own lane handicapping anyway.

In the “Forget About It” lane. Tulsi Gabbard. Too much conspicuous opportunism. Do four years of serious reading and get back to us.

The “Been There, Done That” lane. Joe Biden and Bernie. The Bud Light crowd loves you in Scranton, Joe. I get that. But the game has changed since you were in your prime, and that was 20 years ago. And Bernie: love ya too, man. But 77 is way past the “serve by” date in modern politics. Your job this time around is to keep goosing the actual contenders to keep the fire and faith.

The “A Little Too Cool for School” lane. Cory Booker. Kind of like what I say about people who want to be cops; the fact they want it so bad is the main reason to disqualify them. No human, much less any successful politician from New Jersey, can possibly be as immaculate as Booker purports to be.

The “No, Just No” lane. Kirsten Gillibrand. The creepy bane of the #MeToo movement. Way too many of the obnoxious “beliefs” she needed to play upstate have done a miraculously 180 since elevating to the Senate. Also, for so many reasons too obvious to mention: Michael Bloomberg.

The “If This Was 1956, Then Maybe” lane. Klobuchar. Being a darling of George Will, Republican colleagues and the Wall Street Journal editorial page doesn’t make my pissed-off little heart go pitter-patter. When you can’t quite say you’re in full favor of a medicare access for all on Obamacare I get an even worse case of morbid eye-roll. [*]

The “I Like What Yer Sayin’, Dude. But Yer Style Needs Some Work” lane. Sherrod Brown. Otherwise known as The Most Rumpled Man in the Senate. Unlike Amy delivering Minnesota’s 10 whopping electoral votes, Brown pulling in Ohio would be serious numbers in 2020. Wonk liberals know the guy and like what they hear. But it’s very hard to imagine any dispassionate independent spending 90 seconds listening to him.

The “You’re Checking My Boxes, Now Sell It” lane. Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Beto O’Rourke. Harris has the feel of the front-runner, based on a near perfectly staged roll-out, and she’s got an interesting mix of prosecutorial dagger and pop-culture crede. Warren, while on the cusp of aging-out at 69, has demonstrated the mix of righteous indignation and legislative bona fides that play like sweet music to liberal ears. And O’Rourke has demonstrated a level of energy and charisma above and beyond anyone else out there.

But he’s got to, A: Decide, and B: Convince a whole lot of women like my friend at a dinner party the other night who announced to the crowd, “I’m never voting for another man!”

[*] The early version of this post suggested Klobuchar wasn’t on board with at least a public option into Obamacare, which she is. My mistake. (To many minds “public option” and “medicare access for all” are very nearly the same thing. But she’s being very careful here.)

 

 

 

 

Hillary Needs A Singular Trump Critique, Not Dozens

Posted on by

One of the problems with running against a historically bizarre opponent like Donald Trump is that there are so many different juicy ways to run against him.  Most activists and pundits think of that as an opportunity, but it also poses a very real problem – focus.

Because Trump is such an outrageous cartoon character of a candidate, Secretary Clinton could be tempted to use her campaign platform and resources to frame up Mr. Trump in a myriad of different ways.  But that would be the biggest mistake she could make.

Screen-shot-2016-01-29-at-10_54_35-AM-1140x554_png__1140×554_

Trump the bigot.  Trump the philanderer. Trump the misogynist. Trump the bully.  Trump the trigger happy. Trump the uncouth.  Trump the simpleton.  Trump the liar.  Trump the inciter.  Trump the right winger.  Trump the failure.  Trump the blunderer.  Trump the neo-facist.  Trump the war criminal.  Trump the con artist.  Trump the demagogue.  Trump the hypocrite.  Trump the rejected.  Trump the authoritarian.  Trump the unstable.  Trump the novice.  Trump the flip-flopper.  Trump the all-of-the-above.

It’s dizzying.  One of the worst possible strategies is the last one — to throw everything at Trump in roughly equal measure, which is de facto what is happening at the moment.  And that is what happens when you don’t have a disciplined communications strategy.

Singular Key Message Needed

The essence of communications strategy is sacrifice.  You have to walk past some tempting messages in order to have a focused strategy.  If you say everything you possibly could say about an opponent, you effectively are saying nothing.  All of those very valid Trump critiques piled one upon the other becomes a cacophony to voters.  Subsequently, eyes roll and ears shut.

The_Key_to_the_Key_cg-50_jpg__320×247_So communications strategists typically identify a small number of messages or themes that they strive to repeat and stress above all the others. They’re often called “key messages,” or “frames.”

The key message is the one idea that you need to stick in your target audience’s mind in order to achieve your goal, which in this case is persuading swing voters to reject Trump and get more comfortable with Clinton.

Therefore, the Clinton campaign needs to stick to a small number of lines of attack, even as the Trump vaudeville act continually tosses out new bait to lead the Clinton campaign down dozens of different messaging paths.  Trump is clearly incapable of message discipline, but Clinton can’t allow his lack of discipline to destrory hers.

Trump The Economy Rigger

So which crystallizing key message should Clinton stress?

Swing voters are disgusted by establishment figures like Hillary and Congress, because they see them as part of a corrupt Washington culture that has rigged the economy for the wealthy few to the exclusion of the non-wealthy many.  That is the central concern of many Trumpeters and Bern Feelers, and so that issue is the most important messaging ground for Clinton.

Therefore, Secretary Clinton should align a disciplined campaign messaging machine – ads, speech soundbites, policy announcements, surrogate messaging, etc. — around framing Mr. Trump as:

Trump the self-serving economy rigger.

As Clintonista James Carville might say, “it’s the economy rigging, stupid.”  That is, Trump the privileged billionaire selfishly seeking to win control the Washington levers of power in order further rig the economy to benefit himself and his privileged class at the expense of everyone else.  If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s precisely the strategy that Team Obama used to defeat billionaire Mitt Romney in 2012.

Why choose this framing over all of the other delicious options?  First, it was proven effective against a billionaire candidate in 2016.  There is message equity there.  Why reinvent the wheel?  Second, it goes to the core of what is bugging swing voters the most in 2016.

With this kind of framing, the Clinton-Warren or Clinton-Sherrod Brown team would focus like a laser on Trump’s tax giveaways to the rich. It would highlight his proposals to weaken Wall Street protections. It would stress Trump’s opposition to Clinton proposals to  increase the minimum wage hikes and taxes on the wealthy. It would hammer relentlessly on Trump’s refusal to reveal his taxes, and stress that he doesn’t want ordinary Americans to know that the billionaire pays a much smaller percentage of his taxes than they do. It would focus on his history of lobbying to create and perpetuate the wealth-protection measures to rig the economy in his favor, while harming the rest of us.

Executing that kind of messaging strategy would require the Clinton campaign to largely take a pass on the other juicy lines of attack against Trump, all of which will be magnified during daily news coverage, but are unhelpful diversions of public mind space compared to this framing.  It would require her to be saying things like this:

“You know, I care much less about today’s latest sideshow than the fact that Mr. Trump’s plan to cut taxes for the rich and oppose a minimum wage hike will further rig the economy for the ultra-wealthy. His outrageous giveaway to  his fellow billionaires is much more offensive to me than his latest round of crudeness.”

Focusing on “Trump the self-serving economy rigger” would make Clinton look a bit more like a change-agent, and less like a defender of the despised Washington status quo.  It also would help erode the silly notion of among some swing voters that Trump is somehow the champion of the common man.

This won’t come naturally for Secretary Clinton.  Her establishment instincts will continually tempt her to focus her critique of Trump through a Washington lens.  She’ll instinctively want to crow about the fact that she knows more about policy details, and that the smarty pants Washingtonian centrists, and even some conservatives, are embracing her and rejecting Trump. She’ll want to scold Trump about saying things that, well, refined Washingtonians simply do not say.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.  When Clinton does that, many swing voters hear her as “Washington insider looking down her nose at Washington outsider,” and in the current political climate the instincts of many will be to side with the outsider. Hillary needs to fight her instincts and frame Trump as the ultimate nest-feathering insider masquerading as an outsider.  She doesn’t need to feel her inner Bubba and triangulate the center right, or jump on each of Trump’s outrage du jour.  As much as she may want to resist it, Hillary needs to feel the Bern.

 

Minnpost_Blog_Cabin_logo_3_small

Note:  This post also was published as part of MinnPost’s weekly Blog Cabin feature.

Note:  Collage portrait by Conor Collins.

Ladies, It’s Time You Got Tough with Hillary

Posted on by

Lambert_to_the_SlaughterAre we having another deep doo-doo deja vu Clinton moment, or what? Suddenly it’s 1998 all over again. If only the economy was nearly as good.

So it seems Hillary Clinton, presumptive next president, played by her own rules and kept her State Department e-mails (more or less) hidden from official prying eyes. That is except for government types who received her e-mails. Those are still on the big server system, accessible to every EOH (Enemy of Hillary) who wants to root around and prove she personally armed the terrorists who killed the ambassador in Benghazi.

Now … obviously … this is a (big) deal because she’s Hillary goddam Clinton, with an empty six-lane freeway in front of her leading to the White House. If she wasn’t we’d still be obsessing over that stupid dress thing. Whether this outrage(!) actually has legs, which is to say if the conservative outrage machine can sustain it for 18 months, remains to be seen. Personally, I doubt it, since Es of H have a bad habit of picking the wrong horse to saddle up their righteous indignation. See: Whitewater, Benghazi.

But this email flap is another reminder that liberals might want to demand a hell of a lot more from Her Regency before the coronation. Personally, I’ve never been comfortable with the acclamation route to big power. I like candidates who have had a scare thrown into them, people who have been forced to explicitly defend and/or adjust their thinking and promises based on aggressive examination from E’s and F’s alike.

The current Hillary-Jeb match-up is so embarrassing. Clinton and Bush. Again. We look like a goddam banana republic, alternating between owners of the two biggest estancias every eight years. It’s bad enough we have to endure a system at both the national and state level where millionaires (of both parties) essentially buy themselves a job, usually guaranteeing that their previous stakeholders have primary access to their souls. It’s so damned unimaginative, if nothing else.

More to the point, as many have written before, the Hillary ascension, with no Plan B, strikes me as recklessly perilous. Even if the jowl-flapping buffoons of modern conservatism fail to make “Email-gate” stick, where are we if something truly grave happens to our one-and-only roadblock to Bush III, or President Scott Walker? Tomorrow is promised to no one. Hillary may not get hit by a bus, but not being the springiest of chickens, her health could fail, or we could discover that she really did plan the Benghazi attack. What then?

Given a choice between female candidates, I’d much prefer Elizabeth Warren. (Hell, I’d prefer Warren over any other Democrat, x or y chromosome, off the top of my head.) But a Warren candidacy would ignite the most godawful firestorm of coordinated, multi-front, big money attacks this back water oligarchy has ever seen. She’s despised and feared that much by Wall Street. And frankly, I doubt she’s prepared yet for that level of intensity of defamation. Hillary on the other hand seems quite cozy and well-triangulated among the Goldman Sachs and Citigroups of the world.

Liberal women in particular seem all but unanimously united in their support of Hillary, which is understandable to a point. After 240 years of alleged democracy, a woman president is waaay overdue and Hillary clearly has more experience and retail savvy than any plausible male on the scene. (Sorry, Joe Biden. Ain’t never going to happen.) That said, it may be that the women rushing to carry Hillary’s sedan chair up the White House steps are precisely the people to be grilling her most intensely on how exactly she intends to transform this country’s financial regulatory system, which is so tightly inter-locked with campaign finance, which is to blame for the obscene, truly Guatemala-like corruption and waste of DC?

There are a half dozen other good questions, but getting Her Highness on record, explicitly and in detail on that point alone would be a damned valuable start.

And if (not when) she answers, don’t put up with any of the usual Clinton-ish legalisms.