"Politics so often felt dirty to me – all the lobbyists and the cozy dealings and the special favors for those who could buy access. But as I stood in the lobby outside Ted Kennedy's office, I felt as if I'd been washed clean," media favorite Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said in her book.
That quote sums up the message of Warren’s new book “A Fighting Chance.”
Published by Metropolitan Books, Warren’s autobiography “A Fighting Chance” was released on April 22. In it, she tells of her struggles as a child and young adult – and attacks conservatives, conservative media and anyone wealthy along the way. It also documents her planning political moves with the AFL-CIO, Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank and a Who’s Who of the left.
No matter what she says, the networks love Warren. On ABC "World News with Diane Sawyer [1]" from April 21, the day before her book came out, correspondent David Muir hailed her as "the woman on the front lines" of the "fight to save the middle class."
During an interview with Warren on April 22, CBS "This Morning [2]" co-hosts Gayle King, Norah O'Donnell and Charlie Rose all praised warren for "making the middle class one of her biggest priorities," and repeatedly asked her if she would ever consider running for president.
In “A Fighting Chance,” Warren used tried and true liberal talking points, including mentioning Occupy Wall Street sympathetically and using anecdotes of individual people who had fallen onto hard times, instead of facts and figures, to argue for policy changes.
To Warren, as well as many other liberals, there is no solution without the help of big government. “We can’t bury our heads in the sand and pretend that if ‘big government disappears, so will societies toughest problems,” she argued. “That’s just magical thinking – and it’s also dangerous thinking.” She also warned against “trying to starve the government or drown it in a bathtub.”
This isn’t surprising when you back up on the same page and read just how much she thinks people owe the government. After listing a number of public services (police, firefighters, mass transit, school), Warren quipped that “the market didn’t build those things: Americans built them. Working through our government, we built them together.”
No Warren book would be complete without a hat tip President Obama’s mantra of “you didn’t build that!” “Now look,” Warren wrote, “you built a factory and turned it into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless! Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
Continuing her tirade against bankers and the rich, Warren distanced herself from Occupy Wall Street, while saying she “understood their frustration.” Warren threw the liberal outlet The Daily Beast [3] under the bus, claiming that a direct quote from her which said that “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they [Occupy Wall Street] do,” should have stated that she she’d “worked on these issues for a long time and felt angry about what the banks had done to families.”
Despite her rants against Wall Street, Warren actually has an impressive stock portfolio in her own right. According to Huffington Post [4], “Warren earned more than $700,000 from Harvard, book royalties and consulting fees, and lives in a $5 million house, the [financial disclosures] report shows. She has multiple mutual funds and stock in IBM, the sole individual stock she owns. The total portfolio is worth nearly $8 million.”
On social issues, Warren said it isn’t enough to be pro-choice. Although she admitted that former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown’s record on women’s issues “wasn’t terrible,” she criticized him because “[h]e said he was pro-choice, although he didn’t turn down the support from the pro-life groups that endorsed him.”
Warren also took time in her book to address the “Fauxcahontas” accusations – the claims that she exaggerated her Native American ancestry to get preferential treatment by colleges.
However, even according to the liberal Huffington Post, Warren admitted that “she had listed herself as Native America at Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.” HuffPo quoted Warren as saying that “[m]y Native American heritage is part of who I am, I’m proud of it and I have been open about it.”
— Mike Ciandella is Research Analyst at the Media Research Center. Follow Mike Ciandella on Twitter. [5]