Pre-Debate Shenanigans: Elizabeth Warren Town Hall in Miami

The Warren Town Hall event at FIU was not what I expected. It looked like what I expected: a circle of about a thousand chairs around a small stage with a small podium and a stool with a glass of water on it. After a couple of brief rah rah intros, the candidate came out to the raucous cheers of the SRO crowd and she began telling her story of growing up in Oklahoma; of her hardworking, lower middle class dad and her 3 much older brothers who all volunteered to serve in Vietnam. Then she described the life changes that overtook her family when she was still young as her father barely survived a massive heart attack which took years of recovery. During that time Warren was introduced to the concepts of mortgage and foreclosure, learning that her mother saved the first and avoided the other when she decided to go out and get a full-time job answering phones at Sears for minimum wage. Minimum wage was enough to support a 3 person family.

She went on to explain that she went to college with the dream of becoming a school teacher, chose to sidetrack briefly for marriage and motherhood, but soon finished college locally for $50 per semester paid for by a generous aunt who had come to live with the family. Warren then did live her dream when she taught special needs until deciding 3 years of law school, while still being a wife and mother, suited her as well. Practicing law only briefly, she returned to class as a law professor, covering every economic and financial field there was to teach.

She says she lived her dreams and rose to the top of her field.

But for too many, reaching for those dreams have become impossible because of the skyrocketing costs of higher education and the stranglehold the financial industry had placed on new graduates. From there Warren connected her experience with the experience of those today in similar situations and how corporate and financial interests have so changed the nature of business that there seems no room to grow, compete, or take entrepreneurial risk at any level. She went into brief but substantive detail on a variety of topics all of which added up to effectively reforming American economics and government in the deepest manner since the New Deal brought the US the social safety net, WWII brought an entire infrastructure rebuild of the country, and the post-War era brought financial health to a freely educated (then almost entirely white) populace. A healthy dose of Teddy Roosevelt-era trustbusting is sprinkled over it all.

She says the US is in need of fixing all those parts of our national life and it can and must be done.

It was entirely rational, to the point, easy to understand, and told in the manner of a really energetic square-cool teacher who wants to see her students do well.

I thought after that we would have an hour or so of questions from the audience. Instead there were only three questions from numbers drawn from a bag by Warren's young grandson. In the first, she was asked about her thoughts on the current horror of child refugee detainment. Her answer was as expected and in the course of it announced she’ll go down to the detention center (prison, concentration camp) where children are currently under lock and key in Homestead. It’ll be a neat trick to get down there, have a meaningful moment designed to bring press attention to a crime against humanity on our own soil, and get back to downtown Miami in time to prep for the night’s debate.

The second question was about blue collar jobs in small town America. Her plan (and she has them), is to develop new industries, related to green infrastructure, and mandate that all materials be fabricated in the US, with a preference to those places that traditionally have been places for manufacturing.

The third question was whether she would support action against Iran under current circumstances. Her one word answer, “no”.

Rather than go on, she announced she would take individual selfies with anyone who wanted to wait in line, which nearly everyone in the hall did. She made a brief statement to press (which I couldn't hear even though I was about a foot and a half away from her), then went about the selfies which, as I write several hours later, she still may be taking. I would have preferred to see her take more questions and maybe keep the personal story speech a bit shorter, but overall, I got the picture of what she’s up to as a candidate. She came from a tough but common midwestern upbringing, had some life challenges that are shared by millions, persisted (important word for this campaign thanks to Mitch McConnell), and ultimately wants to reboot the country in a way that will allow others to work toward the same results without big finance, big corps, or corrupt government getting in the way.

She came across as determined, not angry, self-deprecating, entirely likable, smart as you would expect a Harvard law professor to be, caring, and most of all, genuine. This business about “electability” and “likableness” is quite honestly, a bag of bullshit. She’s got the goods. Does she have the political chops after being in the Senate for only a little over 6 years? Entirely unknown. But considering the last 3 White House occupants had little actual experience in high elective office (GWB and Obama) and then none at all (trump), Warren surely meets that minimum criteria for the job as far as the American voter is concerned.