Schooling Elizabeth Warren’s attackers on the meaning of hypocrisy

Elizabeth Warren faces down Tea Party heckler. Photo courtesy of Slatest.Slate.com.

Jason Linkins takes on both media dullards who amplify the "stupid" attacks on Elizabeth Warren and the panic-stricken conservatives who make them. Linkins nails it with this one:

If you're trying to keep up with the themes that underpin the GOP attacks on Elizabeth Warren, well, good luck to you. Way back when, her affiliation with Harvard got her branded an elitist. More recently, her support for the Occupy Wall Street movement branded her a dyed-in-the-wool socialist and middle-class rabblerouser. But now, her opponents are back pursuing the elitist angle, trying to drive a wedge between her and the Occupying 99 percent by pointing out that she's too good at capitalism to represent the poor. Some of these people yammered this critique to Politico, and their words were scribbled down like so:

Elizabeth Warren may have embraced the Occupy Wall Street movement and the "99 percent" crowd, but public records reveal the liberal firebrand belongs to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. 

Her financial well-being will likely hand conservatives a new line of attack against the consumer advocate and Democratic Senate hopeful in Massachusetts who has fired up the left and was labeled by one columnist as "the first candidate of the Occupy Wall Street movement."

"I don't begrudge her own personal wealth. I begrudge her hypocrisy of trying to play the demagogue against those who have achieved and who have created wealth," said Rick Manning of the conservative group Americans for Limited Government.

Lots of people -- like Steve Benen, Greg Sargent, and Paul Krugman (who is also very well-off, and yet no one perceives him as a latter day robber baron) -- have pointed out that this is not what hypocrisy means. Warren would be a hypocrite if she pandered to the 99 percent while advocating policies that harmed their economic interests. But she doesn't do that. The policies she advocates involve creating a fairer environment for consumers who participate in the capitalist system. Her bread-and-butter issues involve things like making mortgage agreements more transparent, ridding credit card contracts of their "tricks and traps," and responding more forcefully to the fraud and abuse that's found throughout the banking industry. (Ordinary people would likely be all the more successful at accruing and maintaining wealth if Warren had her way, actually.)

It's not hypocritical for a rich person to seek to end income inequality. What I think Rick Manning is trying to say is that Warren is, in his estimation, a traitor to the moneyed class, and he'd rather that she shut up and went away.

Read more:

A Sober Analysis of the Race: The People Have Not Yet Anointed Obama

If you paid attention to over-heated Left-wing blogs in full sexist mode, along with the piously intoning liberal punditry in the MSM cresting on a wave of misogynous sewage, you’d believe the presidential race ended this week with the banner headlines regarding the RNC’s funding of Sarah Palin’s campaign wardrobe.

According to our all-wise media – both the old and the new – voters should be more concerned about Palin’s clothing allowance than Sen. Biden’s dire warnings about what we can expect within the first six months of an Obama Administration. The gaffe-prone Biden has guaranteed an international crisis deliberately ignited to test the “brilliant” 47-year-old president who seduced the DNC into selecting him as its nominee on the basis of his abilities as a motivational speaker and fundraiser.

In contrast to the above, Adam Nagourney at the NY Times puts the state of the race in perspective with his sober analysis. (For the record, the Times just endorsed Obama for the presidency.)

Nagourney reports:

“Here are what Mr. McCain’s advisers are watching hopefully (and Mr. Obama’s are watching warily) as the contest enters its final days.

Issues

“Two issues have turned up in the final days, courtesy of some inopportune remarks by Mr. Obama and his running mate, Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware. Both have entered the campaign dialogue, and it is probably a little too early to tell whether they will have the impact that Mr. McCain hopes they will.

“The first was Mr. Obama’s response to the plumber in Ohio who asked about his proposal to increase income tax rates on households making over $250,000 a year, in which Mr. Obama asserted that there was a need to “spread the wealth.” Mr. McCain seized on the response to reprise the he-will-raise-your-taxes attack that has historically had resonance in states like Florida, Iowa and New Hampshire. “We believe we have traction with the tax issue,” said Charlie Black, a senior adviser to Mr. McCain.

“It was no coincidence that Mr. Obama spent about 10 minutes rebutting the notion that he would raise taxes on the middle class at a rally here in Florida on Tuesday. Advisers to Mr. Obama are carefully watching state polling and focus groups in Florida, Ohio and Virginia, where Mr. McCain is waging a vigorous push on this issue.

“The other was Mr. Biden’s prediction that a foreign power would test Mr. Obama with a crisis in the first months of his presidency. That remark goes to what has been the heart of Mr. McCain’s argument about the need for the next president to have experience in “handling high-stakes situations. No one in Mr. Obama’s campaign is disputing the potential damage from Mr. Biden’s remark, but they hope it will be offset by the endorsement of Mr. Obama by Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state, on Sunday.

“Polls

“Pollsters say there has never been a year when polling has been so problematic, given the uncertainty of who is going to vote in what is shaping up as an electorate larger than ever. While most national polls give Mr. Obama a relatively comfortable lead, in many statewide polls, Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain are much more closely matched. Even a small shift in the national number could deliver some of the closer states into the McCain camp, making an Electoral College victory at least possible.

‘“The next 13 days will tell the story,’ said Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, pointing to recent polls showing Mr. McCain gaining in his state. ‘I’m optimistic. I think he’s going to take Florida.’

“The other question is whether there is a hidden resistance among whites to casting a ballot for an African-American. That could potentially be a problem for Mr. Obama in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Mr. Obama’s advisers argued that race had already been factored into polls; but it was notable that the Times/CBS News poll found that one-third of voters said they knew someone who would not vote for Mr. Obama because he is black. That is a question formulation pollsters use to try to get at prejudice that a voter might not otherwise own up to.

“Turnout

“Mr. Obama has made major strides in expanding the voter pool, especially among young people and African-Americans; the question is whether first-time voters, especially younger ones, will actually turn out. Consider this: An ABC News/Washington Post poll on Thursday found that first-time voters support Mr. Obama by 73 percent to 26 percent.

“Mr. McCain’s campaign looks to history for evidence of how big a step it is for new voters to go from registering, which can take place at a doorstep, to actually voting. Still, by every indication here in Florida — where there were two-hour lines in the southern part of the state as early voting began this week — the Obama campaign may be delivering on the formidable get-out-the-voter operation it has promised.

“Which is not to say they are not a bit worried.

‘“Complacency is a big concern of ours, and that’s why we’re going to campaign energetically from start to finish here,’ David Axelrod, the chief strategist to Mr. Obama said in an interview. ‘We don’t want anybody to think that this thing is done — it’s not done. One of the things that can undo us is if people believe that.”’