the newer language is blood quantum, and it's less important than culture and contact. if you grow up with the tribe, it doesn't matter who your great great grandparents were.

That sounds like an interesting NYT piece, I will check it out. Sounds like a much better way of looking at what is going on with Democrats than trying to squeeze it into an outdated model, that's for sure! Thanks for the link.

neilm [26] -

Excellent points all around. Especially the bit about the Overton Window. Bernie moved it drastically, Warren continues to help it move, and others will pick up this mantle.

What progressives fail to adequately communicate is to pushback on the "far-left" or "radical left" label. One woman commentator on ABC's Sunday morning show did so, and I actually cheered. She said something along the lines of:

"You call all this stuff 'far left' but when you break it down to individual ideas, they all have huge support among the public. Things like raising the minimum wage poll at 70 percent or above. Raising taxes on the wealthy polls at a similiar rate. When 7 in 10 people agree with you, you are not 'far' anything. That is the very definition of the mainstream of American politics, in fact. The politicians may not be there and call Democrats who support these things 'far left' but if that's true then most of the country is actually 'far left'."

As for the discussion of the Warren ancestry thing, are we really about to leap into using "quadroon" and "octoroon" language? Seriously? Sigh.

:-(

-CW

P.S. You've got the "poor banker" thing wrong too Do I write poorly or do you read poorly?

I clearly pointed out the fact that prior to the financial crash Warren (along with Chris Dodd and Barney Frank) expected the bankers to loan mortgage money to ALL people, especially poor people/bad credit people, because as long as the price of housing rose in perpetuity, there was "no risk".

Then, when it turned out there was indeed 'risk', she excoriated them for "predatory lending"!

Do you really see no conflict/inconsistency there?

If my former colleague's wife is 1/4 NA, then their kids (the objects of my comment on tribal membership qualifications) would be 1/8th, right?

Wow, no less than the Boston Globe affirms that Warren's lies never advanced her career at Harvard! Who could ever wonder about the veracity of their claims??

Anyway, with Larry Summers as treir head honcho, it's a foregone conclusion that nobody in administration would ever read their prospective faculty hire's application forms.

how awful that those poor, poor bankers are expected to loan money to most people who are good risks, and not loan money to most people who are bad risks. next thing some senator will be demanding that they walk and chew gum at the same time. oh, the horror.

not exactly new information that 1/4 native is well within most tribal rules, by marriage included. growing up and living as part of the nation also counts.

as to warren's employment, boston globe did a big investigation into it, and it turned out nobody at harvard knew anything about warren's claims of native heritage until well after she'd already been working there. thus, my disappointment is reserved for the senator for shooting herself in the moccasins. you my friend, reprobate or no, are frankly not that important.

JL

Thus the right wing's attack on Warren policies will be led by attacking her rather than her ideas, giving cover for other Democrats to follow her to the left but not attract the flack.

I also think that the Republican press and Trump in particular will overplay their hand on this and elicit sympathy for her, particularly when they will be ignoring a laundry list of criminal actions on the part of Trump and his family that the Democrats are starting to develop.

For everybody who thinks Trump's tax returns should be released immediately, I propose that a far better approach would be a long process, with "caution" over potential "legal issues" (which Trump's lawyers will eagerly supply, playing into the Democrats tactics), culminating in a frenzy of media bed-wetting and then a series of revelations starting in September 2020 and coming out in more and more lurid detail until November 2020.

I'd advocate that this strategy be used for all the investigations, rolling them out one after another from early 2020 until the election. Look at the hay that Republicans made from Hillary's email server - a "crime" that most of the Trump family and Trump himself (unprotected phone and all) are guilty of. The Democrats have real crimes to expose.

This will be one of the dirtiest elections of all time because Trump is going to come under more and more exposure, and the Republicans are going to try to manufacture "whataboutism" responses.

I'm a living example of well documented re-connection: I share my ancestral surname (on both maternal and paternal sides) with about 50,000 other known living individuals, the majority of whom live in the the USA and got there via New York City in the late 19th or early 20th century. My parents were probably about 4th or 5th cousins.

Most of these immigrants came from Central Europe, but the oldest recorded connections to Europe radiate from the 12th century Middle East via Italy. Mama Mia! We're Italian - in at least some small fraction. Very few people in my branch of the family are aware of this Italian connection. My genetic connection to Italy is probably about as significant as Warren's Native American connection is. It's a fun fact, but nothing more.

I may also have a significant amount of British DNA, my maternal great grandfather lived in White Chapel (his English had a Cockney-Latviation accent) and married there before catching a steamer to NYC around the time of The Ripper. Not much is known about my maternal great grandmother, but my nieces and nephews are swabbing their gums in hopes of finding out.

Yeah, I totally get that, it's absolutely hell when any Weigantian is forced to agree with a reprobate of my dimension!

Actually, her bogus claim of NA ethnicity at Harvard was the most egregious of her deceptions. Although "not proven", I believe it literally got her hired.

Dunno about that "First peoples have very strict rules . ." thing. I personally knew a 100% paleface guy at work back in the 70's who married a girl who lived on the adjacent reservation and was an enrolled member of the tribe. I never asked Jeff about her % if NA blood, but my guess would have been at most, one NA grandparent out of four. At any rate he was more than happy to accept tribal membership for his kids, because it comes with free medical and dental, and how much more I would not know.

But NA heritage aside, my objections to Warren have to do with her politics, or really her economics. According to her, there is no such thing as an honest banker. If the bank approves a loan to somebody with bad credit/no credit, that's "predatory lending", but if the bank denies the loan, that's "discrimination" or "redlining". The poor banker ain't got a chance!

as much as it pains me, in this case i mostly agree with you. even if i had incontrovertible proof of a native ancestor five or six generations back, i certainly wouldn't have claimed native heritage on any official forms, as senator warren did on her texas bar registration. first peoples have very strict rules about that stuff, and she should have known that (or if she didn't know initially, she should have at least looked it up and apologized for it much sooner than she did).

maybe warren benefited from people's misconception that she was a native american. maybe not - that part is not proven. however, given her strong stances on consumer protection from fraud and exploitation via securities markets, her past failure to treat honestly with the matter of her personal heritage is very unfortunate.

JL

Obviously, hiring-systems criteria that promote ethnicity, skin color, etc over merit, definitely qualify as at least 'misguided', if not "scams", but I don't see that plain fact of life as absolution for dishonesty.

there comes a point at which ignorance stops being a reasonable defense. regardless of whether or not we believe gov northam was being honest in his apology and retroactive denial, he handled the situation very badly - i don't think that much can be denied.

JL

The woman has consistently lied about her ethnicity to further her career by taking advantage of employers' desire to demonstrate their eagerness to hire minorities in their gov't reporting.

First off, let's suppose she actually was a bona-fide Cherokee in everybody's book. Would you instead say about this alternate universe Candidate Warren:

"The woman has consistently used her ethnicity to further her career by taking advantage of employers' desire to demonstrate their eagerness to hire minorities in their gov't reporting."

? Because if you feel that the whole program is just a scam to begin with, there's no need to waste valuable time arguing over who is being a liar or not on the application forms.

calling blackface "racial insensitivity" is like calling holocaust denial "religious intolerance"

Calling it “blackface” when it is done out of admiration for a performer, not to mock them, is ignorance of actual discriminations that deserve our focus far more than this! (Don’t think Northam loved Michael Jackson? His wife had to stop him from Moonwalking in response to a reporter that questioned his story.).

Black makeup is not naturally hateful. A large number of Americans have no memory of ever seeing the minstrel acts that mocked an entire race. Unless we take the time to understand the context behind someone wearing black makeup on their face, we risk harming those that do not deserve our scorn.

Signed: A guy who got called a “racist” and “bigot” and was physically threatened by complete strangers when he went to a costume party as a chimney sweep!

When Warren takes your suggestions, and cites the ways by which Native Americans "make America great", how will that absolve her of her dishonesty in falsely claiming to be one herself??

I don't see the connection.

I live in close proximity, and in younger years, worked alongside Native Americans. I admire them, but the sad truth is, "the Native American experience in America" to which you refer is, with few exceptions, not a happy one.

Maybe you could cite a few of the examples which you feel Warren could use to "increase public awareness of how Native Americans make America great".

Her challenge will be the stupid Native American fake-scandal - she will need to find a way to effectively counter it. As far as I'm concerned it's a non-issue but her enemies will push it as far as they can.

Well, it will be a real issue. There is a way to counter it.

She could start talking about the Native American experience in America in terms that most Americans, I would guess, have little knowledge of. She could increase public awareness about this and how Native Americans make America great.

Yes!

Sorry, this is much ado about something!

There is no comparability between black face and claiming false ethnicity. The blackfacers were not pretending to be black, nor were they seeking to deceive for personal gain.

Blackface is evidence of racial insensitivity, claiming false ethnicity to qualify for employment is evidence of dishonesty.

P.S. It's worth noting the the real Native Americans are condemning her over her duplicity. You might even say she's got them 'on the warpath' over it!

Re " .. the stupid Native American fake-scandal..", shouldn't that read "the fake Native American scandal?

It's the Native American that's fake, not the scandal!

The woman has consistently lied about her ethnicity to further her career by taking advantage of employers' desire to demonstrate their eagerness to hire minorities in their gov't reporting.

Would you be so tolerant of deception of that magnitude in a Republican candidate?

She is going bold, pushing for structural change and there wasn't a thing she said I disagreed with.

Her challenge will be the stupid Native American fake-scandal - she will need to find a way to effectively counter it. As far as I'm concerned it's a non-issue but her enemies will push it as far as they can.

Jamie Bouie had a piece in NYTimes yesterday where he said:

If there’s a major division within Democratic politics, it’s between those who confront and those who seek to accommodate. Because we lack a varied vocabulary in mainstream political discourse, we call the latter “moderates” or “centrists,” which doesn’t capture the dynamic at work. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/opinion/bloomberg-schultz-moderate-democrat.html)

Liz Warren is a confronter and that's what I'm looking for in the candidates. Among other highlights she said words to the effect of: After Trump it's not enough to better manage a broken system. That's the distinction between the confronters and accommodators.

Don't know who will win the nomination or who I'll want to win, yet, but I do think she's set a high bar and others will need to meet/exceed it.

MAGATs, of course.

Where in hell could ANYBODY ever have come up with the "Hairychested counterpuncher" image?.

My image of trump (which I vociferously enunciated to his telephone fundraisers at least a dozen times during the campaigh), was that he was a "Show-boating dishonest crook of a businessman/third rate reality TV host/world-class asshole of a human being".

Where were you guys looking to come up with your image???

The investigations are starting up, and a flashlight is going to shone into the places Trump wants kept dark. He isn't going to like it.

Plus the sealed Mueller document has to be putting the shivers into the West Wing.

Plus the SDNY investigation into the inaugural non-profit is already highlighting some shenanigans. One of Melania's assistants warned that the excessive fees would look bad in an audit.

Great column. I'm seeing some cross-fire about the new presidential candidates already. Only about a year-and-a-half away now!