Elizabeth Warren 2020

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

1 hour ago, bad_teammate said:

Post #25 on 4/2/18 in this thread from some genius guy.

"Donald Trump won many areas because he appealed to the material concerns of the people there. He went in and told them their lives would become materially better, and he gave somewhat specific (and completely unrealistic) reasons that would happen (coal coming back, Carrier saving your jobs, etc...). This is not regional. If you go to a people and speak openly (not honestly, but openly) to their direct material concerns they will like you more than someone who speaks in asinine platitudes (Hillary).

If Warren does a better job of going to any area and speaking to their direct material concerns better than Trump, she'll win that area. Bing bong."

Maybe I am going on emotion, but truthfully that is one of the things I find appealing about Warren: when she is speaking, she makes you believe not only that she can do it, but that you can do it too. She seems to have a knack for encouraging our better instincts instead of our baser ones.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

This is Fox News Laura Ingraham

This is also a Sam Nunberg article, yes, that Sam Nunberg.

snip:

In 2016, Trump’s last two presidential debates were critical factors in his miraculous and historical comeback. While Trump should have the advantage in three cage matches with an older and less sharp Joe Biden, Warren will take Trump to the woodshed piece by piece on policy while jabbing and needling Trump on his personal deficiencies. If Trump goes low, Warren is ready to get into the mud. It remains to be seen if Trump can handle that combination.

The last four presidents each won with a distinct type of populism and change message. In 2020, Trump is promising Keep America Great — a pure base strategy. Warren counters with a combination of aspiration and quick economic government fixes for multiple and distinct voting groups. Warren goes grievance for grievance with Trump while promising to make society fair and just. Combined with palpable swing-voter Trump fatigue, Warren’s professorial demeanor and boring personality also delivers on the “return to normalcy” that Republican suburban women crave.

In 2016, Trump was the political anomaly who fit the mood of the country. He also launched his candidacy “at the right time, right place.” Warren would certainly be a flawed candidate against a prototypical Republican. But the country’s mood is changing. And this time, Warren is the one selling what the disenchanted are buying. And much like Trump had Clinton in 2016, Warren’s weaknesses this time around help make Trump her perfect foil.

Trump better be prepared. With Pocahontas on the war path, her sharp arrows will sting. Trump, who likens himself to the modern-day Andrew Jackson, could ironically find his Trail of Tears in the Oklahoma-born and Native American-wannabe Elizabeth Warren.

 

Edited August 21, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

6 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Would be 8PM CST

 

In this town hall she outlined her priorities should she become president into three categories:

1. Anti-corruption - went over some of the plan points like ending lobbying, locking the revolving door, required tax returns for federal elected officials 

2. Economy - Wealth Tax, universal child care/pre-k, affordable college, student loan debt forgiveness.

3. Protecting Democracy - End Citizens United, constitutional amendment to ensure every person has a right to vote, end racist voter suppression, secure the vote from foreign hackers. 

She took three questions: and ended on healthcare is a basic human right and she is all in for Medicare for All.

My favorite line from this town hall (paraphrasing):  

“No more playing defense, it’s time to go on offense.”

Edited August 22, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

It’s Arizona.  

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

This made me laugh.

 

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[bad_teammate 13,524]

14 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

This made me laugh.

 

WAR LIZ

God I love that so much. It's so good.

I will not be doing yoga listening to that, I'll be this guy...

[Born to Run 6,601]

This is Fox News Laura Ingraham
This is also a Sam Nunberg article, yes, that Sam Nunberg.
snip:

In 2016, Trump’s last two presidential debates were critical factors in his miraculous and historical comeback. While Trump should have the advantage in three cage matches with an older and less sharp Joe Biden, Warren will take Trump to the woodshed piece by piece on policy while jabbing and needling Trump on his personal deficiencies. If Trump goes low, Warren is ready to get into the mud. It remains to be seen if Trump can handle that combination.

The last four presidents each won with a distinct type of populism and change message. In 2020, Trump is promising Keep America Great — a pure base strategy. Warren counters with a combination of aspiration and quick economic government fixes for multiple and distinct voting groups. Warren goes grievance for grievance with Trump while promising to make society fair and just. Combined with palpable swing-voter Trump fatigue, Warren’s professorial demeanor and boring personality also delivers on the “return to normalcy” that Republican suburban women crave.

In 2016, Trump was the political anomaly who fit the mood of the country. He also launched his candidacy “at the right time, right place.” Warren would certainly be a flawed candidate against a prototypical Republican. But the country’s mood is changing. And this time, Warren is the one selling what the disenchanted are buying. And much like Trump had Clinton in 2016, Warren’s weaknesses this time around help make Trump her perfect foil.

Trump better be prepared. With Pocahontas on the war path, her sharp arrows will sting. Trump, who likens himself to the modern-day Andrew Jackson, could ironically find his Trail of Tears in the Oklahoma-born and Native American-wannabe Elizabeth Warren.

 

Go read the twitter comments. "Pocahontas, she lied she will lie again!! MAGA

The hypocrisy is mind blowing.

[Biff Tannen 46,168]

1 hour ago, Born to Run said:

Go read the twitter comments. "Pocahontas, she lied she will lie again!! MAGA

The hypocrisy is mind blowing.

It's not hypocrisy.  They are just idiot cultists.  They really don't think he lies.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

The replies.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20,922]

On 8/21/2019 at 11:44 AM, suddenly shaggy said:

Checks thread-

Sees bad teammate is still being a disingenuous cunt on every page who won't shut the fuck up trying to derail the Warren thread. Sees most of the rest of you trying to engage him in good faith, only to be repeatedly covered in the feces he's flinging. 

Add in special guest appearances by Fozzz and Anastasis, but they see they don't have to worry and try to sidetrack it themselves, bad teammate has got this for them.

 

My live got better when I put him on ignore. I advise all of you to do so.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

The brilliance of Warren’s selfie line (not actually a selfie) campaign tactic needs to be appreciated.  This is something other campaigns will mimic for years to come.  

No matter how big her crowds are, she will take a “selfie” with anyone that wants one, regardless of how long it takes.  She spent at least three hours at her last two events where the selfie lines numbered in the thousands.  

What happens next is you have a thousand people posting their pictures with Elizabeth Warren on Twitter and Facebook.  Occasionally, Liz will thank them for coming out.  

This is some savvy stuff.

 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

Yeah.  It's also a good sign of stamina for an older candidate.   But do most other candidates have the time to do it?   That's a lot of hours spent not on the phone with high-value donors.   

[horncyclist 1,391]

Beto did this in his Senate race and I think still does. It's a good move cause everyone makes it their profile picture. 

[suddenly shaggy 929]

48 minutes ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

 

My live got better when I put him on ignore. I advise all of you to do so.

I would do that with a number of posters on this board, but that leaves the disingenuous bullshit unchallenged, normalizing it for any lurkers, or people who are only occasional readers. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

8 minutes ago, horncyclist said:

Beto did this in his Senate race and I think still does. It's a good move cause everyone makes it their profile picture. 

Yeah, I remember that now.  Beto ran one of the best grassroots/social media infused campaigns.  I don’t remember him making the selfie line a signature feature/attraction like Warren.  She leaned into it hard. 

Edited August 22, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Js1 87,183]

1 hour ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The replies.

This dude is a troll.  "Kamala Harris is angry because she has no kids and locked up other people's." 

Great bit. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

Looks like Texas is a target.

 

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

That's just about the perfect encapsulation of what I've wasted many a word trying to express here.  Enough with defense, it's time to go on offense. 

[TwiceHorn 32,079]

On 8/21/2019 at 12:04 PM, David Dennison said:

How about no more Ivy Leaguers.

I'm not sure I'd call it "corporate capture."  The Ivy type biglaw judges do fine on civil cases, I believe, mostly.  But when it comes to criminal, the odd civil rights, and maybe some personal injury stuff, the Ivy biglaw types, and I think possibly worse, the lifetime gubmint lawyers lack a certain perspective.

[SubliminalHorn 7,009]

16 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Looks like Texas is a target.

 

Just signed up for the Fort Worth volunteer training next week 

[TwiceHorn 32,079]

5 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

The replies.

I have this sort of Mortal Kombat image of Liz kicking them repeatedly in the balls.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

She is spitting hot fire at the DNC establishment tonight.

[horncyclist 1,391]

She gets it. I love her. Need to pound home the moral clarity point. That will have broad appeal.

An end corruption, bring moral clarity, structural change to save our democracy message wins by a landslide against Trump. She is the best candidate to deliver that message by far.

[BradInATX 9,208]

Damn she's good. She gets it, in terms of the messaging she needs to get across to win the swing voters that she'll need to win the election. Her policies aren't always on point in that regard, but her messaging is perfect. She is the anti-Hillary. I'm starting to believe she can beat Trump, and I was one of her biggest skeptics early on.

Edited August 23, 2019 by BradInATX

[TwiceHorn 32,079]

She has this kind of unusual balance of personal warmth and iron will or gravitas.

[Biff Tannen 46,168]

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

2 minutes ago, BradInATX said:

Damn she's good. She gets it, in terms of the messaging she needs to get across to win the swing voters that she'll need to win the election. Her policies aren't always on point in that regard, but her messaging is perfect. She is the anti-Hillary. I'm starting to believe she can beat Trump, and I was one of her biggest skeptics early on.

I've been on board for a few months, but no way I thought she had any chance even a year ago.   A funny thing happens when people run for president.   Some people seem like they'd be naturals, and they just fizzle.   Other people seem like they'll be also rans, and then they turn out to have another gear and just surprise the hell out of you.   I don't know if she'll win the nomination, but it's clear that Warren has another gear I had never seen before and she's gone to a new level in this primary.   And I think, as people hear her campaigning, she's going to keep converting people who are skeptical based on past impressions. 

[BradInATX 9,208]

26 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

I've been on board for a few months, but no way I thought she had any chance even a year ago.   A funny thing happens when people run for president.   Some people seem like they'd be naturals, and they just fizzle.   Other people seem like they'll be also rans, and then they turn out to have another gear and just surprise the hell out of you.   I don't know if she'll win the nomination, but it's clear that Warren has another gear I had never seen before and she's gone to a new level in this primary.   And I think, as people hear her campaigning, she's going to keep converting people who are skeptical based on past impressions. 

Agreed. I thought Beto was a rising star and Warren would be a player, but not a real contender. Couldn't have been more wrong. My gut feeling is that she's going to win the nomination. She has "it", more than anyone else in the field. And "it" plus organization usually wins, unless you're a pre-ordained candidate like Hillary.

Edited August 23, 2019 by BradInATX

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

It’s pretty clear to me she is going to out hustle everyone in this thing.  People respect that shit too.

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

Can we pay for more Secret Service or other protection for her? I am concerned that when DJ turns his rhetoric toward her, it is going to ramp up his unhinged followers.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

I think the long game for an Elizabeth Warren presidency looks the most promising because she is all about accountability and leadership.  In other words, I think she has the potential to force both parties to be better, even the republicans... in the long run.

If Warren could remake the Democratic Party in her image, it might politically punish the Republicans to the point of meaningful reform.  They will have to get annihilated in elections first but Warren is the kind of leader that could bring about that kind of realignment. 

Trump happened for one underlying reason.  Corruption.  It was generations of corruption in both political parties that made us weak and demoralized enough to elevate Trump to the presidency.  

A solution is to smack that corruption right in the face with the nuclear rays of energy that is Elizabeth Warren.  She can’t fix everything but I believe she will push most of us to be better and present an opportunity to fix American Democracy ourselves. 

 

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE ELIZABETH WARREN'S TOWN HALL IN SEATTLE OUTGROWS ORIGINAL LOCATION

Originally planned for the WaMu Theater, the town hall is now being held at Seattle Center Aug. 25.

https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/presidential-candidate-elizabeth-warren-to-host-town-hall-in-seattle/281-8b4e2fc0-1c63-4aa2-b0c5-0238615a883f

SEATTLE — The location for Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren's town hall in Seattle was relocated after an estimated 15,000 people registered for the event, according to a Washington State Democrats spokesperson. 

Originally scheduled at the WaMu Theater, the location changed to Seattle Center for the anticipated crowd size, according to Democratic spokesperson William Casey. 

[Bama Chick 28,596]

Beto did this in his Senate race and I think still does. It's a good move cause everyone makes it their profile picture. 

When I went to the Beto rally in Nashville he stayed after for almost four hours to meet/shake hands/take a selfie with anyone willing to wait in line.

He does it at every single event.

[Bama Chick 28,596]

And at this point Warren/Beto is my dream ticket.

[fattyflattie 4,640]

11 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

It’s pretty clear to me she is going to out hustle everyone in this thing.  People respect that shit too.

That and her intelligence is what I respect. I don’t like her policies, but easy to see she’s a very formidable opponent. To anyone. 

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

8 minutes ago, Bama Chick said:

And at this point Warren/Beto is my dream ticket.
 

Sign me up. 

[Biff Tannen 46,168]

2 minutes ago, Mojo Hand said:

Sign me up. 

Seconded

[burntorangebongos 10,826]

Yeah, that makes my nips hard. Beto has been saying so many hard truths lately and saying really inspiring things. I'd love that ticket.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

She was advised not to do the selfie line because it sucked up too much time.  She said fuck that. 

[bad_teammate 13,524]

On a scale of 0-10, how committed would you say Warren is to single-payer healthcare?

My heart says 8

My head says 5

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

Oh look, it’s the same concern trolling narrative you had six months ago. 

She’s been really clear on this, her destination is a single payer system. She explains why that is all the time, because healthcare is a basic human right.

 She explains her priority is getting the corruption out of the legislative process FIRST.  Once the hands of the healthcare oligarchs get cut off in the policy making process, it becomes much easier to a MFA plan and all the other things we need to get addressed. 

She has a plan for that. 

Edited August 25, 2019 by Hugo Stiglitz

[bad_teammate 13,524]

How would you score her commitment to single-payer on a scale of 0-10? Would a private-insurer-centered universal plan be good enough for her?

It's a fairly simple premise that you should probably be able to address without a meltdown.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

Judge for yourself:

skip to around the 1:25:00 mark when she starts talking about healthcare in this town hall rally she had on Wednesday. 

or just watch the whole thing because it’s fantastic. 

[bad_teammate 13,524]

I watched it and...
- We shouldn't discriminate against people in coverage
- The Republicans are bad for wanting to repeal the ACA and cut Medicaid
- We are all going to pay for each other to guarantee healthcare to everyone
- "I will fight for Medicare for All."

That last part is great, but it is literally one sentence without addressing what "Medicare for All" means. She doesn't talk about it with enough specifics and with enough time out of her overall healthcare talk to fill me up with confidence. I've seen and heard it before.

Obama in 2003, "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal healthcare plan"

And Hugo, this isn't concern trolling. Concern trolling is when you pretend to care about an issue in order to launch an attack. Single-payer, universal healthcare is my #1 issue by a mile.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

What the fuck do you want from Warren on healthcare?   What would satisfy you?  Seriously?  Set your bar now that she has to cross.  

Her #1 issue is corruption.  Since her #1 and your #1 aren’t aligned, it’s reasonable to assume she will never be good enough for you. 

 

Happy Sunday

[Mrs Whiggins 13,050]

On another note, the award for least self-aware has new competition from those twit birds, The Deplorable Choir:

Sadly, but not unexpectedly, they doubled down like true MAGATs when called out on it.

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

The Education of Elizabeth Warren

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/25/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-republican-history.html

 

Never one to shy away from a fight, Elizabeth Warren had found a new sparring partner. She had only recently started teaching at the University of Texas School of Law, but her colleague Calvin H. Johnson already knew her well enough to brace for a lively exchange as they commuted to work.

Indeed, on this morning in 1981, Ms. Warren again wanted to debate, this time arguing on the side of giant utilities over their customers.

Her position was “savagely anti-consumer,” Mr. Johnson recalled recently, adding that it wasn’t unusual for her to espouse similar pro-business views on technical legal issues.

Then something changed. He calls it Ms. Warren’s “road to Damascus” moment.

“She started flipping — ‘I’m pro-consumer,’” Mr. Johnson said.

That something, as Ms. Warren often tells the story, was her deepening academic research into consumer bankruptcy, its causes, and lenders’ efforts to restrict it. Through the 1980s, the work took her to courthouses across the country. There, she said in a recent interview, she found not only the dusty bankruptcy files she had gone looking for but heart-wrenching scenes she hadn’t imagined — average working Americans, tearful and humiliated, admitting they were failures:

“People dressed in their Sunday best, hands shaking, women clutching a handful of tissues, trying to stay under control. Big beefy men whose faces were red and kept wiping their eyes, who showed up in court to declare themselves losers in the great American game of life.”

Nearly 40 years after she began her bankruptcy research, Ms. Warren is among the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Along with Bernie Sanders, her fellow senator, she represents a progressive wing whose profound ideological division from their moderate rivals have turned this primary into a contest over the future of the party.

Ms. Warren’s political awakening didn’t simply happen all at once. Her road to Damascus was a long one. But over several decades, she transformed from a largely pro-business and politically disengaged academic — a sort of default Republican — to a fierce consumer advocate and bankruptcy expert whose advice was sought on Capitol Hill, and then, finally, to a Democratic force on the Hill herself.

Her bankruptcy work with two Texas colleagues, Jay L. Westbrook and Teresa A. Sullivan, resulted in a 1989 book, “As We Forgive Our Debtors,” regarded as a landmark among many bankruptcy lawyers and academics for its depth and conclusions. One central finding — that bankrupt debtors represented a social cross-section of society — dispelled the popular narrative at the time. Even more controversial was the book’s uncompromising criticism of the credit card industry for enticing consumers to take on ever more high-interest debt.

Ms. Warren, who said she began the study on the lookout for “cheaters and deadbeats,” quickly realized that the people she was studying seemed familiar. Her own family in Oklahoma had teetered on the brink of financial ruin. It is a part of the biography she discusses in folksy speeches across the country — her father’s unemployment, her mother’s effort to save the family home with a minimum-wage job, and how that wouldn’t be possible today, with minimum wage paying below the poverty rate.

The revelations from her bankruptcy research, by her account, became the seeds of her worldview, laid out in her campaign plans for everything from a new tax on the wealthiest Americans to a breakup of the big technology companies.

Yet as Ms. Warren’s candidacy has gained traction, critics have complained that she is too rigid and radical in her liberal ideas, dug in to a polarizing degree against others with differing views, and can come across as dogmatic and intellectually strident at times. Mr. Johnson, who admires Ms. Warren, describes her as “hard as nails.” Some Democrats worry that such perceptions make her seem too left-wing and hard to work with, and could make it difficult for her to build an Electoral College majority if she is the nominee.

But a look at Ms. Warren’s philosophical and political metamorphosis provides yet another perspective on her personality, revealing a woman who searched for answers and found something she had never expected, then altered her thinking accordingly.

As Mr. Westbrook put it, “She is really someone who is willing to learn and willing to be persuaded.”

Law and Economics

In 1979, Ms. Warren recruited her parents from her native Oklahoma to her home in the Houston suburbs to help babysit her two young children.

Then a professor at the University of Houston, she would be spending several weeks at a luxury resort near Miami, one of 22 law professors selected to study an increasingly popular discipline known as “law and economics.’’ One of its central ideas is that markets perform more efficiently than courts.

Mr. Johnson, Ms. Warren’s former Texas commuting partner, believes that it was an important influence on her early thinking.

“Before Liz converted, she came to us from the decidedly anti-government side of law and economics,” he said.

The summer retreat was colloquially known as a “Manne camp,” after its organizer, the libertarian legal scholar Henry G. Manne. With financial support from industry and conservative foundations, Mr. Manne had formed a Law and Economics Center at the University of Miami. (He would later move operations to Emory University and then to George Mason University.)

The mission of the retreat was to spread the gospel of free-market microeconomics among law professors. One participant, John Price, a former dean of the law school at the University of Washington, described it as “sort of pure proselytizing on the part of dedicated, very conservative law and economics folks,” with an emphasis on an anti-regulatory agenda. One faculty member, he recalled, suggested eliminating the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In the reputational pecking order of those attending its 10th annual edition that summer in Key Biscayne, Ms. Warren, with her law degree from Rutgers, was near the bottom.

The group included such legal luminaries as Abraham D. Sofaer, a Columbia law professor who had just been named a federal judge in Manhattan, and Frank Iacobucci, a professor at the University of Toronto who would later serve on the Canadian Supreme Court. Ms. Warren was one of only two women in attendance, along with Grace Ganz Blumberg, then a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

While some in the group have said Ms. Warren expressed skepticism at the libertarian ideology, Ms. Blumberg remembers someone very much developing the early stages of her career, who was “far more captivated than I” with the theories.

Afterward, Ms. Warren remained in contact with Mr. Manne, writing periodically to update him on her life and career, appreciative notes that suggest something of a mentor-mentee relationship.

In November 1979, during a visit by Mr. Manne to Houston, Ms. Warren confided that she was going through a divorce from her husband, Jim Warren, an IBM mathematical wizard who had chafed at Ms. Warren’s pursuit of a career outside the home.

Two months after her divorce was finalized, in a letter dated March 7, 1980, Ms. Warren thanked Mr. Manne for providing “lots of advice and comfort” during that Houston visit. She also shared another development in her life: She was engaged to be married again — to Bruce Mann, a Brown- and Yale-trained scholar in the history of law who had become her frequent tennis partner at the Florida retreat.

“You even provided (indirectly) my husband,” she wrote. “Can I ever thank you enough, or should I just request that in lieu of wedding gifts guests just send a donation to LEC?”

Ms. Warren again wrote to Mr. Manne in 1981, attaching a copy of her latest published article. She was sending him one article a summer, she wrote, and each “increasingly reflects my time at LEC.”

The exact topic of the article is not reflected in the correspondence, which was released to The New York Times by the Manne Center at George Mason University. (Mr. Manne died in 2015.) Based on the letter’s date, however, it was probably a 68-page treatise on judicial interpretation of contracts published in the University of Pittsburgh Law Review.

“This is really hard-core law & econ analysis,” Todd J. Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason who formerly served as executive director of the Manne Center, wrote in an email. “If you had given me this article with the author anonymized and asked me who wrote it, I would have answered that it was one of the leading scholars in the law & economics of commercial and contract law. Never, in a million years, would I have thought this article was written by EW.”

Several articles Ms. Warren wrote during that period, on utility regulation, promote a pro-industry position, experts said.

A 1978 article in the Rutgers Law Review — which would inspire some of her early debates with Mr. Johnson — argued in favor of a utility rate-setting model that Mr. Johnson said would allow utilities to charge customers for taxes that hadn’t yet been paid. A piece in 1980 for Public Utilities Fortnightly, an industry magazine, took a similar position, according to its editor, Steven Mitnick, who added, “It’s quite surprising that this was written by the person we know as Elizabeth Warren.”

But Mr. Price, the former University of Washington dean who became friends with Ms. Warren in Key Biscayne and is a supporter and contributor to her presidential campaign, sees nothing unusual in what he describes as Ms. Warren’s “reasonable evolution from what they were espousing” at the retreat.

Reflecting on his own shift from “Rockefeller Republican” to Democrat, he added, “I believe we just go through an educational process.”

As Ms. Warren sees that process, her early interest in law and economics revealed a period of “learning another tool, but then coming to understand the values that underlie that system.”

Traveling With R2-D2

By 1981, Ms. Warren and her husband had secured temporary teaching posts at the University of Texas, where she agreed to teach bankruptcy law. She quickly earned a reputation for lively lectures, putting students on the spot and peppering them with questions and follow-up questions — the consummate practitioner of the Socratic method.

Even visitors to her class got the treatment. One of them was Stefan A. Riesenfeld, a renowned bankruptcy professor who had come to lecture on the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978. The law, which had expanded bankruptcy protection for consumers, was already under attack by the credit industry, which argued that it made personal bankruptcy too attractive.

Even so, Mr. Riesenfeld explained to Ms. Warren’s class, those who filed personal bankruptcy were “mostly day laborers and housemaids who had lived at the economic margins and always would,” she wrote in her 2014 memoir.

“I asked the obvious follow-up question: ‘How did he know?’” Ms. Warren wrote. After more questioning, it became clear that not only did Mr. Riesenfeld have no real answer, he was irritated by Ms. Warren’s probing.

The subject struck close to home. When she was growing up in Oklahoma, her father’s heart attack had thrown their household into precarious financial territory, forcing her mother to take a minimum-wage job answering telephones at Sears.

She remembers being fearful as she lay in bed at night listening to her mother cry. “She thought I had gone to sleep. I didn’t know for sure the details of why she was crying, but I knew it was bad and that we could lose everything,” Ms. Warren said.

(Later, the oil glut of the 1980s would destroy her brother David’s once-thriving business delivering supplies to oil rigs. Her brother John, a construction worker, would also struggle after the oil market collapsed. Her family ended up in such dire straits that Ms. Warren and her husband would ultimately provide financial assistance to some relatives, including help buying their homes.)

She wanted answers, more than Professor Riesenfeld could provide. She began discussing her questions with colleagues.

“There was this new bankruptcy code, and nobody knew much about what was happening out there in the world,” Mr. Westbrook said. “We got to talking and decided it would be kind of interesting to go down and take a look at some of the cases on file in the Western District of Texas, San Antonio to El Paso. We literally went to the courthouses and talked to the judges.”

As the study expanded, the researchers began visiting other states to collect data from the court files — then available only on paper.

“We got two portable Xerox machines, which in those days were a big deal — high technology,” Mr. Westbrook remembers. “We had to buy a ticket for them. We didn’t trust them to baggage.”

They nicknamed the equipment R2-D2.

Dozens of people would eventually be involved in the effort, an analysis of a quarter million pieces of data gathered from bankruptcy cases filed from 1981 through 1985.

Among the researchers was Kimberly S. Winick, then a University of Texas law student and now a lawyer in Los Angeles. While Ms. Warren didn’t talk a lot about her views, Ms. Winick said she believed that the project’s initial theory was that, “If you filed bankruptcy, you must be cheating.”

“Liz was from a more conservative place,” Ms. Winick said. “And she was somebody who had worked very, very, very hard all her life. And she had never walked away from a debt. And I think she kind of started with the view — let’s see what people are doing and how they’re cadging on their debts and screwing their creditors.”

That was the conventional thinking of the day, promoted in a study by Purdue University researchers that was being widely circulated on Capitol Hill as evidence the 1978 bankruptcy law needed to be toughened, Ms. Warren said in the interview.

But when she and her colleagues analyzed the study, she said, they concluded not only that its methodology was flawed, but that it had been funded with a sizable grant from the credit industry.

“That’s where it starts to shift for me,” Ms. Warren said. “Once we figured out that this was a bought-and-paid-for piece of credit industry advertising, now I was a little more neutral.”

In the Fight

And there were the personal stories, voices from that cross-section of society forced into bankruptcy.

“There was an elderly couple who told the story of their child, an adult man, who had a drug problem,” Ms. Warren said. “And how they had sold everything, he’d fallen back in again, and they cashed out their retirement accounts to put him through rehab.”

Another couple had left their jobs in the previous year. Even though they had quickly found new ones — as a psychiatric aide at a state hospital and a manager at a state agency — their income dropped 25 percent. They fell behind on their $45,000 mortgage and other debts. Their experience illustrated the study’s crucial finding that lenders had extended an enormous amount of credit to people who were clearly bad risks.

While the files did not tell the whole story, they provided enough evidence for Mr. Warren and her co-authors to write, “Repeatedly, we have been surprised by the data and forced to rethink our own understanding of bankruptcy.”

The study’s findings, laid out in their 1989 book, also explicitly raised questions about a central tenet of law and economics: that individuals respond rationally to economic incentives. As applied to bankruptcy — the more generous the bankruptcy provisions, the more people would file — that idea had been the rationale behind the campaign that succeeded in toughening the bankruptcy code in 1984.

Over the years, the research elevated Ms. Warren’s status, from little-known Texas professor to sought-after lecturer, writer and consultant in bankruptcy law. It also set the stage for her career in politics.

In 1995, Mike Synar, a former Democratic congressman from her home state, asked Ms. Warren, by then a Harvard professor, to advise a special commission reviewing the bankruptcy system. She balked, fearing the Washington work would render her scholarship impure, but signed on when Mr. Synar promised to keep her insulated from politics.

It was during that period, in 1996, that she switched her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat, though she insists that her essential conversion was from “not political” to “political.”

“I didn’t come from a political family,” she said. “I hadn’t been political as an adult. I was raising a family, teaching school and doing my research,” she said.

Then she went to Capitol Hill.

“I quickly discovered that every single Republican was on the side of the banks and half the Democrats were,” she said. “But whenever there was someone who would stand up for those working families, it was a Democrat.”

She added, “I picked sides, got in the fight, and I’ve been in the fight ever since.”

[bad_teammate 13,524]

I'd like to hear her specifically call for a single-payer universal healthcare system using those words, and to do it regularly. I would like to see her spend time spelling out exactly what she wants the system to look like. I would like for that to be a constant part of her stump.

Again, this is my #1 issue, so I want candidates to not only express support for my #1 issue, but to specifically and regularly champion it without any kind of vagueness or fear or language that suggests flexibility (which is what I hear when Warren talks about "bringing everyone to the table" which sounds suspiciously like "lets hear what private insurers have to say").

Question: "Can you clarify where you are on single-payer?"

Warren's Answer:

I know you find that very emotionally upsetting, Hugo, but some of us are motivated heavily by policy beliefs.

Where would you score Warren on determination to enact single-payer, specifically on a 0-10 scale?

[Hugo Stiglitz 23,367]

Just asking questions!

[bad_teammate 13,524]

Are you avoiding answering because you personally don't care about single-payer or because you think Warren doesn't?