If Joe Biden Makes Elizabeth Warren His VP Pick, She Will Have Powerful Friends to Boost Democrats 2016

Vice President Joe Biden, pondering shaking up the 2016 Democratic presidential primary by challenging Hillary Clinton, reportedly meeting with radical Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Credit:warren.senate.gov)

 This is fueling speculation that Biden might tap Warren to be his vice presidential running mate.

If so, Warren would bring in an immense infrastructure in the form of the nonprofit group Demos, as I wrote about last year in Organization Trends:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the freshman Massachusetts senator who pioneered the “you didn’t build that” philosophy, is using her new book, Fighting Chance, to throw red meat to the Left and position herself to the left of Democrats like Hillary Clinton, who are more comfortable with Wall Street donors. Warren’s book tour was well received among fawning liberal supporters across the country, many of whom are looking for an un-Hillary in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

“I’d spent nearly twenty years fighting to level the playing field for the middle class, and I’d seen millions of working families go over the economic cliff—and it was getting worse,” Warren writes in her book, explaining why she decided to run for Senate in 2012. “What kind of country would my grandchildren grow up in? What if the conservatives and the big banks and the big-time CEOs got their way and Washington kept helping the rich and powerful to get richer and more powerful? Could I really stand on the sidelines and stay out of this fight?”

The New Republic has called Warren “Hillary Clinton’s Worst Nightmare,” and much reporting since has followed similar themes, even as Warren feigns uninterest in presidential politics (just as she claims public clamor forced her to run for the Senate).

Still, many political observers claim former Secretary of State Clinton is invincible. Of course, similar claims were made in 2008. That year, in addition to her official campaign organization, Hillary had close allies in the nonprofit sector propping her up, such as the Center for American Progress (founded by a former Clinton White House chief of staff, John Podesta) and targeting her enemies, as Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) did.

How can Warren compete with that?

Should Warren run, she will likely have her own infrastructure in place with Demos, the research and advocacy group whose slogan is “An Equal Say and Equal Chance for All.” Notice the similarity to the title of Warren’s book.

Of course, the Left’s vision of equal opportunity is usually based on some absurd equality-of-outcome scheme, which is part of the core policy positions of Demos: to spend more, tax more, redistribute more, restrict political speech more, and convince the public that big government is good for them. The organization’s mission statement even calls for “rethinking American capitalism as it exists today as a system of political economy.”

The name Demos is actually an ancient Greek word meaning “people” or “the mob.” The Greek term is the root of the English word democracy—and also of demagogue.

Before she was a senator, Demos honored Warren at its 10th anniversary gala in 2010 with its “Transforming America” award, because Warren was the architect of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation (New York Times, April 10, 2010). Demos aggressively advocated for the Dodd-Frank bill and has long supported Warren. In 2003 Demos helped promote Warren’s previous book, The Two Income Trap. But that’s understandable, given that the senator’s daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi, is a co-founder and currently chairman of the governing board for Demos.

Demos has a new president, Heather McGhee, who took the job in March when Miles Rapaport left to become president of Common Cause (see Organization Trends, May 2014). McGhee ascended to the presidency after serving as vice president of policy and outreach. She previously served as the deputy policy director for the ill-fated 2008 presidential campaign of former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (D). There’s no reason to believe she was among the campaign aides involved in covering up Edwards’ extramarital affair or his questionable use of campaign funds that led to his indictment by a federal grand jury. (He was acquitted.)

But more importantly where Demos is concerned, Edwards sought to position himself far to the left of both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during that primary, running a “two Americas” campaign based on class warfare themes that approximate most of the positions in policy papers and books that the organization publishes.

“I am honored that Demos’ board and staff have entrusted me with the leadership of this extraordinary organization at this moment,” McGhee said in a statement after her promotion. “It’s true that a future progressive majority is emerging, but deep change is needed to ensure that the next generation has a meaningful say in our democracy and a chance in our economy. At a time when more Americans are demanding solutions to the inequality crisis, there’s simply no place I’d rather be.”

Other top staff members have a history in left-wing activism.

Brenda Wright, the Demos vice president of legal strategies, is a former managing attorney for the National Voting Rights Institute in Boston, as well as a board member for Common Cause of Massachusetts—Warren’s state, coincidentally. She was also the director of the voting rights project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, where she remains a board member.

Hillary's War on Women

In late April, Vice President Joe Biden correctly condemned law enforcement or university and college officials that are accusatory of rape victims. It could very easily be aimed at former Secretary of State, former First Lady and former Arkansas public defender.

State.gov

And if Biden is really upset about it, it could be a great issue to take against Hillary Clinton in a hypothetical 2016 Democratic primary. In his April 29 speech, Biden was specifically talking about college age adults. So actions by Ms. Clinton as a young attorney were even worse – accusing a 12-year-old of bringing it upon herself.

From ABC News:

In 2008, during the height of her presidential primary campaign, Newsday published an in-depth story about Clinton's involvement with the trial. Newsday argued that Clinton's account in "Living History" left out "a significant aspect of her defense strategy - attempting to impugn the credibility of the victim." She reportedly sent an affidavit during the trial requesting the girl undergo a psychiatric examination at the university's clinic, and without offering any source, alleged that the victim had often sought older men. The case, Newsday claimed, "offers a glimpse into the way Clinton deals with crisis. Her approach, then and now, was to immerse herself in even unpleasant tasks with a will to win."

The victim, now 52, first believed Clinton was just doing her job as an attorney, but became enraged upon hearing that Clinton openly laughed about how clever she was as a lawyer in getting a light sentence for someone she knew was guilty.

"Hillary Clinton took me through hell," the victim told the Daily Beast in an emotional interview published today. The woman said that if she saw Clinton today she would say, "I realize the truth now, the heart of what you've done to me. And you are supposed to be for women? You call that [being] for women, what you done to me? And I heard you on tape laughing."

Don’t expect a court case from the 1970s to define a presidential contest. But, it should give Hillary – and her supporters – pause before presume she represents all women.

Biden Throw Down with Hillary as he Came Clean on his Class War Rhetoric

It looks like the Veep is ready to play the Huey Long class warrior that President Obama was so effective at in 2012.

"Come on you two, knock it off now."
(Photo credit: Blogs.America.gov)

Parts of Joe Biden’s private speech Friday in Columbia, S.C., a key early primary state for 2016, was spent attacking the Clintons – and a little bit of it came from being fact checked by The Washington Post.

From The Hill:

Biden, a potential 2016 candidate, said the unraveling of middle-class financial security began in "the later years of the Clinton administration," not under George W. Bush, CNN reported Saturday … In recent months, the vice president has focused on revving up liberals on issues of income inequality, as he prepares for a possible run against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, though many Democrats don't think he'd run against her. … One attendee said it was an “Elizabeth Warren-type speech” blasting income inequality.

Biden gave a similar red meat speech at George Washington University last month about income inequality, where he said that when he first became a U.S. Senator in 1973, “The discrepancy between the salary of the average CEO in America and the lowest-paid worker in that company was 22 to 1 … Now, today, the average CEO in America makes 273 times as much as a person working on a line. What happened?”

ThePost pointed out however that during the Clinton administration, the disparity was 400 to 1 for the CEO to lowest paid worker.

 

“A large part of the reason for the growth in the gap during the Clinton presidency is a soaring stock market and the increasing practice of awarding stock options to corporate executives. Recessions — and the subsequent decline in stocks — made those options less valuable, so the disparity declined a bit,” the Post said in correcting Biden.

So “what happened” was economic growth, which there was plenty of during the Clinton years. Biden’s skewed presentation of CEO to lowest paid worker was a clever way to rile a crowd, but it’s in no way the same as saying the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. 

Typically when an economy expands, CEOs get much wealthier than before and in expanding their companies most workers earn more. So a larger gap between a CEO and worker could still mean everyone is doing better, while a smaller gap could indicate an economic downturn, bad for everyone. 

What we’re seeing in the Obama administration – or for 2016, let’s call it the Obama/Biden administration – is only the wealthy doing well enough because they’re insulated from this economic downturn and fewer and fewer opportunities for the poor and middle class.

Tough Action Not Trash Talk

Nothing wrong with Vice President Joe Biden’s travel to Ukraine to symbolically show solidarity, but one wonders what he’ll actually accomplish given the problems of the United States putting forward a solid peace through strength message.

Vladimir Putin’s government is already violating the Geneva agreement and blaming the Ukrainians with the more recent violence that erupted – establishing an apparent pretext for further violation.

Putin may be crazy or may be crazy like a fox, either way, after snatching Crimea he seems in the mood to test the West just to see how far he can go. A professed Soviet throwback, I’m starting to wonder if he will be cowed by expanding to NATO allies in Eastern Europe, thinking:  What’s the West going to do? More appropriately, what’s the United States going to do?

President Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney assured America last week, “We’re not in a Cold War because I think it’s important to remember what the dynamics of the Cold War were. You had two super powers, you had two economic blocs, you had two military blocs. There aren’t two of any of those things today. Russia is not the Soviet Union; there is no Warsaw Pact."

 

As a native of Poland, I’ll assert that there will not be another Warsaw Pact, thank you very much. But that doesn’t mean Russia won’t establish other alliances in Putin’s zeal to be a world power again. So other countries should realize why it's not advantageous to align themselves with Russia.

President Obama’s remark that Russia is a “regional power” was more trash talk than tough talk. It might have hit Putin’s ego, but has done little to give him pause. Weak sanctions and vague talk of “additional costs” is not causing anyone to quiver.

There should be real sanctions – including on Putin’s assets. Not only to be clear that Putin cannot continue this behavior but also to discourage other heads of state from throwing in with him.

Western Europe has more to lose from these sanctions on an economic basis. But they would be willing to look at the long game of quietening Putin and other potential thugs if the U.S. leads the way.

But that leadership can’t come in the form of meaningless sanctions and trash talk.