Elizabeth Warren is outspoken, uncompromising, and strong-willed. Everyone knows that. However, would her brash personality be enough to defeat Hillary Clinton in a presidential showdown? New York Times columnist David Brooks seems to think so.
Brooks recalls Warren’s memoir “A Fighting Chance,” which illustrates the Massachusetts senator’s impoverished upbringing that now serves as the inspiration and engine of her populist progressive politics. Warren’s mother worked in retail and her father worked as a repairman, and that was when the Warren family’s finances became steady.
Warren oft describes that her one true talent was arguing, with fighting and confrontation against sizeable adversaries being the overall theme of the book, as is her stance on financial policy. Brooks noted an instance in the book where Warren:
“with relish, [she] describes a fight she . . . had with a judge on a panel discussion over bankruptcy law. ‘The judge probably had a hundred pounds on me, and he started shifting himself closer to the microphone, going shoulder to shoulder with the judge as I hit back with arguments. . . . I glanced over and noticed with satisfaction that the veins in his neck were throbbing and his face was red and sweating. I wondered briefly whether he might have a stroke right there on the small stage.’”
Brooks continues to bolster Warren’s theme of fighting and confrontation by noting how the Democratic Party is “growing more combative,” saying the “there’s an underlying and sometimes vituperative sense of frustration toward President Obama, and especially his supposed inability to go to the mat.”
Each year, more and more Democrats become dissatisfied with the ever-increasing amount of power that corporations accrue with each election cycle. In 2001, 51 percent of Democrats were displeased with corporate power. Ten years later, that number grew to 79 percent.
Warren has the aggression, but she also has the intelligence to temper that aggression from becoming petty, white-hot anger. Also, there are more Democrats that are willing to buy into her populist, anti-corporate message. Now, as to whether or not she’d defeat Hillary, Brooks reminds us that history is against Warren because “the establishment wins.” However, Warren has the fire, and appears to have the support.