Fauxcahontas's Last Stand
With the national media’s attention riveted by a series of racism and sexism scandals tearing through the whole Democratic Party establishment in Virginia, Elizabeth Warren probably thought this was a good time to get her own racial politics scandal behind her. So on Tuesday, Warren told the Washington Post that, in the Post‘s summary, “she was sorry that she identified herself as a Native American for almost two decades.”
Warren, asked in a brief interview Tuesday if she’d intended the apology to include labeling herself as Native American when at the University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard University, replied “yes.” She gave the same response when asked if it included labeling herself as a minority in the Association of American Law Schools directory.
That’s a spectacular collapse in her political narrative. What began in 2012 with Warren righteously claiming that she knew her Native American heritage from her family’s stories and her high cheekbones, and progressed last October to her claim that a DNA test vindicated her, has now collapsed into a blanket apology for ever making the claim.
You don’t see this every day. Politics is a field awash in fabulism, and we’re used to seeing politicians cling to flattering personal narratives no matter what. So how did Warren crash and burn on this issue so thoroughly?
Read the rest at The Bulwark.