Bill Gates told Bloomberg that he “wouldn’t be against a wealth tax” like the one Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is proposing, but he didn’t think it was realistic.
Said Gates: “I doubt, you know, the U.S. will do a wealth tax, but I wouldn’t be against it. The closest thing we have to it is the estate tax. And I’ve been a huge proponent that that should go back to the level of 55 percent that it was a few decades ago.”
At a massive rally in New York City last night, Sen. Elizabeth Warren spoke for about 42 minutes — then stayed for nearly four hours taking selfies with supporters, the New York Times reports.
“With each big rally, Warren is solidifying her place in an exclusive club of presidential candidates who have become crowd magnets, exhilarating fans at events that can sometimes feel like rock concerts.”
“The Working Families Party, the labor-aligned progressive group whose electoral influence has grown since the 2016 election, has endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren for the Democratic presidential nomination, a boon to her candidacy as she attempts to position herself as the main challenger to former Vice President Joe Biden,” the New York Times reports.
“The party endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders during the last presidential cycle.”
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is adding some new proposals to her anti-corruption plan, this time with one particularly provocative target: President Trump’s sister, the Daily Beast reports.
In a Medium post, Warren proposes closing the loophole that “allows federal judges to escape investigations for misconduct by stepping down from their post.”
It’s a reference to a case involving Trump’s sister Maryanne Trump-Barry, whose retirement brought an abrupt end to an investigation into her role in various tax schemes of the family and potential fraud therein.
Reid Wilson: “Warren was one of four candidates who did not attack one of her onstage rivals. And, reflecting a frustration among some other Democratic campaigns who have failed either to match Warren’s steady rise or to land a jab on her, she was one of the few who was not attacked herself, with the lone exception of Biden’s gentle poke.”
“Through three rounds of debates, where others have found momentary success in lobbing broadsides at their rivals on stage, Warren has not. She has emerged as the most confident in her own agenda, and the most capable of setting the agenda to which the rest of the field responds.”
“Warren still trails Biden in most state and national polls, though many of those surveys show Biden’s advantage narrowing. Where Biden played defense, the other candidates seemed unable or unwilling to take on Warren directly.”
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell writes in the Washington Post:
“Warren didn’t seem to have any trouble taking our money in 2018, but suddenly we were power brokers and influence peddlers in 2019. The year before, we were wonderful. I co-chaired one of the events for the senator and received a glowing, handwritten thank-you letter from her for my hard work.”
“It seemed odd to some of us who gave her money that Warren was experiencing an epiphany less than 12 months later. It’s one thing to fashion a campaign that relies on grass-roots fundraising, but it’s another to go out of your way to characterize as power-brokers and influence-peddlers the very people whose support you have previously courted.”
Boston Globe: After summer surge, Warren could be a target in tonight’s debate.
Elizabeth Warren appeared to enjoy a CNBC segment reporting that Wall Street executives fear her becoming president, tweeting: “I’m Elizabeth Warren and I approve this message.”
ABC News: “While other candidates frequently take photos with voters — with Sanders recently making a point to take ‘selfies with anyone who wants them’ at events where his schedule allows — Warren, without fail, has stayed until the end of the photo line after each of her events. As one senior campaign official noted, the process demands its own set of logistics: venues have to be booked out longer to account for the lines, certain staffers are known to be able to skillfully move the line along faster than others and there are concerns about how to best avoid germs given they touch so many strangers’ cell phones.”
“Asked whether increasing crowd sizes might force changes to the ‘selfie line’ strategy, a spokesperson for the Warren campaign declined to comment.”
“For now, the candidate is staying committed to the time-consuming process, which she’s told her staff and reporters that she finds ‘energizing.'”
Back in 2006, Elizabeth Warren wrote a personal financial book: All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan.
But even then, she took a shot at a certain Manhattan mogul who was running get-rich-quick real-estate seminars at the time, Bloomberg reports.
Wrote Warren: “We are also not going to say that if you’ll just shift to generic toilet paper and put $5 a week in the bank, all your problems will instantly disappear. A few pennies here and a few pennies there, and the next thing you know, you’ll be debt-free, investment-rich and lighting cigars with Donald Trump. Nope, we’re not selling that brand of snake oil.”
The New York Times has an interesting piece on how Sen. Elizabeth Warren is telling Democratic insiders she’s not a threat.
Said Warren at a recent fundraiser: “Last year, I was running for re-election, but I didn’t hold back. In fact, I raised or gave more than $11 million helping get Democrats elected up and down the ballot around the country” and “sent contributions to all 50 state parties, the national committees and the redistricting fight.”
“Her point was easy to grasp: While her liberal agenda may be further left than some in the Democratic establishment would prefer, she is a team player who is seeking to lead the party — not stage a hostile takeover of it.”
“As Ms. Warren steadily rises in the polls she is working diligently to protect her left flank… Yet publicly, and even more in private, she is signaling to party leaders that, far from wanting to stage a ‘political revolution’ in the fashion of Mr. Sanders, she wants to revive the beleaguered Democratic National Committee and help recapture the Senate while retaining the House in 2020.”
The Atlantic: “Joe Biden is ostensibly the candidate of the Democratic establishment. But it was Elizabeth Warren—who’s built her career on trying to challenge the status quo—who spent the weekend wowing party insiders.”
“At this point in Warren’s campaign, it’s not a surprise anymore when she spends hours working a ‘selfie line’ after a major event, as she did following two massive rallies she’s held in the past week. But it was a surprise when more than 150 of the Democratic Party’s biggest donors similarly lined up on Thursday night after her speech at a dinner here—and it struck even some of the Democrats waiting to take photos with her.”
Said one attendee: “These are people who should not like her. And they love her.”
Playbook: “Sure, a few of the more centrist candidates — Michael Bennet, Joe Biden, John Delaney, Amy Klobuchar — will sort of verbally subtweet her, but their criticisms of lefty policy ideas like ‘Medicare for All’ are aimed just as often at Bernie Sanders as they are at Warren.”
“This phenomenon has allowed Warren to effectively use Sanders as a human shield. Or maybe she’s more like a cyclist, drafting off Bernie’s leg work until it’s time to blow past him for the finish. Her patient approach, along with her message discipline and lack of errors, has allowed her to rise steadily in the polls. Is Biden going to wake up one day to find her right on his six?”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren was taking selfies at yesterday’s town hall meeting “when she came face to face with a familiar person,” the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.
The photo suggests they could be separated at birth.
A new Economist/YouGov poll found 65% of Democratic voters said Joe Biden would “probably beat Donald Trump” — unchanged from June. But the number saying the same thing about Elizabeth Warren jumped 14 points since then, to 57%, the highest of any other candidate.
In the overall race, Biden led Warren by just 1 point among Democrats in a match-up with Trump. That’s after being 16 points ahead of her in June, according to the poll.
Benjamin Wallace-Wells: “Warren’s campaign rests on the theory that the past decade has transformed the way class is felt in America, so that instead of the uneducated against the educated, or the heartland against the coasts, it is now also possible to run a widely inclusive, populist campaign against the ultra-rich. If you keep your eye on what the capitalists get away with, you can run on economic populism with the support of doctors and lawyers and the P.T.A. “
Walter Shapiro: “If this were a typical political comeback story (the kinds that are immortalized in best-selling campaign books that later become HBO docudramas), Warren would rescue her campaign at this critical juncture with a dramatic gesture or bold decision. You could imagine the overheated prose: ‘Elizabeth Warren was angry. Her White House dreams were as bankrupt as her campaign treasury. In just a few hours, she….'”
“The ensuing campaign narratives could take any number of forms. Here’s a brief hypothetical sample: Maybe Warren would use the first debate to puncture the pretensions of a pesky rival, as Walter Mondale did in 1984 when he belittled Gary Hart’s ‘new ideas’ with a line stolen from a hamburger-chain commercial: ‘Where’s the beef?’ Or Warren might emulate a floundering Bill Clinton in 1992 by placing an unorthodox figure like James Carville in charge of every aspect of the campaign. She could even go the full John McCain route—jettisoning, as he did in 2007, the entire structure of his consultant-heavy operation to run a bare-bones, seat-of-the-pants campaign for the nomination.”
“But now for the dramatic revelation: Absolutely nothing changed with the Warren campaign. Like a sailboat caught in a summer squall, the good ship Liz’s Luck righted itself as soon as the winds died down.”
Washington Post: “This shift comes as Warren is publicly projecting a friendly attitude toward the Vermont senator — backing him up on the debate stage, refusing to criticize him when reporters ask, restraining her staffers from posting tweets needling him.”
“That avoids alienating Sanders voters whom she may need later. But strategists for both candidates say there’s only room for one of them to survive far beyond the early primaries, making for a below-the-surface battle, especially in Iowa and New Hampshire.”
David Axelrod: “Elizabeth Warren is running a strategically brilliant campaign.”
“More than any other candidate, she has a clear, unambiguous message that is thoroughly integrated with her biography. That is essential to a successful campaign.”
“Her unsparing critique of corporate excess and her expansive — and expensive — agenda for change mirror those of the reigning left champion, Bernie Sanders, in places. But where Sanders sometimes seems like a parody of himself — or of Larry David’s parody of Sanders — Warren seems fresher, deeper and more precise in her execution.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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