SHUT UP, ELIZABETH WARREN

America doesn’t need two Hillary Clintons.

By Daniel Greenfield

 

  

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is a New York writer focusing on radical Islam.

Elizabeth Warren has been coddled ever since Fordham Law Review insisted on believing that the blonde blue eyed woman was Harvard Law School’s “first woman of color”.

She has as much “color” in her pale face as she does principles, ideas, wit, ethics and speaking skills. 

Warren isn’t a good speaker. Her speeches are inept, her cadence is uneven and she ends sentences on a squeak. She stumbles breathily through prepared texts, seemingly confused to be up on stage as if she’s waiting for everyone to realize that there was a mistake and replace her with someone competent.

Sadly that never happens. All this might be excusable if she had something to say, she doesn’t.

If Elizabeth Warren ever had a single original thought in her head, it long ago died of starvation. She achieved national fame by claiming that no one got rich on their own because the police protect factories. That was probably a more compelling argument back when the stereotypical millionaire got rich from factories. But Warren was cribbing from the twenties because she has no new ideas.

Either that or she imagines that Bill Gates, Michael Bloomberg and Mark Zuckerberg became billionaires by having a lot of factories in Lowell.

These days she tours as Hillary Clinton’s attack Chihuahua lobbing piercing insults at Trump. Like the time she accused Trump of being “greedy”. Then she charged him with having a “goofy hat”.

But the media cheers every squeaky insult from the former Republican turned Democrat and class warrior turned millionaire as if she were the anemic half-assed second coming of Don Rickles.

In the same media echo chamber where Jon Stewart was a mighty smirking destroyer and John Oliver makes for compelling television, Elizabeth Warren’s tepid putdowns can be described as devastating assaults. (Or as NPR’s Nina Totenberg dubbed her, a “pugilist” which is how people who don’t watch or like boxing describe boxers today.) But outside it, Warren is a joke wrapped in its own punch line.

Take the hilarious chutzpah of Elizabeth Warren accusing Trump of greed and money-grubbing at a Hillary Clinton event. Say what you will about Trump, but unlike Hillary he didn’t shake down the Boys and Girls Club for a quarter million for a speech. The Clintons ripped off everyone from earthquake victims in Haiti to public universities controlled by their former associates. Bill and Hillary would steal candy from a baby if they could fly a private jet to and from the scene of the crime.

The Clintons have more money than even they could figure out how to spend in the next two decades. Their only child is married to an investment banker. They keep grifting money they have no need for. But they have so little self-control that they had to return property to the White House after leaving. Bill and Hillary can’t stop grubbing and stealing. This isn’t greed. It’s a mental illness.

Bill and Hillary made a fortune through corruption and conflicts of interest. They are the least qualified people in the world to hurl accusations of greed and grubbing at anyone. And trotting out Harvard Law’s “first woman of color” who got paid $350,000 to teach a single course is almost as bad.

Elizabeth Warren attacked Trump for conflicts of interest. Warren is a living conflict of interest. She ranted about student debt after singlehandedly eating up the tuition fees of seven students.

After her star turn on the Daily Show attacking financial interests, she went right to fighting against asbestos victims on behalf of an insurance company, before clutching her blood money and then making a bid to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to protect consumers from people like her.

Elizabeth Warren hates banks and hedge funds, except one particular fund that may just have a way of profiting from her agenda. But Warren also keeps finding ways to profit from her rhetoric.

If any of this sounds familiar, it should. Elizabeth Warren is just a less successfully slimy Hillary Clinton.

Imagine Hillary without Bill, without the detour to Arkansas, the fake accents and the sideways climb to power and you have Elizabeth Warren. Unlike Hillary, Warren never learned to talk to more conservative voters or operate outside the corridors of power in a handful of major northeastern government blocs.

Elizabeth Warren took the path Hillary was on before she married Bill, maneuvering through a shadowy incestuous world where academia, government and special interests bleed into each other and can turn bland hacks like her into power brokers. But that means she lacks even the elementary political skills that Hillary was forced to learn along her long journey to becoming the inevitable nuisance-in-waiting.

The only question then is why Hillary Clinton would want a more inept version of herself tagging along.

A Saturday Night Live skit did have its version of Hillary Clinton boasting that she would be her own vice president. If nothing else, picking Warren would give the country two Hillary Clintons to endure. And next to Warren, Hillary Clinton seems polished, competent and coherent. Elizabeth Warren could be Hillary’s Biden. A terrible choice who exists to make the top of the ticket look better by comparison.

Progressives will feel the old familiar thrill every time Warren calls for purging the kulaks before boarding another private jet back to her three-story Victorian mansion in Cambridge or her $740K Penn Quarter D.C. condo. And Hillary Clinton will clap supportively as Warren stumbles through another speech accusing Donald Trump, Wall Street and everyone except her greedy new boss of being greedy while trying not to roll her eyes.

And mostly succeeding.

Like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren is a pathetic joke. Both senators are greedy class warriors buzzing with a million plans that they have no ability or interest in actually implementing. The difference is that Bernie sold himself cheaply to Revolution Messaging and got a few months of flying private jets. Warren held out for Hillary and is hoping for four to eight years of flying private jets to denounce private jet flyers.

Hillary may just be stringing Warren along. A few appearances with the progressive great hope whom Bernie was just temporarily stepping in for before letting her know that it’s not going to happen.

If Hillary Clinton wants to win, she’s going to have to turn out minority voters. And Elizabeth Warren is as popular with minority voters as Bernie Sanders. Warren Democrats are rich, old white men. Bringing her on board would make the Hillary ticket as diverse as a ticket with two Hillarys on it can possibly be.

America doesn’t need two Hillary Clintons. It doesn’t even need one.

And it doesn’t need another boring leftist with nothing to say being coddled by the media as a wondrous wit for spewing sonorous clichés. That’s what we have John Oliver and Stephen Colbert for.

Back when Scott Brown brought up Warren’s $350K payday for teaching a single course, Elizabeth Warren complained, “I want to talk about the issues. Senator Brown wants to launch attacks.”

Now Warren has come full circle, ignoring the issues while launching feeble attacks that miss by a mile. It’s a fitting end to the political life of a political hack. Like many progressives, Warren liked to pretend that she was better than politics. But Elizabeth Warren wasn’t better than politics. She was worse.

America doesn’t need her. Massachusetts doesn’t need her. No one needs her. Almost.

Because somewhere an insurance company looking to put one over asbestos victims or a university seeking a celebrity minority professor to score $350K for teaching one course does.