The PPP Poll on Democrats’ 2020 preferences found that “Joe Biden leads the way for Democrats with 31% to 24% for Bernie Sanders, and 16% for Elizabeth Warren. They’re the only folks we tested with meaningful support for the nomination at this point.” Since Warren is the only one in that groups not eligible for Social Security, she’s at least the putative front-runner for the 2020 race against President Trump. That’s not bad entirely bad news for Democrats. Warren’s smart and passionate, and she’s a fiery speaker. Unfortunately, she’s also a jerk and more important, a bigot.
Warren has been on an anti-Trump rampage for months, and an anti-Wall Street rampage forever. She recently graced Facebook with another anti-business rant to her nearly 2.5 million followers. In it, she condemned Whitney Tilson, who runs Kase Capital, calling him a “hedge fund billionaire” who is “thrilled by Donald Trump’s economic team of Wall Street insiders.” The Massachusetts Senator wrote, “Tilson knows that, despite all the stunts and rhetoric, Donald Trump isn’t going to change the economic system…The next four years are going to be a bonanza for the Whitney Tilsons of the world.”
This gratuitous attack was pure bigotry. To bigots, what matters is what people are—blacks, whites, Jews, gays, men, women, Muslims, poor people, rich people, Democrats, Republicans. Also Trump voters, feminists, Christians, college students, bankers, and lawyers. Bigots assign unattractive, negative character traits to individuals based on neat categories they can be placed in, and their real beliefs, principles, and most important of all, acts don’t matter. Warren’s reference to “the Whitney Tilsons of the world” is the mark of a bigot. If you work on Wall Street, you are just like all the rest to her. Greedy. Corrupt. Bad.
The hateful attitude from Warren is especially unfair in Tilson’s case. He was one few financial executives who publicly opposed Trump and supported Hillary Clinton. He is a lifelong Democrat, and he helped start the terrific volunteer teacher program Teach for America; he doesn’t just sit around counting his money. (Warren, incidentally, is about as rich as he is.) Tilson was also one of the very few Wall Street executives who donated to Senator Warren’s campaign for the Senate. Tilson, like Warren, has supports tough regulations for his industry. “I’m a fan of Dodd-Frank,” he said in a recent interview. ” I think banking should be boring…I worry about Wall Street returning to being a casino.”
Tilson doesn’t understand why he was singled out for Warren’s bile. “I’ve donated money to her, attended her events, and did everything in my power to stop Donald Trump,” he told the New York Times. “In addition, I agree with her 100 percent that large swaths of the financial industry have run amok and prey on vulnerable Americans, and thus strong regulation, including a muscular Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is sorely needed,” he said.
He added, “Personally, I feel betrayed. In recent years, I’ve really stuck my neck out by very publicly supporting her, the C.F.P.B., and a tough regulatory approach to banks — none of which wins me many friends — and this is how she repays me.”
I can explain Warren’s attitude to him. She’s a bigot, just not the kind of bigot that progressive typically object to. It’s this kind of bigotry on both ends of the political spectrum, based on class, occupation, education and belief, that has made the vital role of civil civic discourse in our democracy dysfunctional.
Of course, some traditional forms of bigotry are also acceptable to many of Warren’s fans…this kind , for example…
But I digress.
Sort of.
In 1992, Tilson’s wife, Susan Blackman Tilson, was a student in a Harvard Law School class Warren taught. She’s a loyal Warren supporter, telling her old professor in a letter that she had been “cheering from the sidelines as you rose to national attention for your excellent work on behalf of consumers.”
Both Tilsons wrote to Senator Warren last week asking her to remove her unfair Facebook post. Warren had an aide email them, saying,
“She asked me to relay to you that she is removing the word ‘billionaire’ from the post, as you have indicated that is factually inaccurate. The senator has decided, however, not to remove the overall post.”
Jerk.
Ethics Alarms 
Would you expect anything less from someone who appropriated a past she created without any substance to it? What Warren did was a political version of stolen valor. Warren is playing to the left and hopefully a few are capable of recognizing her for what she is.
I’m less concerned with her falsely claiming minority status to steal a faculty position than I am with the fact that she is like the Jacobins, to whom dissent with their extreme views was justification for murder.
Maybe we will see a Thermadorian reaction?
Boy, do you ever get bonus points for THAT!
How about the little lefties learn a lesson about who the Democrat establishment are in this? They do not care for your causes, your feelings, or your dignity. They only want to use you for their own ends (power and money) and will cheerfully slit your throat once they can, even if only out of malice.
You can substitute ‘Republican’ for ‘Democrat’ above, and you will get a feel for why Trump won the election…
I have to agree with you here, Jack. I used to love Elizabeth Warren, but her knee-jerk anti-Wall Street stance has embarrassed her before and in this case has embarrassed her again. And yes, you are correct to identify this as bigotry (though I wish you’d apply the term more liberally [pardon the pun] to examples of bigotry toward minorities that you’ve instead dismissed.)
When hasn’t Jack not called bigotry “bigotry”?
Betrayed by a double negative.
I’d love to see an example of dismissing bigotry toward minorities. I’ll accept the argument that Trump suggesting that a Mexican-American judge might be biased against him because his comments about illegal immigrants were widely reported as “Anti-Mexican” qualifies under the Warren standard, but if you’ll recall, that comment was called “racist,” which it is not. I think, upon reflection, that since assuming someone will be biased against you based on their ancestry is bigotry.
I think, upon reflection, that since assuming someone will be biased against you based on their ancestry is bigotry.
I’m glad, and this speaks well of you.
I think “Mexican” is treated as a race in this country, and since I don’t believe race is real and basically only exists to the extent people are treated, I think it was racist. But I know you see race differently, and I’m glad we can now agree it was at least bigoted.
How can she be a bigot Jack? She’s a real faux Indian! : http://www.dailywire.com/news/7003/heres-everything-you-need-know-about-elizabeth-aaron-bandler
I know you’re kidding, but the point of the post is that bigotry does not have to be aimed at minorities.
I’m guessing that this might have been an instance where they wrote the rant, and then had some minion do a news search for a name to direct the rant against.
Extreme incompetence then. All minions should know the name of large $ political supporters, and then the failure to remove the offending post…Something else happening here, I think.
Could that be because Hillary lost the election (yes she did! she lost! she lost!) even though she achieved greatness in a high government position while surviving grave danger from enemy fire; even though she shares in a wonderful charitable foundation that even receives donations from lots of other countries’ governments; even though she stood by her man and wants all girls to be belie…never mind that one; and even in spite of her ingenious ability to combine personal and government communications . . . and just because she speaks and speaks and makes tons of yummy money doing it so she must be telling the truth, some picky-picky people kept picking at her because she has a vagina? So we can believe in you too, Elizabeth. You too can make mole-hills out of mountains and bury your mistakes underneath them.
I usually hate memes,but this one made me laugh out loud:
It certainly seems more efficient! Like just ordering a pizza instead of making one from scratch.