SALON

Friday, Sep 21, 2012 4:04 PM UTC

“Professor Warren’s” lesson

By the end of her first debate with Scott Brown, she learned how to hit him where it hurts

By

Topics: Elizabeth Warren, Scott Brown, Opening Shot,

Elizabeth Warren talks with reporters following her debate with Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass. (Credit: AP /Michael Dwyer)

Earlier this week, I swore off making sweeping pronouncements about the direction of the Massachusetts Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren, which is probably a good thing, since I don’t think their first debate last night moved the needle dramatically for either candidate.

That said, however, I would give a slight edge to Brown, and the reason is simple: He was more disciplined in using the hour to advance his basic strategic goal than she was.

When you boil it down, Brown is running a campaign that’s rooted in personality – the regular guy with a truck versus the far-left academic elite. Warren’s, on the other hand, is rooted in party identity: You may like Senator Brown a lot, but if you send him back to Washington he’ll empower a national Republican Party that you hate. For most of the debate, Brown seemed much more aware of his imperative than Warren.

For instance, it took him approximately eight seconds to refer to his opponent as “Professor Warren,” a title he would invoke dozens of times over the next 60 minutes, as in: “Professor Warren, in her case, makes over $300,000 to teach one class.” It was no shock he did this, but I was somewhat surprised that Warren didn’t show up with some kind of humorous rejoinder at the ready, something that might have thrown Brown off his game or at least made viewers more conscious of the game he was playing.

I also doubt much damage was inflicted on Brown in the first half of the debate, in which tax policy and women’s issues featured prominently. Warren repeatedly brought up Brown’s Senate votes – against a plan to extend the Bush tax rates for all but the top 2 percent of income-earners, for the Blunt amendment – and on the substance, she was right. But Brown protested that “Professor Warren” was making things up, that “independent” groups (in reality, the not so independent Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business) had called her the real tax-hiker in the race, and that he’s just as pro-choice as she is. How much of this back-and-forth sounds like incomprehensible noise to casual viewers? A lot, is my guess.

Warren’s problem in this stretch was that she didn’t more explicitly link Brown to Mitt Romney and the national Republican Party, and herself to the president. Barack Obama is going to carry Massachusetts by somewhere between 20 and 30 points – maybe more, if things really break his way. The state’s aversion to the national GOP – it hasn’t elected a Republican House member since 1994, and Brown was the first from his party to win a Senate race since 1972 – is Warren’s chief asset in this race. Basically, she’s trying to replicate what John Kerry did in 1996, when he held off the personally popular Bill Weld in Bill Clinton’s reelection year.

Weld and Kerry staged a series of memorable debates that year, and Kerry was dogged about linking his opponent to Jesse Helms and other Washington Republicans whose names were dirt in the Bay State. But Warren was much more hesitant to do so, at least in the early-going last night. Her attacks on Brown’s votes might have been more effective if she’d framed them in more explicitly partisan terms – he sided with Mitch McConnell and the obstructionist Republicans in the Senate against President Obama’s plan to lower taxes for all but the top 2 percent! Or something like that.

To her credit, Warren seemed to figure this out in the final stretch of the debate, linking herself to Obama a few times and even mentioning Romney. She used a question about energy to point out that a Brown victory might allow climate change denier Jim Inhofe to chair the committee that oversees the Environmental Protection Agency. Brown protested that he’s his own man, but Warren seemed to sense that she’d found a winning theme, and repeated it several times.

With only seconds left in the debate, she was given the last word. “But remember,” she said, “at the end of the day, this race may be for control of the Senate. Senator Brown can’t have it both ways. He’s out there raising from Republicans all around the country, saying, ‘If you give me money and I win, it means Republicans can take control of the United States Senate.’”

I bet we’ll hear a lot more of this from her when the candidates meet again in 10 days.

Steve Kornacki

Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 66 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
192 points193 points | 7 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
161 points162 points | 26 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
118 points119 points | 55 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
72 points73 points | 15 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
40 points41 points | 4 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations