Then incendiary real-estate-tycoon-turned-presidential-candidate brought out the big artillery Saturday when he labeled Sen. Elizabeth Warren D-Mass goofy on Twitter in response to pointed criticism of his campaign.
Trump started yet another twitter controversy when he tweeted that he hoped Clinton chose “Goofy” Elizabeth Warren as her running mate because he was confident in his ability to triumph over them, in response to her pointed criticism of his campaign.
Trump thinks he can beat a Clinton/Warren ticket, but I’m not so sure. The real story wasn’t Trump’s trademark Twitter invective but rather the senator’s response. Warren responded with a series of tweets that were harshly critical of Trump’s petty tactics which rely on “racism, sexism & xenophobia.”
In a presidential election characterized by an angry electorate and overwhelming support for anti-establishment candidates on both sides of the aisle, Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would be well-suited to add Warren to her ticket.
Warren, a staunch critic of Wall Street, is a former Harvard Law professor who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012. A populist in the same vein as Bernie Sanders, she has supported minimum wage increases and student loan reform and served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel from 2008 to 2010.
Leading up to the current election cycle, many liberals had Warren pegged as a potential presidential candidate before she quelled speculation by saying she had no plans to run.
Deep divisions exist among both liberals and conservatives. As Sanders’ unprecedented success in primaries has suggested, Democratic voters are wary to throw their support behind Clinton whose close ties to Wall Street help make her, along with Trump, “more strongly disliked than any nominee at this point in the past 10 presidential cycles,” according to statistical analysis by FiveThirtyEight.
Choosing a progressive like Warren as her running mate would balance the ticket and help capture some of the disenchanted voters who have rallied behind Sanders.
A Warren vice presidency would not erase Clinton’s past indiscretion and involvement in various scandals, but it would go a long way toward uniting a deeply fractured electorate.
Clinton’s past might be shady, but Trump, the only real alternative at this point, is a wild card. Sure, his offensive tactics might be no more than a calculated act intended to drum up the support of the working class.
But is it not equally as likely he is truly the loose cannon he appears to be? With Clinton, we know what we’re getting, and by adding Warren to her ticket, it makes the thought of another Clinton administration more palpable to disaffected liberals who might feel uncomfortable supporting her at the moment.
Winning these voters back starts with choosing a running mate capable of appealing to this new wave of liberals, and Warren is the woman for the job.
dkilcull@indiana.edu
@daniel_kilc
