I will add to this, and embed videos when available, but here’s my quick take. (Full video here)
Very strong opening for Brown on fake Cherokee issue. He didn’t handle it the way I would have, but he picked an issue — the release of her employment records — and stuck to it. (added) In hindsight, focusing on releasing records was brilliant, because Warren has a major problem, she likely made or participated in causing Harvard to make false federal filings as to her Native American status using standard Harvard and EEOC definitions.
Very unofficial transcript:
i think what you’re referring to is the fact that professor warren claims she is a native american and as you can see, she’s not. she checked the box and she had an opportunity to make a decision throughout her career when she applied to pen and harvard and checked the box claiming she was a native american. clearly she’s not. i don’t know and neither do the viewers know whether she got ahead as a result of that checking of the box, but the only way that we’ll be able to find that out is to have her release her personnel records, have harvard release their personnel records so make sure that she did not have an advantage that others were entitled to. when you are a united states senator tough pass a test, one of character and honest and truthfulness
Warren was reduced to telling her family lore stories..
This is my family, this is who I am … I can’t and won’t change who I am, I am who I am.
Warren’s family lore has been debunked, but it’s her story. But it would have been hard for Brown to get into those weeds. Warren likely has focus group tested her approach. Brown needs to focus next time on her attempt to take advantage and how she signed forms with definitions of Native American which she cannot possibly meet based on family lore.
Brown spent the rest of the night hitting two themes, will not raise taxes and supports job creation:
If you want someone to spend your tax dollars, give them to Professor Warren.
Warren probably got the better, in liberal Massachusetts, on social issues using the War on Women theme. Brown deflected it, but it probably stirred up the base.
Warren didn’t land many blows, but Brown hit her very hard at the end on two points. When Warren brought up the high cost of college, Brown hammered her on her lavish salary and perks.
When Warren tried to say that Brown sided with big companies, Brown lowered the boom on something most viewers probably didn’t know, that Warren represented Travelers Insurance Co. and was paid $225,000 to defeat asbestos claims. Brown harped on it, and because most viewers probably didn’t know, I think it hurt.
Brown also gave multiple shout outs to union members, including on the Keystone Pipeline. Remember, the unions supported Coakley in 2010, but the members voted with Brown.
I imagine supporters will still support each, but even putting aside my disdain for Warren and trying to be as neutral as I can, I think Brown helped himself tonight. It wasn’t a knockout, but he won easily on points because Warren needed to demonize him, and he came across as he always comes across, as a regular guy the people can relate to.
Related – Aleister at American Glob, Scott Brown Won Tonight’s Debate Hands Down.
Fifty percent (50%) of voters who watched tonight’s U.S. Senate debate between Senator Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren said the Senator won, with 40% saying that Warren won the debate (6% thought it was a tie and 4% were undecided) according to a Kimball Political Consulting survey of “likely voters” in Massachusetts.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Lieawatha made no reference tonight to “high cheekbones”! She should have said “Of course I’m Cherokee, can’t you see I have high cheekbones like all the Indians do?”.
Much as I tried watching the debate, I find that any more than five seconds listening to a lying statist freak like Warren is all I can stand. So I will trust you that Brown did the job. Thanks, Professor Jacobson!
So now she’s channeling POPEYE? I AM WHAT I AM?
That means she’s 1/32 cartoon character. (on her father’s side but there was a lot of prejudice about our family of cartoons (walt disney) marrying into my father’s cartoon family (King Features).
“We didn’t talk about it much but it was there.”
She’s becoming a cartoon herself.
My family lore has it that there is plenty of money in the checking account. In fact it was even mentioned again this evening at the dinner table.
So why is Brenda from the bank calling me?
Thank you, Professor Jacobson. I lived in Cambridge many years ago, so many I can hardly remember. When I lived there with my family, I was a medical student at Tufts and was grateful for the rent controlled apartment where we lived. I had no income then and we were just getting by.
On the other hand, I never made much money as a physician as I picked a poorly reimbursed field for my practice. Now I am retired.
The reality is that investors have to make a reasonable return on their investments or they will withdraw their money. Is that unreasonable?
When I lived in Cambridge, my landlord could have chosen to sell his property where I lived and my family and I would have suffered accordingly. But he did not and I have been extremely grateful. I believe that my landlord was making enough money from his other properties that he could have subsidized the building where my family and I were living to enable him to keep our building.
I have come to know, however, that the market is the best guarantor of the best prices for everyone.
1. By the 2004 election I could no longer stand the sound of Bush’s voice. I donated to the SwiftVets so people would learn what a disaster Kerry is, but I did not check a box for President.
2. By the 2010 midterms I could not stand the sound of Obama’s voice.
3. I could not stand the sound of Warren’s voice by the third or fourth time I heard her speak. Before the Cherokee stuff broke, she struck me indelibly as phony, phony, phony.
Re: Warren’s voice – this is apparently exactly why her ad strategy has shifted from her smarmy, smug lecturing tone to just images of her while actors speak warmly of her.
Brown should use her speaking in his own ads. Nothing turns people against Liz Warren like having to listen to her.
Brown should use her speaking in his own ads. Nothing turns people against Liz Warren like having to listen to her.
Yes!
I loved Brown’s comment about she and her husband’s 3/4 million dollar salary. So, the intellectual founder of OWS is a filthy rich professor that lectures against the filthy rich. Irony tastes better when served with A-1 sauce.
Not that it matters, because I don’t live in MA and I am no Dem, but the little secret about her fighting AGAINST asbestos claims really struck me. If it can make me think whoa, that’s slightly disingenuous, I imagine some independents and maybe some dems might feel the same way. I know, I know, I’m attributing rationality to them, but it might get them on an emotional level.
I did not see it (the feed did not work for me and I did not have the TV on) but I listened to it and watched the comments at LI’s live feed. I thought Brown won, from what I heard. Liz’s voice is really annoying.
[…] Read William Jacobson’s Analysis here. Like this:LikeBe the first to like this. from → 2012, Debate, Elizabeth Warren, Legal […]
“No Way, Lizzy”
As a lawyer, Liz was “fair”,
But to be “Prof” she had to share
MINORITY traits that just weren’t there.
Oh, poor Lizzy.
And then she had a wicked dream,
She’d steal a “Cherokee Nation” theme,
Theft of a race was her crazy scheme,
Crazy, crazy Lizzy.
Harvard bought the lie real fast,
And Liz kept lying to the last!
She could deceive with stunning class!
Dirty, dirty Lizzy.
Now Cherokees kept perfect lists,
Of their descendants in our midst,
And Lizzy’s name did not exist!
Oh, oh Lizzy.
In fact the TRUTH was stranger still,
LIZ’ forebears, like Custer, killed,
The Cherokees who were living still!
BAD, BAD LIZZY!
But when confronted by her fraud,
Liz attacked–she wasn’t awed
By truth, or even Indian Gods
Danger, danger Lizzy!
Now Massachusetts must decide,
If Liz, with BO right at her side,
Can mock both state and indian pride.
No way, Lizzy.
NO RIGHTS RESERVED
[…] SOME WARREN-BROWN POST-DEBATE ANALYSIS from Prof. Jacobson. […]
Three great moments: calling her out for not putting her money where her mouth is and paying the optional higher income tax rate, calling her out on her and her husbands income of $750,000, and the best slam: her work for Travellers Insurance against asbestos claims. She did not even try to deny those claims whereas he had an answer for every accusation she threw at him.
She looked frightened, he looked like he was having fun.
[…] BuzzFeed, five minutes of fun at the start of tonight’s debate. I agree with William Jacobson: In some ways, this is a tough subject for Brown to broach. To make the case effectively he’s […]
I think last time when Brown said, “it’s not the Kennedy seat, it’s the people’s seat” he won the election.
In the clip embedded above, “she checked the box” stuck with me. A good public speaker/debater knows that to be effective, he has to repeat an idea a few times to drive the point home and get it to sink in. Brown repeated “she checked the box” a few times. It’s a powerful phrase, I think, because it is simple yet it conveys a lot of meaning and it is easy for everyone to understand the point he is making.
“She checked the box” may be the new “it’s the people’s seat”.
As jakee308 points out above, the only memorable Warren catch phrase conjurs up images of POPEYE. She was on defense, not offense, which is not a good place to be.
If Brown performed in the rest of the debate as well as he did in that clip, he clearly won.
Does Brown believe that Travelers should not have defended the claims against it? Was he playing an anti-business card? Or was this just a gotcha on her hypocrisy?
I didn’t appreciate it when Gingrich launched his anti-capitalist attack on Romney (for whom I may not be able to bring myself to vote), and I wouldn’t applaud Brown for adopting similar tactics.
Still hope he wins.
Clearly he’s imploring her to live up to her own ideals. He is not expressing any position on Travelers’ right to defend itself, rather, he is raising the question of why she can so easily be bought. He is illustrating her for the fake that she is, not just the fake Indian that she is.
All hypocrites in both parties need to be exposed for what they are. So he performed a public service.
Obama could well win the election because of people like you won’t vote for Romney. We are choosing between two candidates. Will you really choose Obama by not voting?
I will have to read what Brown said to see what point he was making.
As Dr. Paul Rahe has pointed out at Ricochet.com, Romney is a managerial progressive. I’m sick of being told that I have to vote for non-conservatives because the other guy is worse.
Glenn Reynolds has said, in reference to global warming, that he’ll believe the alarmists when they change their behavior. I keep hearing from the GOP establishment that this is the most important election ever; when they start acting that way, I’ll believe them.
Then why did you make your original post if you did not know what he said or what point he was trying to make?
Anchovy – See those curly marks with the periods under them at the end of my sentences? Like the one I just used and at the end of this sentence? Those mean I was asking questions about what Brown said.
The clip shows that Brown adopted an anti-business posture in attacking Warren’s work for Travelers.
Well, we’ve know for some time that Brown is a Massachusetts Republican, not a conservative. But I can see that the comments here are being dominated by like minded folks.
“I will have to read what Brown said to see what point he was making.”
Somkescreen…. you are a pathetic troll. That is what you said and what I responded to. You plainly stated you don’t know what Brown said and what point he was making but felt the need to comment anyway. That is jerkism in the first degree.
Anchovy – I understand you’re embarrassed that you didn’t understand that those little curlicue marks meant that I was asking those who had listened to the debate to give me their interpretations of what Brown said. But calling names and claiming that asking such questions is improper just embarrass you more.
She did not have to take the case if it ran against her deeply held beliefs that big capitalist companies are evil and exploit the little people.
Of course if she made enough money on the deal she might have been able to overlook her moral objections and screw a bunch of sick and dying little people who only wanted justice from the greedy insurance company.
Re: Travelers…
It wasn’t an anti-business slam. She kept repeating that she had spent her whole life “fighting for the little guy” and he was countering that by pointing out how she defended the largest insurance company in America precisely *from* the little guy.
It seemed very effectively done, to me.
It was obvious: she rails against “big corporations” and talks the OWS talk, but when it comes to walking the walk, she didn’t hesitate to take the corporate money. It’s hypocrisy.
Why would you assume he would attack Travelers’ right to defend a lawsuit?
Brown was not saying it was wrong for lawyers to defend businesses and rich people. He was saying it was wrong for Warren to constantly rail against businesses and rich people but then make big bucks defending those vary same businesses and rich people. He was not attacking free enterprise, but Warrens hipocracy. Only if Brown had made the same attack against a free market supporter, would it be wrong.
That is where your Newt analogy breaks down. Both Newt and Romney say they support business and free enterprise, so why should he attack Romney for personally practicing what he preaches, getting rich using free enterprise. But if Newt had attacked a socialist dem for personally getting rich practicing free enterprise, he would have had a good point.
If dems can attack repubs for having a personal life that is not consistent with their public christian moral principles, then repubs should attack any dem whose personal life is not consistent with their public anti business anti free market principles.
boston.com has a survey on who did better:
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2012/senate/specials/stronger_first_debate/
Warren: 53.3%
Brown: 38.9%
Liz has heap strong medicine.
Not sure I would call that a “poll.” It’s a survey of people who read their news online (i.e., 20-somethings who aren’t putting kids to bed and have no job to go to tomorrow). I just voted 5 times on it.
I did not call it a poll either. I merely posted the link hoping some LI readers would vote in the survey to even out the result. Maybe even share the link on some other blogs I don’t know of so that the left will have one less junk stat to crow about. Ya know?
Sorry–I see that you indeed used the word “survey.”
I tried voting fast, but I was outclicked by those young folks. I saw Brown’s number declining despite my votes. I gave up after 5. Must be nice to have fast fingers and a lot of time on your hands.
Ah Boston. Where young resent college graduates go to retire.
No surprise there…
The Warren campaign started sock-puppeting the Boston Globe comments section about 10-14 days ago.
You can see it in the sharp turnaround in the article comments from the majority being unfavorable about Elizabeth Warren, to suddenly the majority of comments being gushingly supportive of Warren and receiving high numbers of approvals.
The biggest problem I have with Brown’s comments on Warren’s use of faux Indian heritage is the phrase, “she did not have an advantage that others were entitled to”. So the Senator believes certain people should be given an advantage based on race and ethnicity?
Not necessarily…. he could have meant that, if we are going to give special consideration to certain populations, white liberals shouldn’t lie to take advantage of it.
But nice try anyway.
Perhaps you could explain the difference between my phrase, “certain people should be given an advantage based on race and ethnicity?” and yours, “special consideration to certain populations”. Seems like the same thing to me.
If I did that I would also have to explain what “liberal lie” means, which was the point of my comment. But you knew that anyway.
Again…. nice try but no soup for you.
My guess is he meant “entitled by law.” Warren would also be “entitled” to free birth control pills under Obamacare–it’s the law after all. Although I cannot imagine why she would ever need them.
We’re in Massachusetts. He’s not going to win a state-wide election by arguing against affirmative action. But no one, no matter what they think of affirmative action, is in favor of cheating. Pointing out that someone else was “entitled” to that preferential treatment was hugely important — it personalizes the victim. It’s not just that Warren *lied*, she cheated and potentially robbed someone else of a job. That’s why it’s good that he said it that way.
I thought Brown did just fine — probably enough to hold on to the seat. Warren looked fine, too, though. No knock-out on either side.
I do wish that Brown had been able to articulate the rampant idiocy of taxing the top 3% of small businesses as a part of a job creation proposal. (Aren’t the most successful small businesses *exactly* the ones that ought to be expanding and hiring new employees? Isn’t that how they become the bottom 10% of mid-sized businesses next year?)
I was also sorry that Brown didn’t point out that Warren has never served in any public office at all… Experience really does matter. And he could easily have slipped this in somewhere responding to one of her attacks on his record. “Since you’ve never served in any legislative office, perhaps you don’t understand how this works…”
To begin, let’s not use the weasel words, affirmative action. Let’s term it quotas, preferences and set asides. That’s what it is. Second, several blue states, California, Washington, Michigan, have passed civil rights initiatives outlawing quotas, preferences and set asides. In each case, the outcome came despite the opposition of the states entire political, academic, business, labor and media establishment.
We learned under Clinton that it’s OK to commit numerous sins, including criminal ones, if you’re liberal. Would Scott Brown even be in the race if he was caught with the level of dishonesty Warren has shown? As Mitt Romney has noted, liberalism is about using the force and violence of the state to pay yourself from the public treasury. Once that becomes the basis of your political philosophy, who’s going to sweat the small stuff like lying, tax evasion (Geithner), manslaughter (Kennedy), rape (Clinton)?
Browns brilliance is he recognizes that leftists will excuse almost anything except hipocracy, so he hit Warren hard on hipocracy. That is how a repub can win in a leftist state like MA, insist the dems live by their own rules.
She supports minority set asides, then lies to benefit from them, and screws another real minority of the bennie she publically supports.
She rants against big corporations and purports to support the little guy against them, then makes big bucks supporting a corporation against the little guy.
He has exposed Warren as a hipocrite, the one unforgivable leftist sin.
Princess Fauxcahontas’ played the victim card tonite. She did tell the truth on one thing: “I am not changing who I am.” Got it. She is the YOU DIDN’T BUILD THAT QUEEN–enemy of capitalism, free markets and freedom. She wants to “fight for jobs” — hahahahahahah… Professor, you’re a policy wonk teacher from the ELITIST UNIV. IN THE NATION… Harvard. You’ve led an incredibly sheltered, insulated life. You never hired or fired anyone. You have NO CLUE what the working person’s life is like. Get real. Scott Brown may not be a conservative but he most certainly is not an enemy of the country. This woman will remind every iron worker in South Boston of his worst nightmare… sadly, she is a shrew and men will ultimately not vote for her.
Speaking of idiots, no one’s commented on Crazy Nancy Pelosi’s statement today that if the democrats re-take the House, the House will amend the Constitution on the very first day!
Only an elected official as crazy or as ignorant as Pelosi or Shiela Jackass Lee would not know Article V proscribes for the intentionally difficult process required to amend the Constitution.
A parody that the likes of this crowd would really enjoy:
http://thefinereport.com/2012/09/crazy-nancy-pelosi-is-back/
If you listened carefully, I particularly enjoyed the part where she said her father’s family wouldn’t let him get married because her “mother was part Delaware and part Cherokee”.
She’s gone from flip flopping the parents’ respective tribes to assigning all the injun blood to her mom. Priceless consistency.
Brown completely blew it with his “just look at her”. All that’s going to do is get her sympathy. And with Obama poised to take 60% of the vote, and her argument that Brown is (duh!) a Republican … get ready to stop calling her “Professor” and start calling her: Senator.
Hopefully he put her away with this. Mr. Brown is a conservative in Mass, but, that’s good enough for me.
He was OK not great. He hung his campaign on the Indian controversy and that was a mistake. The debate performance was not good enough to change the dynamics of this race. I’m still going on the impression that the overwhelming number of Democrats that are registered in Mass. will elect a ham sandwich if it’s the correct party affiliation.
Much as I dislike her, I do believe she will be elected.
[…] a minority on law school directories. He said the story of Warren’s lineage goes to her characterProfessor William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection provides an extensive analysis, concluding:[T]rying to be as neutral as I can, I think Brown helped himself tonight. It wasn’t a […]
Warren: “I am who I am”.
Translation: ” I yam who I yam.”
Conclusion: She is now claiming to be descended from Popeye.
[…] MA Sen: Warren-Brown Post-Debate Analysis (Videos added) […]