Democratic Primaries
Related: About this forumThe Summer of Warren
A profile in GQ. Some excerpts:
Julia Ioffe joins Elizabeth Warren on the campaign trail, where the surging senator has spent the season overcoming her campaign's wobbly start and getting down to businesstrouncing debate foes, climbing in the polls, and somehow making a slew of policy plans feel exciting. Suddenly, she's winning over Democrats by making the grandest ideas sound perfectly sensible, including her biggest pitch of all: That she's the one to beat Trump.
...There is a story Warren has been telling lately, one that explains how she learned the words that have come to define her careerfirst as a law professor, and more recently as a politician: mortgage, foreclosure, bankruptcy. Long before she encountered them as cold legal terms, those words had a more powerful meaning as the ones whispered late at night by her parents in Oklahoma. This was after her fathers heart attack, when hed spend long stretches out of work. The family had sold off the station wagon, but it wasnt enough to keep the creditors at bay. One spring day, 12-year-old Betsy found herself standing in her mothers bedroom. Laid out on the bed was the dress, Warren nearly whispered to a crowd one scorching afternoon in Elkhart, Indiana. Some of you in here know the dress, she went on, scanning the predominantly silver-haired room. Its the one that only comes out for weddings, funerals, and graduations. A faint and knowing yeah echoed where I sat. And theres my mom, and shes in her slip and her stockinged feet, and shes pacing and shes crying. And shes saying, We will not lose this house. We will not lose this house. We will not lose this house. The audience was silent as she delivered the line, her voice crackling with tears.
Warren tells this story at each of her town halls, sometimes more than once a day, and every time she tells it, she is on the verge of crying. She doesnt in the end, but people in the audience do. At every single event I attended, I saw people wiping away tears when she told the story. It was a masterful summoning of sentiment that calls to mind a method actor dredging up the same emotion in the same play, night after night, for a months-long run. American voters demand authenticity of their candidates, despite the obvious and calculated performance of a political race. I wanted to know what happens in that momenthow does Warren manage to move a crowd to tears despite the repetition? I wanted to ask her if what I heard in her voice was real.
Because Im back in that room, she told me, her eyes suddenly brimming. I can describe the shade of the carpet to you and the bedspread, and Im there with my mother. And Im not only there as the little girl standing in the doorway, Im there in my mothers heart. Her voice dropped to a whisper, her eyes blinked away the extra moisture. She was so frightened, Warren went on, reprising the story of how her motherwho, at 50, had never worked outside the homewalked to the local Sears, got a minimum-wage job, and saved the family from foreclosure. I knew how scary it was by the time I was standing in that doorway, Warren said, her voice gravelly. Id heard her cry night after night after night, and I think that for kids sometimes, its harder to hear a parent cry, knowing they wont do it in front of you. Thats really scary.
That she elicited such empathy in that room in Elkhart was a special feat. It was a relatively conservative corner of a conservative state, and the audience was palpably cool to her when Warren took the stage. Several voters I spoke to before the event werent sure what to expect, and one man told me that, though he was curious about the Massachusetts senator, he was sure the country would not elect a woman. Warren said she could sense that the audience wasnt with her when she started. Well, its not like I walked in and said, okay, diagnosis: Heres the problem, she explained. Its in the room. And even as Im being introduced, I can see facesIm kind of standing off to the sideand as soon as I got on stage, I thought, the people standing here want to know me better, they want to know who I am and why Im here. So lets slow down a little bit, lets talk a little more, but we got there. By the end of her speech, most of the able-bodied people in the room were up on their feet, their fists and cheers churning the air.
Her trick isnt to just read the energy in the room, its to feel the people there. And like all of her plans and strategies, she leaves nothing to chance, ensuring that the faces in her audiences are lit, that the crowds are never obscured to her by the curtain of darkness one sees from a bright stage. Its very important to me to be able to see faces when Im doing a town hall, Warren said. I dont want to be in a theater where Im on stage and the audience is in the dark. This is not a performance, this is a chance to engage, for all of us in the room to think about whats happening to our country, to our lives, and I need to see faces when Im talking through that.
More at https://www.gq.com/story/the-summer-of-elizabeth-warren
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
Kurt V.
(5,624 posts)primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
DeminPennswoods
(16,072 posts)of Trump - she's smarter and can read and react to "a room" better.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
ms liberty
(9,765 posts)primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
calimary
(83,901 posts)Still got a candle in the window for Jay Inslee. But Ive always liked her. She knows her stuff and she gets an A for authenticity.
I always enjoy seeing her at rallies. Shes got the work uniform down, too. I used to dress like that for work when I was in the news biz. Plain black top and pants. Then you just vary it with the outer layer - a jacket or tunic or shawl of a bright color or beautiful pattern. Even worked for covering the Oscars. Same plain (inexpensive) black top and bottom, but just fancy up the jacket or accessories. Its a smart strategy - very simple, and its economical also. Sheesh - there were some women whod go out and splurge on evening wear to cover the Oscars. Dressing up was mandatory. Even the messengers and camera crews and assistants had to dress up for the event. And everybody looked like a million bucks. But there are ways to look like it even though you didnt break the bank to get there.
Warren doing it like that simply tells me shes practical. And thats a good quality to have in a leader.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
KPN
(16,032 posts)She has a good chance in this primary, and will absolutely clobber tRump in the GE in my older white male view. I find it impossible not to like her.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
bloom
(11,636 posts)and I would say that most of the crowd, at least, were already fans - as I was and am.
I am very happy that more people are recognizing her strengths.
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided
rurallib
(63,085 posts)And it made me realize that Warren, unlike any candidate for anything I have ever encountered understands what is happening to the poor and middle class. She lived it. Not only does she understand, she is truly determined to do something about it.
She is determined to help people as her TOP priority, not as a side effect for some policy for the wealthy.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden
ehrnst
(32,640 posts)new data and incorporate it into her ideas that HRC and Obama have.
I think that being an educator really honed those aspects of her personality.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden