Elizabeth Warren Ancestry Thread Part 2
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Foolmewunz
Grammar Resistance Leader, TLA Dictator
Look, I accept her explanations. It's the made-up ones I don't accept. She didn't just tick off a box on a form that implied that you were to list your various ancestry claims. She wrote out "American Indian" in a field for "Race:"
"Hey, we were all into doing that kind of thing back there and I was kinda proud of the Native American strain in my lineage!" I'd be fine with that. Her comment at one point that she thought she'd have better opportunities to get to hang with some N.A. attorneys also works for me.
You were going to a lot of trouble to parse the whole thing in terms of analogies to your own mixed heritage. I'm there... I'm both Jewish and Sicilian - second generation of both. But it has no bearing on this.
I'm a Warren supporter if it comes down to the leading three (Biden, Warren, Sanders) and do not support the fake narrative that she was trying to exploit affirmative action. As crimes go, her little transgression is minor. I don't think we need to embroider the living bejeebus out of it, though.
Pterodactyl
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I think Warren's past claims are most problematic because of how race has been made the central issue of what is a vast political divide in this country.
In a vacuum, writing words on a piece of paper hurts no one.
But you can't be the party of "white people are inherently evil and only prosper at the expense of minorities" and then nominate a white lady who (so the argument goes) apparently, explicitly and cynically exploited a system of mandated diversity for her own personal gain. It's appears to be hypocrisy.
Also, this is why distilling every political argument down to "racism" or "sexism" is so dangerous. If the litmus test is always "did this person ever do or say anything that could be construed as racist at any point in history" then most of the people are going to fail that test.
See; Franken, Al.
In other words, if you live by the sword, you should expect to die by it.
PS. Personally, from a policy standpoint, Im almost in lockstep with Warren and I think she would make a fantastic president. But I think she is maybe the worst opponent for Trump because of this issue and the time in which we're living.
In a vacuum, writing words on a piece of paper hurts no one.
But you can't be the party of "white people are inherently evil and only prosper at the expense of minorities" and then nominate a white lady who (so the argument goes) apparently, explicitly and cynically exploited a system of mandated diversity for her own personal gain. It's appears to be hypocrisy.
Also, this is why distilling every political argument down to "racism" or "sexism" is so dangerous. If the litmus test is always "did this person ever do or say anything that could be construed as racist at any point in history" then most of the people are going to fail that test.
See; Franken, Al.
In other words, if you live by the sword, you should expect to die by it.
PS. Personally, from a policy standpoint, Im almost in lockstep with Warren and I think she would make a fantastic president. But I think she is maybe the worst opponent for Trump because of this issue and the time in which we're living.
smartcooky
Penultimate Amazing
That's a dead link in Zig's quote, probably because you copy-pasted Zigs post rather then quoting it, so you picked up the abbreviated text of the link and not the whole hyperlink.
Was it this one?
http://volokh.com/2012/05/04/elizabeth-warren-and-affirmative-action-in-law-school-hiring/
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Thank you!
I did as you say since the old thread was closed and I couldn't quote it into this thread. I should have known better.
Silly Green Monkey
Cowardly Lurking in the Shadows of Greatness
Did she?
Pterodactyl
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I don't have a firm opinion. I think her actions were certainly questionable (I guess that's what we're doing here) and are now a definite liability.
kellyb
Penultimate Amazing
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See, I've yet to encounter even one single person who says they won't vote for Warren in the general because of this issue.
Not one.
Just a lot of people predicting that maybe other people won't.
Marcus
Illuminator
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The question is not who to support in the general, but who to support in the primaries. Who will make the best candidate? I don't think the answer is entirely clear yet.
The Great Zaganza
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The Ancestry Issue is very much like the Email Server - not anything of substance, but if illuminated the right way, it looks bad.
Most importantly, it is completely irrelevant as a means to judge the qualification for the job of President.
Most importantly, it is completely irrelevant as a means to judge the qualification for the job of President.
The misrepresentations happened so long ago that you're probably right. Still, it's an indicator of a weak personality, and her present day handling of the topic hasn't helped.
Whoever faces Trump needs to be able to look into the eye of the beast without blinking. Think Frodo and Sauron.
BobTheCoward
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I disagree. I find her lack of skepticism about claims made by family members very relevant. I value skepticism as a quality of job performance.
I think it is even worse that she would readily believe something that produces no benefit.
Belz...
Fiend God
I don't think Sauron could look into Trump's eyes and not blink.
Drewbot
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Trump is a powerful negotiator. He knows how to leverage bargaining assets, create bargaining assets out of nothing, and ask for the order.
If Warren and Trump get on a debate stage, he has her all set up to fall into the Nagging-Mother-In-Law trap. Uggh I'm already picturing it.
Belz...
Fiend God
You must be joking. He SUCKS as a negociator. What he does is bully people, often backed by nothing but the threat of lawsuits.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
States facts not in evidence. Did you learn that at Trump University?
"Illegal e-mail servers" aren't a boogeyman among the Liberals the way "Cultural appropriation" is.
Again this whole thing is a nothing burger from every possible angle... if we didn't live in a world where the same people keep wanting to talk about white people wearing dreadlocks or teaching belly dancing classes.
The reason I'm such an outlier in most political discussions is because I don't care about gotcha/whataboutism/"how do you like it when the shoe is on the other foot" arguments that make up... well all within a rounding error of our political discourse these days but that's not the same thing as burying my head in the sand and pretending that's not what this is and talk around it.
Well all the more reason to vote for your drunken racist molesting uncle I guess.
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
Did Warren do a stupid thing? Yes. Was it the stupidest thing ever? No. Was it so stupid that by itself it renders her incapable of being a good president? No. Is it worth talking about still? No.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
This is the part I have trouble getting over. No matter how many problems or annoyances you can come up with for a possible Democratic candidate, at the end of the day, your alternative is always Donald Trump, your drunken racist molesting uncle who leaves before paying his share of the bill.
But, I mean, Trump (presumably) has a penis, so that makes it okay, I guess.
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I wish more people could grasp that "I'm gonna vote for Candidate X" and "I'm a total fanboy for Candidate X and think they can do no wrong" aren't the same thing.
Barring some sort of factor that I'm literally unable to even imagine a reasonable hypothetical for happening between now and then, I'm gonna vote for whatever Democratic Candidate is nominated to run against Trump.
That does not mean I'll have zero issues with them or throw my support behind everything they do and say.
Barring some sort of factor that I'm literally unable to even imagine a reasonable hypothetical for happening between now and then, I'm gonna vote for whatever Democratic Candidate is nominated to run against Trump.
That does not mean I'll have zero issues with them or throw my support behind everything they do and say.
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
Indeed. If Biden gets the nomination even I will reluctantly vote for him. I'll even wear a "Biden 20/20" eyepatch to support him. Possibly with fake bloodstains.
Belz...
Fiend God
First-hand accounts alledge that he has a mushroom, instead.
I'm going to have to disagree on both these points. Warren did the same thing that millions of Americans do - believing a family story. And when you expand that beyond claims of Native ancestry, probably almost everyone does something similar. I certainly know I believe some family traditions that can't be verified (because certain kinds of anecdotes rarely can be). I don't think there's anything in believing family histories that inherently indicates a weak personality. I guess you could fault her for being so conspicuously credible of the claims, but, again, that kind of behavior in general is so common, I'm not going to fault her for it; and I'm a person with recent, strong ties to a culture that results in frequent "hey, I'm that, too - well, like, a quarter or an eighth or something"-type comments from people that get annoying. But I don't hold it against anyone because I learned a long time ago that's just what America is like - people here like holding onto distant claims of identity. If I had to consider every family story or claim of ethnicity someone has told me a sign of personal weakness, I don't know if I could respect anybody
And I actually see her response as fairly strong so far. She was called out for being clueless and handling criticism poorly, apologized, and is publicly trying to make amends and do a better job. That shows a lot of maturity that's, IMO, a good counter to Trump's refusal to admit to even small mistakes. Doing things like using a marker to "correct" a map and make it seem like you were right all along is a sign of a weak personality to me, owning up to your mistakes isn't. Could she have done a better job? Maybe, it's hard to say what exactly the right response to any smear campaign is. Will the GOP try to make it into a big deal? Yes, and there is some ammo there (although, as I said in the previous thread, it might be dangerous territory because so many Americans, especially southerners, claim NA ancestry, too), just like with the emails thing, but at least the people with the biggest stake in Warren's claims have accepted her apology and generally tend to approve of her now.
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Regnad Kcin
Penultimate Amazing
I can’t tell, are you talking about her once being a Republican?
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
That she switched parties, and the reason behind it, is one of her best selling points.
That she claimed to be a Native American and a Republican at the same time should have led her to deeper thoughts about her won identity.
Also, can we treat this like alcoholism: Yeah, she did that stuff back when she was in the GOP, but she's been clean for decades now.
I don't fault her for that aspect. The problem is, even per the family story, she was fractional. Self-identifying based on a small fraction is dishonest.
Cavemonster
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I think it would be dishonest only to the extent that she believed it would be literally read that way by some person who had an interest and that her intent was to fool that party.
If you go to the website of a company that sells alcohol, you'll find that they ask you to enter your age to be allowed admittance. And for some godforsaken reason, they tend to use drop down menus instead of a typed entry. So you have to go through a slightly awkward process to find your birth year.
I assure you, I am over 21. In fact, I'm turning 40 this coming year.
And yet, on at least two occaisions on entering one of these websites, I have merely scrolled down to the first year that would be over 21 and submitted that age.
Have I presented something which is not true? Absolutely. Have I been dishonest? No. Because I didn't intend to mislead or cheat anyone. That's both the dictionary definition and the meaning of the word you'd need to use to have it be worthy of moral reproachment.
Belz...
Fiend God
Foolish, perhaps. But dishonest?
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
You encounter dropdowns like that because of a universal programming rule: any field you allow the user to free text input will let a constant stream of garbage data into your database.
Hellbound
Merchant of Doom
Unless you do good error checking and have murder-drones pre-programmed to seek out and remove problematic users.
Since there's no actual verification of the age and it's all on the honor system is should just be a "Are you Over 21, Yes or No" box. What's the point of making any system to input actual age in that kind of context?
Venom
Philosopher
To the extent that we can categorize "race" (I think there should be more boxes to check here in the U.S.).
TragicMonkey
Poisoned Waffles
Because many children are too ignorant to do the subtraction necessary to figure out what years are more than 20 years ago.
Cabbage
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I can't read her mind, retrospectively or otherwise, when she wrote her race down as "American Indian". All I know is she wasn't truthful, knowingly.
I find this comparison unconvincing for two reasons: (1) For all practical purposes, you didn't misrepresent yourself. You were legally qualified to make the purchase. Whereas Warren misrepresented herself. (2) That's a far more casual scenario.
By the way, your concept of the dictionary definition of "dishonest" is wrong, in the sense of too many qualifiers.
Clearly.
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