Warren Versus Trump

I'd seen that there was some back and forth between Liz Warren and Donald Trump. Where to put my money in a battle of snaps between these two? It's tough because Trump has already proved himself the master of insults worthy of a grade school student. So whataya got Drumpf?

Donald Trump repeatedly mocked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as “Pocahontas” at a press conference in North Dakota on Thursday, even as a Native American woman present at the event interrupted to call his comments “offensive.”

Really? The Pocahontas thing again? And at the same time managing to insult yet another group of Americans. 

 “I find it offensive that Goofy Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to as Pocahontas, pretended to be Native American to get in Harvard,” Trump wrote.

In a tweet of her own, Warren retorted that she “didn’t even go to Harvard.” She was a faculty member at the school.

“Get your facts straight,” Warren wrote.

So, I suppose next Trump will be bashing Harvard and trash talking Warren for not being able to get on the faculty at Trump University. Oh, and in the video at the clip, Trump calls her a big mouth. Classy!

OK, Senator Warren's up. 

 In a Tuesday night speech at the Center for Popular Democracy’s annual gala in Washington, she criticized Trump for profiting of the 2008 housing crisis through buying property on the cheap.

“What kind of man does that?” she asked repeatedly. “A small, insecure money-grubber who doesn’t care who gets hurt, so long as he makes some money off it.”

I gotta say insecure money-grubber is good. Anything else?

She went on to call out Trump on long-harbored desire to eliminate Dodd-Frank regulations on the financial industry.

“Donald Trump is worried about helping poor little Wall Street? Let me find the world’s smallest violin,” she said. She later added: “Can Donald Trump even name three things that Dodd-Frank does?”

I'm pretty sure that he can't, so I'm giving the round and the fight to the senator from the great state of Massachusetts.

OK, so I go over to TPM and see Josh Marshall talking up Senator Warren for VEEP. Sounds like a wonderful idea to me even at the cost of the Senate seat. The possibility of Warren succeeding Clinton as prez in 4 or 8 years makes that more than worth the temporary loss of the seat.

Warren is off-the-cuff, free-wheeling and direct in all the ways Clinton is cautious and rehearsed. But it is a reinforcing rather than an invidious contrast and likely helps bring to the surface Hillary's progressive background that has been buried by decades at the pinnacle of Democratic party politics and years as the punching bag of the left of the party which feels excluded by the seemingly endless Clinton ascendency.

It may sound crazy to attach so much to her recent Twitter contretemps with Donald Trump. But the tone, rhythm and style are exactly what the Democrats need to knock Trump down and bring out his toxic mix of personal insecurity and emotional instability. It's not over-earnest or off-key or droning (traditional Democratic tonalities - let's be honest). She's mocking, substantive and constantly on target.

Indeed, Trump's responses to Warren, his attacks on her, make it clear to me he'll have a hard time handling her.

 Do it for Teddy.