Sen. Elizabeth Warren may have bombed with the Democratic base in the 2020 Democratic primary, but she remains the clear favorite of New York Times employees.
The paper has published yet another heroic profile of the Massachusetts senator, claiming this time that Warren’s personal evolution on the issue of race is, in many ways, a “preview of the journey many white liberals are on now.”
This is more than just a profile. It is an advertisement, and the Biden campaign is the target audience. Considering that this article seems to come out of the blue — indeed, it details no news event and contains precious little new information about the senator — and considering it is careful to mention several times that Warren is “under serious consideration to become Joe Biden’s running mate,” it seems clear that the story’s real purpose is to goose the senator’s chances of landing her name on the 2020 Democratic ticket.
This would explain why a 2,500-plus-word profile on Warren and race makes only a vague reference to the fact that she falsely identified as a minority when she taught at Harvard Law School in the 1990s. The point is not to give a thorough account, warts and all. The point is to give the most flattering account possible. Remember, this is an advertisement.
The profile, titled “Elizabeth Warren’s Evolution on Race Brought Her Here,” has only this to say about the senator’s yearslong and admittedly bogus claim to Cherokee Indian heritage: “Her most politically defining misstep was over an issue of race, when she took a DNA test to demonstrate her purported Native American heritage and a backlash followed.”
That is it. That is the full extent of the paper’s effort to incorporate details of Warren’s false ancestral claims into a broader story about her supposed evolution on race in America.
There is no mention in the profile of when Fordham Law Review, with no objection from Warren herself, billed her as Harvard Law School’s “first woman of color.” There is no mention of the fact that Warren identified for nearly a decade as a “minority” in the Association of American Law Schools’s deskbook, despite that the best she can say is that she is (maybe) 1/64th Cherokee. There is no mention of the fact that Harvard Law cited her supposed Native American heritage as a way to dismiss critics who said the school lacked minority representation. There is no mention of the fact that Warren’s disastrous DNA stunt happened in the first place because she had still maintained, as recently as last year, that she had a claim to Cherokee heritage.
Instead, New York Times readers are treated to lines such as, “Allies say her awakening traces the arc of much of her life,” and “she has emerged, according to activists and organizers, as one of the most racially progressive white politicians in the country.”
Regarding Warren’s time at Harvard Law, where she identified as a Native American, the New York Times reports, “It was in those years at Harvard that Ms. Warren’s reputation as an expert on the intersection of race and economics grew.” The article is also sure to mention that she was a “popular and demanding teacher” who “became a mentor to young female law students.”
The New York Times wants badly for Warren to be Biden’s running mate. Whether Biden is dumb enough to buy what the New York Times is selling is an open question.
