Warren’s Waterloo?

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Is Elizabeth Warren getting desperate as Bernie Sanders appears to be slowly pulling ahead? It certainly appears so. At least her errors of judgment in campaigning seem to be growing in number. So far, I see at least three. The latest came in last night’s debate.

Warren and Sanders are the only candidates offering medicine strong enough to cure our national ills. So I consider Warren’s latest unforced error to be the debate’s headline. But I’d like to reprise all three.

Warren’s first unforced error was her response to Trump’s dismissing her claim to partial Native American heritage with the pejorative nickname “Pocahontas.” Warren took the taunt deadly seriously, to the point of having a DNA test. The test showed an Indian ancestor between five and ten generations ago, with a best guess at eight. That means Indian ancestry at the level of one divided by two to the eighth power, or less than 0.4%.

So what? Native Americans are a tiny minority of us, estimated at less than 2.7% Is identifying with them going to advance Warren’s campaign? Probably not.

Native Americans who live on reservations and/or are formally registered as tribal members tend not to think much of those who claim the same heritage but don’t and aren’t. Making such a big deal of “proving” her claim of heritage was an error of judgment whose only redeeming feature was that it occurred early enough in Warren’s campaign to be easily forgotten.

Warren’s second error of judgment was much more serious. It was trying to “differentiate” her brand of “Medicare for All” from Bernie’s by imposing a three-year delay in wiping out private insurance by fiat.

Whom does that ploy fool? It doesn’t avoid the coercive obliteration of the private insurance industry or insurance that many citizens have and like. In the end, it achieves little more than “Medicare for All Who Want It” but speeding up the transition, at most by a few years, on pain of rampant coercion. It’s also an implied lie—that the change avoids the biggest political liability, namely, that very coercion.

And so we come to Warren’s latest error of judgment: accusing Bernie of telling Warren, in private with no witnesses, that a woman can’t be elected president. Forget the fact that Bernie is very careful with sweeping statements. He limits himself to the painfully obvious, such as the fact that the US has become an oligarchy rigged against working people. That’s the very same painful truth on which Warren also bases her campaign.

But Bernie has a much more powerful rebuttal than that. Hillary Clinton actually won the popular vote in 2016 by two million (Bernie erroneously said three). Shift the distribution of that vote a little more favorably in the Electoral College, and she would be president. Is Bernie too dumb and/or ill-informed to know that?

But Warren’s charge was more serious than just making little sense on its own merits. Together with the Pocahontas DNA test, it may be part of a pattern: a campaign based on identity politics. Is Warren going to go toe-to-toe with Trump in that arena?

The right way to run as a woman is the way Warren did in the last debate. It’s to show impressive empathy for all the many people whom our oligarchic economy has left behind. The wrong way is to run petulantly, as disadvantaged, slighted and belittled.

Warren ought to know as much, having had the benefit of a sterling example. Barack Obama won the presidency fair and square, twice, by clear popular majorities, never mentioning his race except for one brilliantly incisive speech on racism in Philadelphia. Obama showed by action, not words, that grievance doesn’t win elections; understanding and rising above grievance does.

Warren’s latest unforced error was bad enough by itself. But apparently she compounded it by refusing to shake Sanders’ hand after the debate. No one was close enough to overhear their words, but the televised body language was suggestive, if not unmistakable.

I keep hoping that these errors of judgment are the fault of campaign staff who need to be fired. But Warren’s public stiffing of Bernie’s outstretched hand was apparently direct, spontaneous and personal. For voters desperately hoping for her and Sanders to join forces at some stage and together right our ship of state, it was a kick in the solar plexus.

Meanwhile, Bernie continues to advance in the polls. He had a brief but superb interview with Judy Woodruff on PBS recently. Far more important, he had a lengthy, in-depth interview with the New York Times’ editorial board. There he demonstrated an absolutely essential quality for any chief executive: knowing what he doesn’t know.

Yes, Bernie is old and not getting any younger. That’s precisely why he needs a brilliant, younger but like-minded pol like Warren as his running mate, to carry on if the worst should happen. Yes, Bernie sometimes exaggerates numbers, as in calling Hillary’s two million national-vote surplus three. But every time the Times asked Bernie something he wasn’t sure of, he said so. He went on to say he would consult the experts and decide.

Not only is that answer reminiscent of Pope Francis’ supremely attractive humility. It’s the only right answer for any chief executive. No one knows or has thought through everything, so the worst answer is to fake it, or, worse yet, think you actually do have an answer for everything. Isn’t that precisely why Donald Trump is such an abysmal leader?

So if Warren is losing ground to Sanders, it’s not because she’s a woman. It’s because she lacks the humility and/or experience to know when to be adamant, when to be flexible, and when to step back.

It may be because there are people on Warren’s staff who desperately need firing. If so, that’s a test of her executive leadership, which will repeat itself many times if she wins the presidency.

I haven’t yet canceled my monthly contributions to Warren’s campaign. I hope her downward trend will reverse, and I believe it can if female empathy replaces female grievance.

But time is getting short. Our nation desperately needs both of the two doctors who’ve best diagnosed our ills, male and female, somehow to make common cause and join forces, lest the oligarchs and their paid lackeys overwhelm us all.

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