Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has found a new minority to claim after her tribal affiliation didn’t pan out so well – and this one is even more exclusive. As far as she knows, she’s the only one, in fact. No other current presidential candidate for the Democratic Party – to her recollection – has any executive branch experience. Not the former mayors or even the former vice president of the United States.
At a town hall event in Newton, IA, Warren claimed to be the only one running for president with any experience on the “executive side.” She believes this gives her a special insight into the use of executive power, which she plans to use to accomplish a plethora of policy goals. She intends to erase up to $50,000 in student debt for as many as 42 million Americans on her first day in the White House. She hopes to ban fracking. She’ll do this all on her own, she thinks, as there’s no time to wait for Congress. Isn’t that an interesting line of reasoning for a U.S. senator? Will she feel the same when Donald Trump gets re-elected and she’s still a member of Congress? Perhaps if Sen. Warren ever complains about the president defying the will of Congress, someone will remind her of her own speech.
Elizabeth Warren was asked by President Obama to lead the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau in 2010. The Senate didn’t confirm her though, so in 2011, she left. If it is indeed her executive experience that makes her especially qualified for the job, and she’s the one with the most experience, then none of the Democrats are qualified. Fortunately for the party – though probably quite unlucky for Sen. Warren – she either lied or she was confused.
Elizabeth Warren (Photo by Scott Eisen/Getty Images)
There are several other candidates in the Democratic party who have considerably more executive branch experience than the former Native American – and of them, only Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) is far enough in the past that one could be forgiven for not recalling it. Remember Mayor Pete? Does she ever wonder how he got that nickname? Pete Buttigieg has only not been mayor of South Bend, IN since last month – and has often cited his experience as mayor as the reason he’s so qualified to be president. Another well-known former mayor who campaigns on his executive experience is Michael Bloomberg of New York City. Bernie Sanders was mayor of Burlington, VT back in the ‘80s, and then there’s the current frontrunner, Joe Biden. He was the vice president for eight years, specifically the eight years directly before the current vice, Mike Pence. And, like the others, he has campaigned on his executive branch experience.
How Sen. Warren could be ignorant of this is a mystery. She clearly recalls President Obama. She mentions him by name at the town hall. So how could she not remember that the guy trouncing her in the polls was his vice?
The Democratic senator from Massachusetts seems to have a problem with the truth. She was a Native American – until a DNA test proved she wasn’t. She was fired from a teaching job for being pregnant, but that’s not the story she told all those years ago. She grew up poor with a janitor for a father – a line that infuriated her brother. Apparently, dear old Dad was never a janitor. Now this. What outrageous claim will Sen. Warren make next?
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