At Netroots, Elizabeth Warren Avoids Current Events, Gaza Questions

At Netroots, Elizabeth Warren Avoids Current Events, Gaza Questions

If Elizabeth Warren would be a good candidate for President of the United States in 2016 to face the deep problems of this troubled world, her speech at the left-wing Netroots Nation conference sure didn’t give anyone much reason to hope. She avoided talking about any important current events and later even physically ran away, refusing to answer when a reporter asked her about the conflict in Gaza.

Warren kicked off her 15-minute speech talking of her work creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and facing the evil banks that are ripping people off. She then crowed that she took on those big banks, saying, “We fought back,” and “we won.”

“We won,” she said, “because you and a zillion other people across this country got in the fight. … You called out sleazy lobbyists and cowardly politicians” to “win this fight.”

Yet, as Warren celebrated her big win against evil banks and corporations with the CFPB, leading her Netroots audience to think she is against corporations, she didn’t mention that she now loves corporate welfare, as she supports the Export-Import Bank.

Another subject Warren avoided was the downing of the Malaysian jet in Ukraine, a plane reportedly felled by separatists armed by an aggressive Russia. She also avoided talking about Syria, China, and North Korea. In fact, she ignored all foreign policy and current events.

Warren preferred only to hit that well-worn liberal populist message filled with attacks on jobs creators and the business sector. She proved herself to be just another liberal calling for a bigger government fueled with big spending and higher taxes. She touched on all those common, boilerplate, liberal shibboleths. She called for “equal pay” and higher minimum wages. She celebrated abortion and called for religion to be quashed through a reversal of the Hobby Lobby decision. Warren used her speech to jump on nearly every left-wing cause célèbre you can think of, except for gun control.

“The game is rigged, and it isn’t right,” she constantly called, to the applause of the far-left group in attendance.

But not a word was wasted on the very current events that the next president will likely face because of the massive failures of the current holder of the office.

Warren was similarly reticent to discuss current events, such as those in Gaza, once she left the dais. When asked, in the hotel’s hallways, what she thought of the situation in Israel, Warren waved the question off and then ran pell-mell for the elevators, escaping any further questioning.

The thing is, Obama ran as the “eat the rich” candidate and avoided campaigning much on foreign policy. Look where that got us. Do we need the president who succeeds him to do this, as well?

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.

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