Several readers have emailed me an article in The Boston Globe, Elizabeth Warren’s Native American problem goes beyond politics. It’s worth a read, and *relatively* balanced for The Globe.
One of the readers wrote:
It reminded me of all the hard work you’ve done in the detailed documentation of her dishonest, self-serving claim to Native American heritage.If she’s hit a speed bump in her road to the White House, you paved it into place!
I appreciate those kudos, but also need to note that I didn’t do it alone. The Boston Herald broke the story in late April 2012, and reporters Hillary Chabot and Chris Cassidy did excellent follow up work.
Cherokee genealogical researcher Twila Barnes did the deep digging into the historical records and Cherokee rolls, including digging up numerous interesting nuggets that contradicted Warren’s supposed “family lore” stories. Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart News broke many stories about Warren’s law school career and use of the false self-identification. And there were others, such as law professor David Bernstein who discovered Warren’s entries in a law school directory used for hiring purposes, and radio host Howie Carr who uncovered the apparent plagiarism of the infamous Pow Wow Chow entries. And I’m sure there are others I’ve forgotten to name.
But it is true, that we doggedly pursued this and other Warren problems, and brought it all together in February 2013 at ElizabethWarrenWiki.org, a one-stop shop for detailed, sourced research on Warren’s Cherokee and Native American problems, and other issues.
Whenever Warren is fighting with Trump, traffic to the Wiki site spikes from search engine searches about Warren. We’ve recently upgraded the technology behind the Wiki site, cleaned up dead links and videos, and are embarking on expanding the coverage.
Warren’s almost 6-year refusal to admit what she did is just baffling. It’s beyond politics.
The person who claims to speak up for the victims of a rigged system tried to rig the system in her favor by misappropriating the ethnic identity of a truly victimized people, the Cherokee people. Perhaps this inherent conflict between Warren’s politics and her life performance makes it impossible for her to admit that she was a victimizer.
But I think it’s more than that, it’s some sort of character flaw.
If Warren, early on after the Boston Herald broke the story, had simply fessed up, this would have gone away. She was going to beat Scott Brown in the Senate race regardless — to use a current political analogy, Warren could have shot someone in the middle of Boylston Street in Boston, and Massachusetts liberals still would have supported her.
So the problem has lingered. And The Globe, which in the past was a cheerleader for Warren and tried to cover for her on the Cherokee problem, correctly diagnoses the problem:
There’s a ghost haunting Elizabeth Warren as she ramps up for a possible 2020 presidential bid and a reelection campaign in Massachusetts this year: her enduring and undocumented claims of Native American ancestry….As Warren is mentioned as a serious presidential contender in 2020, even some who should be her natural allies say Warren has displayed a stubborn unwillingness to address the gap between the story she was told of Native Americans in the family tree and a dearth of hard evidence to back it up.It’s a disconnect that has lingered unresolved in the public sphere for more than five years.Warren says she grew up understanding that forebears in her mother’s family had Cherokee and Delaware blood. But examinations by genealogists of documents including birth, marriage, and death records have shown no conclusive proof of Native American ancestry.While it may be easy to dismiss Trump’s continued Twitter attacks as bigotry, which has been Warren’s response thus far, the view of her more sympathetic critics is that she is leaving herself vulnerable by not clearing the air in a definitive way. Their fear is that the issue could act as a drag on her profile as she considers whether to seek the Democratic nomination for president.“From a strategic perspective, taking the live step of taking responsibility and an apology, even while noting that it was not her intention to harm anyone, is important,” said Tom Bonier, CEO of the Democratic polling firm TargetSmart. “Will that change votes? I don’t think that doing so will lose her votes.”
Warren hasn’t apologized. And I’m not sure at this point she can. Not after her Twitter wars with Trump. The Globe goes on:
“It frankly became a much bigger issue than anyone expected, and it went on much longer than anyone expected,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist based in Boston. “It was compounded by the Warren campaign’s refusal to address it.”She added: “When someone is pouring gasoline on a fire it’s always better to put the fire out. But, in this case, the Warren campaign thought it would burn itself out.”’
Warren seems unmoved. She thinks she has put it all behind her, according to the Globe:
Warren says she believes these issues are in her past.“These issues were extensively litigated in 2012 and I think the people of Massachusetts made their decision,” Warren said in her brief interview with the Globe this month. “I think what the people of Massachusetts and what voters are concerned about is the direction that Donald Trump is pulling this country.”
Warren is delusional if she thinks her ethnic deception is behind her, and she can rely on Trump hatred to save her.
Trump’s attacks on Warren, and her barbed responses, have served to solidify Warren’s brand as being the Fake Indian.
The Boston Globe, long a Warren backer, seems to get that, even if Warren doesn’t.
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