What if Warren is the One?

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The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll of Democratic-leaning voters nationwide presents an enigma [Item 13, about halfway through summary]. A plurality of these voters sees Elizabeth Warren as having the “sharpest mental ability” of leading Democratic candidates. A much bigger plurality thinks Sanders is not “in good enough overall health to serve as president.” [Item 14].

Sanders and Biden would each turn 80 within two years of becoming president. A plurality of these voters thinks Sanders is the “the most honest and trustworthy” and “best understands the problems of people” like them. Yet a strong plurality of 42% still thinks Biden has the best chance to beat Trump.

Isn’t there a bit of a contradiction here? If Sanders is most honest and sympathetic but too unhealthy, and if both he and Biden are too old, isn’t Warren the only viable leading candidate? If she is the smartest and most strategic of the lot, as many people (including me) believe, isn’t she the best as well? Isn’t Warren, who just turned 70 this summer, also the youngest and most vigorous of the candidates leading now?

What if the “electability” issue is simply a cover for Democratic-leaning voters’ insecurity and fuzzy thinking?

What if these voters, including a huge chunk of women, are still just reeling from Hillary’s unexpected loss? What if most of them still haven’t come to grips with Hillary’s deficiencies?

What if they haven’t yet seen Warren, who knows and tells precisely how Wall Street has corrupted and failed us, as nothing like Hillary, who made millions by speaking to Wall Street in secret? What if voters have yet to remember that Hillary described herself as befuddled by politics, while Warren forthrightly describes herself as a “capitalist” who just wants to bring back rules of the game that are fair and give the little guy and gal a chance?

Until a male mentor realized how talented Warren is, she was well into her adulthood. No one would ever have predicted that she would become a distinguished professor of law at Harvard and later the most promising female candidate for president ever. She rose from the lower-middle-class masses in Oklahoma, of all places. She rose out of nothing and nowhere, by dint of her intelligence, wisdom and hard work. Isn’t that what we all used to call “merit”?

Which brings us back to the sorry, sordid, stupefying gender “issue.” Yes, our species’ evolution from alpha-male-dominated clans has made female supreme leaders extremely rare. But two of the best leaders in human history have been women: ancient Egypt’s Queen Hatshepsut and England’s Queen Elizabeth I.

Queen Hatshepsut took took a religion-heavy hierarchy and turned it toward a more secular, rational nation based on commerce and cooperation. Queen Elizabeth I did even more: she took an island nation riven by internecine warfare and assassinations and turned it into the thriving trade-, law- and science-based culture that still, despite Brexit and Trump, inspires the world.

Remember Barack Obama? Remember how, from the very beginning, he was the best candidate? Remember how everyone worried that the US could never elect a “black” man as president? Remember how surprised everyone was when he won?

What if Warren is just like that? What if worry about electability is not a cover for near-universal and deep-rooted sexism, but a genuine, honest but misguided fear? What if most Dems want to vote for Warren because she is the smartest, most strategic and youngest leading candidate but honestly think that others won’t?

What if, in short, the “electability” issue vanishes like a whiff of putrid cigarette smoke after Warren wins Iowa and New Hampshire and makes a strong showing, if not first place, in South Carolina? Isn’t that just what happened with Obama?

More than that. What if being a woman is actually an advantage? What if voters want somebody totally unprecedented in order to shake things up? What if that still-unsatisfied craving was part of what elected Obama, with his dual racial heritage and funny name? What if that’s what helped elect Trump himself? What if Trump’s total lack of experience, his brutal and stupid honesty, and the other aspects of his “uniqueness” actually made him an attractive candidate, especially as compared to Hillary, who was practically an establishment mannikin?

What if, after Obama’s clean and honest but only partially effective presidency, and after Trump’s raucous and crazy failure to do anything but corrupt us and enrich the rich, voters still want someone to shake things up and drain the swamp? Then mightn’t being a woman with a firm but gentle hand actually help? After three years of ego-driven testosterone-crazed chaos, might a woman’s steady and nurturing hand be just the thing?

What if Warren is just the right person, at just the right time in history, to put this badly derailed nation back on track? What if she personally is just at the peak of her intelligence, experience and wisdom? What if her candidacy is an avalanche just starting to gather mass and speed? What if the mainstream media are subconsciously underrating her, using the elusive test of “electability,” for fear she might jog their bosses, the oligarchs, from their privileged roosts?

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