It’s semi-official: U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren has not publicly declared herself a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, but she’s formed an exploratory committee, which is considered to be the first step toward an eventual declaration.
In a video announcement on New Year’s Eve to her supporters, Warren revealed her plans ahead of what The New York Times notes is likely to be a “long and crowded” primary. In her video, Warren struck her usual anti-Wall Street tone — galling, considering her millionaire status — as well as announcing plans to visit Iowa, where the first-in-the-country caucuses are held.
“I’ve spent my career getting to the bottom of why America’s promise works for some families, but others, who work just as hard, slip through the cracks into disaster," she said in the video. "And what I’ve found is terrifying: These aren’t cracks families are falling into, they’re traps. America’s middle class is under attack.
“But this dark path doesn’t have to be our future," she noted further. "We can make our democracy work for all of us. We can make our economy work for all of us."
Watch:
https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1079734725323964417
Real Native Americans don’t have much respect for Warren
Now that she’s formed a committee she is free to begin raising money for her candidacy in what is expected to be the most wide-open field for Democrats in a generation. But frankly, Warren’s reputation as a fake Native American — she’s been dubbed “Fauxcohontas” by her critics — ought to remove her from any serious consideration. (Related: Trump on ‘Fauxcohontas’ Liz Warren in 2020: ‘I’d love to run against her.’)
And even her hometown newspaper, The Boston Globe, as liberal as it is, believes so.
“Warren missed her moment in 2016, and there’s reason to be skeptical of her prospective candidacy in 2020,” the paper wrote in a rather scathing piece after urging her to run for president in 2016.
Now, she’s a “divisive figure” who was mocked widely and harshly, even by fellow Democrats, for taking a DNA test this fall to ‘prove’ she was of Native American ancestry. The test found she had no more than 1/1,024th such ancestry, or only as much as a potential — potential — 10th generation relative who was Native American.
Real Native Americans were also upset by the test.
Twyla Baker, a teacher and citizen of the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota, criticized the test because the genealogist didn’t even use Native American DNA for comparison (because there isn’t any); he used DNA from Central and South America as a stand-in.
Warren’s "types of claims can damage the validity and work of indigenous people who are living their identities every day," Baker told NBC News. "It also lays the groundwork to do serious damage to our sovereignty, as tribes are responsible for defining who is a tribal citizen.”
No more charlatans, please
Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. said much the same thing. "Senator Warren is undermining tribal interests with her continued claims of tribal heritage,” he said. “A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship.”
Krystal Tsosie, an Native American geneticist who is a citizen of the Navajo Nation in Arizona, added: “We as Native Americans are just concerned that people will start equating ancestry with identity. We feel this way because there was miscommunication with what Warren was trying to show and do. Individuals are trying to gain a sense of belonging in our communities when they haven't lived with our ways and in our communities.”
“It's not for an outsider to proclaim themselves as Native Americans," she added, according to NBC News. "That's currently the discussion that many members are having about non-Natives.”
Misappropriating Native American heritage is nothing new for Warren. In fact, she was criticized for it during her first senatorial campaign against then-incumbent moderate Republican Scott Brown.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, throughout the 1980s and 1990s when she was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, “she was claiming in a legal directory to be a minority and was identified as such in federal forms filed by these universities.” The WSJ’s James Freeman noted further that, at the time, no one in the hierarchy of those colleges was refuting her claim.
In 2012, the Boston Globe reported that no one who considered Warren for teaching jobs was looking to ‘diversify’ by hiring a Native American instructor, especially at Harvard. Yet that doesn’t jibe with a 1991 Globe report detailing a lawsuit filed against the Ivy League school by students because it had “failed to hire sufficient numbers of black, Hispanic, Native-American and women professors.”
To say that no one who hired her knew of her claimed status seems far-fetched enough. But what is clear is that Warren made the claim, and no one questioned her about it or thought it odd.
Now she wants to be our president by claiming she’s honest, up front, and on ‘our side.’
No, thanks. Washington is already full of charlatans; we don’t need one in the White House.
Read more about Elizabeth Warren, read LizWarren.news.
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