The revelation that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., identified her race as “American Indian” in a 1986 registration card for the State Bar of Texas raises further questions about her political competence.
In October, when she released the result of a DNA test to claim authentic Native American heritage and it epically backfired, I argued that she could overcome the episode in time, but the bigger challenge was what it said about her terrible political instincts.
Viewed in the light of the new revelation, it makes her DNA test decision even worse.
Even though the bar registration card just became public now, Warren would have known it was out there when she released the DNA video or, at the very minimum, would know that there were some documents in existence in which she claimed this heritage. As the Washington Post, which first reported on the registration card, noted, “as Warren undergoes increased scrutiny as a presidential candidate, additional documents could surface to keep the issue alive.” That is, the registration card is quite likely one of many similar official documents that is going to come out in which she identified herself as American Indian.
Knowing than any such documents were likely to surface, it’s amazing that she would have drawn more scrutiny to the issue last fall with the release of the DNA test and an accompanying video in which she disputed the idea that she used her claim of heritage to advance her career. Yet now we have more documentary evidence that she was making the claim in a professional context — and there’s no doubt more where this came from.
This reinforces my view from a few months back. It’s quite early in the race, and there are a lot of twists and turns that the presidential campaign is going to take before the early primary states start voting. So, there is theoretically time for her to recover.
However, the question of her Native American question has been dogging her since her 2012 Senate race and she still hasn’t figured out a way to address it. She just keeps digging herself in even deeper. She’s been able to survive as a liberal Democrat in Massachusetts, but now that she has to appeal to a broader electorate, against candidates that are going to be endorsing a lot of the same positions as her, it’s a whole new ballgame. If this is indicative of how she’ll respond to other controversies that are inevitably going to arise during her campaign, then she’ll be toast.
