Elizabeth Warren on the cover of the Rollin' Stone

[BeyondGeography]

Link to tweet

Some excerpts:

You were a Republican for much of your adult life. Does that give you an advantage to understand conservative voters, to be able to tailor your message—
I would describe it not so much as tailoring as finding the part in the heart where we ultimately, as Americans, agree with each other. Much of the conversation that I now have publicly about corruption — how the rich guys are sucking up all the wealth and leaving everyone else behind — is a long-running conversation I’ve been having with my brothers for decades. They get it. My Democrat brother and my two Republican brothers understand that the rules for billionaires and corporate executives are not the same as the rules for their kids. And they don’t like it. And neither do I.

Your family had financial trouble when you were a kid. Obviously, it’s shaped your political philosophy, but I’m curious how it impacted your personal relationship with money.
I’ve always been afraid there won’t be enough money. Always. I’ve always saved. I’ve always watched the prices of everything. And I’ve always worried about the rest of my family, worried about making sure everyone is OK.

Was your decision to go back to college after you dropped out to get married motivated by a need to feel financially self-sufficient?
You’re right, it has that effect. But it was the other way round. I wanted to be a teacher. I’ve wanted to be a teacher since second grade. When I dropped out of school at 19 and got married, I thought I’d given that up. I knew that theoretically I could go back to school, but it would cost money. Finding a commuter college that cost $50 a semester was a door swinging open in a way that I had thought was impossible. So there I was, I could pay for it. And now that I could pay for it, I could be a teacher.

Your dad was the breadwinner before he had a heart attack, and your mom had to go to work to provide for your family. You often describe your mom as encouraging you to get married rather than pursue your education, almost setting you up to end up in the same position she was in.
I think she would have described it as “Be very careful about the man you marry.” That was the pathway to success, not “Go create a path for your own financial independence.” Now, it took a lot of courage for my mother at 50 to take on her first full-time job. But it was never something she was happy about. She didn’t say, “What a great and fulfilling opportunity that was!” She saw it as work born of necessity, because she had to take care of her family and she wanted me to be safe. And to her dying days she still believed that the best way for a woman to be safe was to be married to a man who earned good money.

... One of your earliest forays into politics was battling Joe Biden in the Nineties over bankruptcy reform. There was a big difference back then in your two worldviews. Do you have those same differences today?
Our differences are a matter of public record, and I haven’t changed any of my views. The fundamental problem I see in Washington today is the influence of money. The giant corporations who can spread it around, the billionaires who can buy influence, the lobbyists who are there every day to advance the views of those who pay them well to attend every meeting. It’s why my campaign starts around this question of how power is distributed. Our government works great for those with lots of money and not so much for anyone else. And that’s been a problem for a long, long time.

Did you get the sense that he ever grasped your criticism of the bankruptcy bill?
I don’t want to go back and relitigate 15 years ago.

I’m curious whether you think more Americans are in debt today because of that bill that Biden championed.
Let me say it the other way: A lot fewer people can get the help they need today because of the change in the laws. That’s what the research I did with my co-authors [showed]. There’s been so much work on this, too, about families caught in financial hell who can’t get any help because the bankruptcy laws were tightened to the point of suffocation back in 2005.

... What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?
Ask yourself what’s the worst that could happen, and if nobody will get physically injured, then give it a try.

What’s one piece of financial advice that you think everyone should know?
Debt is really dangerous — far more dangerous than you think.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/elizabeth-warren-interview-cover-927716/amp/

[Farmer-Rick]

1. We really need a woman president...badly

Even Obama thinks women can do a better job of it.

[JoeOtterbein]

2. Liz is cool. nt

[ancianita]

3. I like to think she scares Wall St because she knows the financial skeletons, on and off the books.

[blm]

14. That's my take, too. They fear Warren and Katie Porter.

[turbinetree]

4. Warren: The 21st Century's Teddy Roosevelt Dec. 16, 2014

[loyalsister]

5. I don't see the value of that analogy

Teddy Roosevelt represented xenophobia and toxic masculinity. Real "Americans," "English only" and rough riders and the underlying racism of the "progressive" movement which included eugenics in an effort to build a "nordic superior race." All of which are more representative of Trumpism than what I expect from the modern Democratic party.

[turbinetree]

8. Here I will correct what she said.....................

https://www.boston.com/news/politics/2019/03/11/elizabeth-warren-running-mate-teddy-roosevelt

[Act_of_Reparation]

9. The Bull Moose Party Platform:

-Limits on campaign contributions and disclosure requirements for contributors
-Required registration for lobbyists
-Publication of Congressional committee proceedings
-National health service
-Social security
-Limiting ability of judges to limit labor strikes through injunctions
-Minimum wage for women
-Eight hour workday
-Establishment of the SEC
-Farm relief
-Worker's compensation for injuries sustained on the job
-Inheritance task
-Women's suffrage
-Direct election of senators
-Replacing caucus system with primaries
-A simplified constitutional amendment process
-Adoption of directly democratic state constitutional measures, including: recall elections, referendums, ballot initiatives, and judicial recall
-Tariff reductions


I hadn't heard anything about eugenics being an official part of the party platform. I mean, we're talking about a bunch of rich white guys at the start of the 20th century. No doubt more than a few of them believed in eugenics. I wouldn't say that's endemic to progressivism as a political ideology, though.

[loyalsister]

11. Progressivism without the lens of the Holocaust included some very bad ideas

Sanitizing history helps no one, and allows bad ideas to thrive below the surface. We can only change course if we acknowledge the facts.

https://dnalc.cshl.edu/view/11219-T-Roosevelt-letter-to-C-Davenport-about-degenerates-reproducing-.html

Charles Davenport, Harry Laughlin, and the American Breeders association met in 1909 to discuss possibilities for how to apply breeding principles to humans.

https://library.missouri.edu/exhibits/eugenics/laughlin.htm

These ideas persist when the history is ignored or defended, and it is why white supremacy is as deeply embedded as ever.

[hedda_foil]

6. What a fantastic interview. What a fantastic woman! I want her to be President so much!

I just donated an extra $25 because it's so important for her to start moving up again. We're getting very close to the Iowa caucus. She's got to positively shine in tonight's debate!

[Hortensis]

7. Great picture of her! You know, in 2016 Biden wanted Warren for his VP;

she was THE choice for him. They met to discuss it and she was interested, but of course he didn't run. The use of this interview to put down Biden, and her current bland answers as a presidential candidate, should be examined with that reality in mind.

I've always liked Sen. Warren a lot. I don't think she'll be our nominee, though, and in this political environment am very glad of that. I'd instead love to see her as our first female VP and what big things she'd be tasked with making happen, I imagine rebuilding what the Republicans are destroying but for the future and better than ever.

She's always reminded me of Frances Perkins. SecLabor Perkins, empowered by FDR and a Democratic/liberal-dominated congress, made incredible things happen that Americans have benefitted tremendously from ever since. We should create a $7 bill just so we could put Perkins on it.

Lol, SUCH a change in styles over this century.

[blm]

16. Heh. Thank you. Some Biden fans here act as if Warren is evil in the flesh.

I knew he hoped to launch a bid in 2016 and wanted Warren to be VP.

Maybe the antiWarren posters will get the vapors when they hear about it.

[Hortensis]

18. Troublemaking pundits encourage excessive partisanship

with fake, even effectively lying, controversy. In this case some have suggested actual enmity between two professionals of good character who wouldn't sink to that even if they didn't have so much in common.

[blm]

19. They are both pretty smooth going after GOP and,

somewhat awkward attacking other Dems.

I’d say, Beware the Dem who is smooth attacking other Dems and fumbles over confronting Republicans.

[Hortensis]

20. Absolutely to the beware. Especially the first part.

In this world, in this time of great danger to our nation from the right, it's a big red flag there's something wrong with them.

[BlueMTexpat]

10. Great interview!

Thanks for posting!

I also liked these snippets in the article before the interview:

...
“This is somebody that had a life that was not about what was going on in Washington, but whose life was affected by the decisions that were made in Washington,” says Rep. Katie Porter, a former student and mentee of Warren’s at Harvard Law School who flipped a House seat in conservative Orange County, California, in 2018. “Decisions that get made about child-care policy, decisions that get made about opportunities for women in the workforce.”

It’s easy to forget that this is only the third campaign Warren has ever run. Unlike Buttigieg, who has known he wanted to be president since before he knew how to drive, or Biden, stumbling through his third Oval Office attempt in four decades, or Sanders, singularly focused on holding public office since 1971, Warren never really wanted to be in politics. She was drafted.

“She was having a barbecue for some of her students at her home, and I called her,” says former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. “She couldn’t hear me — I don’t talk very loud on the phone, you know? So finally I raised my voice and I said who I was, and I wanted her to come to Washington.”

As a law professor, Warren had done years of research showing that most people who declared bankruptcy weren’t deadbeat system-cheats. They were, more often than not, middle-class people who had experienced some kind of tragedy: lost a job, got sick, divorced. Reid wanted her to sit on a bipartisan committee overseeing the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Hail Mary to shore up the financial system after the 2008 crash.

Warren’s merciless grilling of Treasury officials catapulted her into the national spotlight — she was articulating the outrage of millions of Americans who lost their homes while bankers were bailed out. She also worked with the Senate to hammer out the Dodd-Frank financial-reform legislation that would create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency Warren proposed in 2007. When Republicans threatened to block her appointment as the agency’s administrator, Obama made her a special adviser to the Treasury secretary instead....

************
I believe that we need someone who has accomplished things EVEN BEFORE she became a politician, who has had the real-life experiences that so many of us share and who has had to grapple with the kinds of decisions that so many of us have had to make on a day-to-day basis.

This article shows me once again why I am - and will remain - staunchly in Elizabeth Warren's corner unless or until she is no longer a candidate.

I truly believe that she is the BEST candidate and can beat ANY Republican, including Impeached 45.

[blm]

13. ✔️

[blm]

12. Really tried to get her to attack Biden personally. She's not easily baited and I

happen to like that. Wish more candidates would show that level of sense.

[BeyondGeography]

15. I knew you'd pick up on that

[blm]

17. Of course. I dislike when media plays the baiting game.

It distracts from the issues.