Lefsetz: The Reincarnation of Elizabeth Warren

The mainstream media is always last…

No, wait a minute…even if you hate Elizabeth Warren you’ve got to hear what I say because it applies to you. The issue is how do you get famous and have your ideas heard in America today.

You’ve got to do the work and you must be selling substance.

Elizabeth Warren is on the road.

Most of the audiences are relatively small. There’s not a ton of press coverage of each event.

She’s just like a crack band bubbling under, that is not understood by the mainstream, is seen as an also-ran and then…THEY BLOW UP!

Can you say Bruce Springsteen? His first LP was an anomaly, not representative of his sound, the band was there, but deep in the background, “Greetings From Asbury Park” was more New Dylan than the Springsteen we all now know.

But the sound was there for everybody to hear on “The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.” Now Springsteen was no longer the new thing. And the mix on the LP was a bit muted, it lacked edge. So the album didn’t sell and Bruce went on the road convincing consumers one by one.

If you saw him, you talked about him.

Until that famous moment when music critic Jon Landau said he’d seen the future of rock and roll and the tide turned. The Landau article was in Boston’s Real Paper, the paper of record amongst the youth, devoured by everybody. Landau’s review wasn’t first, but it was the most important.

Same deal with Elizabeth Warren.

She’s been around for years. Mostly in the background until the right started attacking her. And before you get your knickers in a twist you righties, know that she wanted to protect the populace, the rank and file, from the corporations. You can’t be against that unless you’re sucking at the tit of the corporation yourself, making seven figures, and that’s a very small number of people. You’re getting screwed and don’t even realize it. Those insane interest rates on your credit cards? Warren wanted to stop them.

But Warren was depicted as a schoolmarm and no one on the left ran to her side, to defend her, because they don’t want to get caught up in any war that doesn’t benefit them directly – they don’t want the potential stink upon them.

So Warren went her own way and ran for Senate and won.

This is the act that refuses to do what the A&R person says to. Who won’t cowrite, who won’t work with the producer du jour, who has a sound he or she wants to get down and doesn’t want any interference. But can you go on your own, do it your way, prove it yourself?

We hear about the winners, but not the losers.

The truth is most people are scared to do it by themselves, they’re convinced they won’t succeed. They tell themselves they need money, that it’s undoable. But even today, if you’ve got the goods and you play live, or release an undeniable hit like Lorde, you can make it.

Then Warren got into the Senate and spoke English.

Nobody speaks English in D.C., it doesn’t behoove you.

You obfuscate, keep the lobbyists close, it’s all about raising money for your reelection campaign. Screw the people you’re representing, you give them lip service, but your true constituency is the corporations. And when someone comes along and blows the whistle on that, says she’s for the people, you blanch.

So the shadow news is where movements start, where stories break. And if you don’t think they have power, look at Steve Bannon and Breitbart.

But when the noise becomes big enough, when it’s loud enough, the mainstream media dives in, it wants to own the story. And this is a good thing if you’re the act/purveyor, it signals to everybody paying attention that you’ve made it. Whereas if you get the publicity first, it’s wasted, today you have to have something to back it up.

So the mainstream media wisdom was that Elizabeth Warren was unelectable.

All the focus was on non-candidates like Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke and Pete Buttigieg. Yes, even Mayor Pete, he’s got no chance this time around. Maybe close, but no cigar.

Then there was the excoriation of Bernie and the wait for Biden to rescue the Party and put the Democrats on top.

But everybody in entertainment knows the best-laid plans often go awry.

Hell, the big story in movies today is the failure of the latest Men In Black iteration. Everybody discounted the public’s opinion, the film grossed even less than already low projections.

This is just like in music. How many highly touted albums stiff?

It happens all the time. Illustrating all the pre-hype is worthless…coming albums, coming books, reviews before you can hear or read… The public is addicted to the Tomatometer. People wait until it hits the street and then they put their finger to the wind and judge the mood, if it’s a stinker, they stay away.

How come the public is more sophisticated than the purveyors, the mainstream media?

That’s the story of the internet era, how those supposedly “in charge” get it wrong over and over again. They’re inured to the past, whereas it’s always about looking forward, not back.

So Elizabeth Warren percolates in the marketplace, is sometimes begrudgingly acknowledged, and then she goes way up in the polls and the mainstream media gloms on.

Hell, if they weren’t so busy lunching and bloviating to their peers, and were surfing the web and were out on the street, they’d have felt it – just like I felt the Trump wave and everybody in the mainstream did not.

Because I was on the front line. Anybody who was on the front line felt the blowback. But if you’re not… and everybody in the mainstream is not…the talking heads cashing their checks on TV, the reporters who don’t want to hang with THOSE people and…

The New Yorker feature is excellent. It’s mostly facts, not opinion.

But the New York Times feature is half a takedown.

I’ll attribute it to woman on woman hate.

Women criticize each other more than men criticize women. Oh, men commit many faux pas and hold women back, but the perception is that if you leave it to women, it’ll be all right. For an example to the contrary, look at the Women’s March, which was riddled with anti-Semitism.

So the author of the New York Times piece, Emily Bazelon, has got quite a CV, she went to undergrad and law school at Yale, her grandfather was a judge in the U.S. Court of Appeals. Who is this interloper who went to run-of-the-mill colleges and Rutgers for law school think she is?

Bazelon’s viewpoint is that of the insider, assessing the game she knows, and not the one she doesn’t, to her detriment. But, once again, the usual suspects have an investment in the past, these are the elites not only Trump fans abhor, but rank and file lefties too.

But this is Sheelah Kolhatkar‘s beat. Business. And that’s the essence of Warren’s candidacy, economics.

That’s why Warren’s booming, she’s speaking English about income inequality, she’s got plans to decrease it.

And what do the usual suspects say…IT’S UNWORKABLE!

No one likes to snuff hope like someone already in power. They’re afraid of the new.

But not the public.

Meanwhile, Warren is playing the long game, with her plans. She’s so far ahead of the rest of the pack, they can’t catch up. Biden is afraid of offending someone, Sanders has the right viewpoint, but he’s nowhere near as specific as Warren, and everybody else is playing personality politics.

Like we care about your dog and your smile and your likability.

Anybody becomes likable if they deliver what you want, the ugliest person. And right wingers know they got shafted by Trump, because he’s erratic and didn’t deliver on his promises. And the media no one pays attention to keeps talking about this, but who wants to listen to those self-righteous wankers?

But now they want to listen to Elizabeth Warren, who is not top-down, but grass roots.

Whether she wins the nomination or not, Warren has proven the game has changed. That she’s more in touch with a changed public than the New York Times and most of D.C.

As for the debates, assuming she gets the nomination, where is it written that substance doesn’t matter? Warren is the queen of the takedown, she’s famous for it, watch this video where she gives it back to John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo.

All the attention is paid to the mob, not the individual.

You get the feeling no one cares about you or me. Hell, I’ll talk about me. I was on the road and entered payments on two credit cards in my checkbook, but spaced it and didn’t pay them on my phone app. Fine, my fault. BUT THEN I HAD TO PAY NEARLY FIFTY BUCKS IN PENALTIES ON EACH CARD! AND THE BALANCE ON ONE OF THE CARDS WAS EVEN LESS THAN THAT!

I hate making mistakes, but I can afford it.

But how about someone who is struggling to make ends meet, fifty bucks means a lot to them. And Warren has learned those who are poor are not lazy takers, many times they’re working two jobs and one blip and they’re on the road to bankruptcy. But it’s a better story if it’s the individual’s fault, no one wants to admit the system is broken and doesn’t serve the people but the corporations.

Everybody but the rich can identify with Warren’s statements.

And we’ve seen the Trump movie before, in Minnesota, with Jesse Ventura. Every action has a concomitant reaction. One thing’s for sure, Trump is not an expert on policy, international relations, so much. The public is now ready for someone experienced, which is why if they wanted to win the Republicans wouldn’t even run Trump, they’d find someone with experience to speak to the base he awoke.

Like I said, institutions abhor change.

Not only the newspapers, but the TV companies too, they can’t stop bitching about Netflix, which was seen as a joke until it started making its own hit programs and got 100 million subscribers. It might even be too late for competitors to get real traction.

Record labels are risk averse, now more than ever. They want a predictable hit, something that sounds similar to what’s already successful. This is why music is stagnant, a joke. But one thing’s for sure, someone in the trenches, outside the system, is gonna turn the table over, the audience demands it.

And the audience demands our country step forward and change, because it’s just not working for too many of us.

This is the road Elizabeth Warren is taking. This is the road the mainstream media couldn’t see in 2016 and can’t see today.

But they’re waking up.

Because you can’t keep a good woman down. You can’t muzzle a knowledgeable source whose views are based on substance. You see it’s the same as it ever was, America believes in truth, justice and the American way. 

Is Elizabeth Warren Superwoman?

We’re about to find out.