Senator Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren sparred Wednesday over health care, taxes, and women’s rights in a debate that drilled into policy and left behind some, but not all, of the personal sniping that has characterized their race for the US Senate.
Warren, a Democrat, was often on the attack, criticizing votes Brown has taken that she said have gone against the interests of women, workers, and students. Brown, emphasizing his local support and local roots, sought to burnish his home-grown, independent image.
Comments
Anyone else find it a strange coincidence that the broadcast suffered a 90-second "technical difficulty" as Brown was giving his heartfelt retort to Warren's plea that Brown has no empathy for women? The only think missing was that the ad shown during Brown's speech was a Warren ad. Ah, "Warrengate."
No such blip on C-Span. Was your remote impaired or do like to make faux controversy? The ad also was not a Warren ad. It was a regular advertisement. Also minutes after the debate NECN ran the whole missed segment. Somehow your comment shows that you did see the 1 1/2 minute clip. Elizabeth Warren has chosen not to clean out the skeletons in Scott Brown's closet, that are not inconsequential, but the Brown campaign makes their strongest focus on non issues trying to smear a prominent teacher's and researcher's reputation. Let's agree both are qualified candidates but their approach to legislating is starkly different. However there have been no peeps from the Brown crowd here to endorse the Senator's actual votes, who supports him, and whose company he seeks out for endorsements and fund raisers. You might want to exam this. This will be the next Senator's work day.
No interruption in WBUR. Oh, but maybe they weren't in on the "conspiracy".
So, according to the Globe's "Fact Check" Elizabeth Warren LIED when she insisted that ObamaCare would not take one cent away from Medicare. This also means that Barack Obama also LIED when he said the same thing at the debate.
She did not say what you wanted her to say. She outlined that savings were found by reducing overcharges by insurers and reducing fraud and abuse. No benefits were removed. The saved outlay was put into extending Medicare another 8 years and helping to provide funds for Medicaid patients, a large portion of whom are elderly in nursing homes and receive Medicaid as their supplement to Medicare. This question has been explained many times but opposition insists on twisting it into something it isn't. Wonder why?
Read the article again because that is not what the Globe said abouut either one of them.
Brown made it clear once again that he is in hopelessly over his head at any job that requires him to be forthright, honest, and able to think. You could see him trying desperately to remember the canned responses that he had been taught. Brown did not say one meaningful word in an hour.
I wish Prof. Warren would find a different thing to say than "Let me be clear..." Reminds me too much of Richard Nixon ("Let me be crystal clear...").
That aside, it sounded as though Brown stuck to the issues during the first half, discussing his record, discussing his approach to taxes and military spending and healthcare, and Dr. Warren spent almost the entire debate attacking Brown. During the second half, Brown finally began attacking her directly, though thankfully he omitted the whole Cherokee thing for a change.
I appreciate that they are opponents, but more focus on the issues and less "he said, she said" drivel would be useful.
The bottom line is, they are closer together than they are different on many issues, except that apparently Warren wants to increase taxes on larger businesses and the wealthy (except that she wants to eliminate the ObamaCare tax on Mass. medical instrument companies, to gain their support), and she wants to cut defense more deeply than Brown, and she supports ObamaCare (except for that pesky tax on an important constituent).
It sounds as though Warren just wants to be Senator, without being able to articulate why she would be so much better than Scott Brown, who after all has been quite a moderate and bipartisan Senator these two years. Is Brown perfect? No. Is Warren perfect? No. Would she be as bipartisan as Brown? Highly unlikely. That, in the end, is what I will base my vote on. We need people willing to compromise, to reach across the aisle to reach imperfect solutions as opposed to ideologues who will fight to the death over nothing.
Brown and Warren are not "close" on issues! Brown is for giving Wall Street a free hand, when we already know where that got us. Brown has voted down jobs and extensions of jobless benefits, holding these middle-class bills hostage to tax cuts for the wealthy. Brown is against giving consumers a fighting chance against big banks. Brown's support for women is shaky--Blunt amendment ring any bells?
kate, what was the primary driver of the financial crisis?
Watching this debate caused me to take stock of what the professor's really saying when she constantly repeats, "billionaires and milluionaires". This brilliant lawyer shrills these words while looking directly into the camera lens. "Monster billionaires" are stealing the wealth of you poor working folks, she says. "Monster" businesses are at war with you "folks", she says. They, not government are responsible for our lost jobs, closed factories and every societal illness that causes "folks" to line up for food stamps, welfare checks and free cell phones. Free enterprise involves smart people who take chances with their lives and wager they can earn a living making something and selling it for more than its production cost. Dare I say the word profit without incuring her wrath? After some thought it became clear that her emotional blasts thinly disguise her guile. Her and Obama's message is simple. The American dream of becoming rich someday is really a socialist nightmare filled with flying phantoms of the night called billionaires and millionaires. During the Soviet revolution roving mobs ran screaming through the streets burning and destroying and murdering all those "rich folks". Mob incitement is the working tool of those who believe private property and private business really are rightfully the people's and their governments. Today's Democrats are treading a timeline that our university professors, like Ms Warren believe rightfull leads to what Hugo Chavez is developing in South America. Ms Warren repeated those names so many times last night it made me wonder if she needed to say anything else. That was her entire message.
You put the word monster in quotation marks as if you are quoting her. Elizabeth never used the word monster. You are not entitled to your own facts.
"The American dream of becoming rich" - hate to break it to you, but the American dream for most people is just to get by. And you're worried that millionaires are going to be murdered.
Prof. Warren followed old patterns of teaching by repeating over & over the words she wanted her audience to take-away, "Billionaires, millionaires, women's rights, middle-class." Her Democrat handlers reenforced her old habits to repeat key words throughout her lecture. Although she remembered she was in Massachusetts - not her home in Washington.
On the other, Senator Brown is the Massachusetts home-grown man: He has worked hard for the state for many, many years. He was working on behalf of the Commonwealth's residents long before Warren decided she wanted to return to Washington. There is a campaign ad that rings true when it claims Ms. Warren is a "phony."
Thanks for the ad.
Being "home grown" has nothing to do it; neither does having women in the family. What counts is the voting record, and Brown votes against the middle class, the poor, and women. Antonin Scalia is his idea of a great Supreme Justice. Brown does the corporations' bidding and then tries to hide from his record.
Why is Brown so afraid of Grover Norquist?
sounded to me like he loves him.
Senator Brown has been a true public servant working for many years for Massachusetts residents.
There are too many voters who DO NOT KNOW Senator Brown, and regretably, there arealso too many voters who DO NOT KNOW Prof. Warren, but are willing to believe both Warren's & the Democrat lore.
Did Warren staff write this article? How many quotes does Warren have vs Brown? Her talking-point quote is reported and his response or counter-point is not. What ever happened to reporting news instead of disguising opinion?
I love how low the threshold for competence is for Democrats and their candidates: the measure of Liz's success in debates has been whether she 'speaks clearly and calmly'. Hello?!?!?! How about having experience as a selectman, state rep, mayor, or state senator? How about running a company with 100 employees and meeting payroll every two weeks??!?! Liz Warren has done nothing in her life to justify her candidacy. She certainly doesn't have the experience worthy of being elected. Don't even get me started on her surprisingly lengthy list of LIES...
So you've posted this three times now. Please! I beg you: Please tell us these lies- we want to know!
This comment has been removed.
The one thing that is clear after three debates is that Liz isn't qualified for the job!! Her childlike refrain of taxing the rich ignores basic economics. Taxing the rich also raises taxes on small businessmen who don't net much money, and it crushes new job creation. That is why Democrats didn't raise taxes when they had all the votes they needed for two years to do so! Because enough of them understand basic economics to know that would only make the problem worse! Liz Warren doesn't seem to have gotten the memo!! Liz Warren pretends that if we just let he tax the rich, all of America's problems will go away, when, in fact, basic knowledge of basic economics should inform her that taxing the rich will crush new jobs because it also taxes small businesses who create all the new jobs. Worse, taxing the rich only brings-in 15% of what Obama wants to spend over the next ten years. The other 85% gets to be paid by YOU the middle class!! You get to pay $5.3 trillion of 'EXTRA' Obama spending! Taxing the rich doesn't come close to solving the problem, any problems, but it puts a wet blanket on job creation. We are spinning our wheels going absolutely nowhere exactly because of this Democrat ignorance of economics. And Liz may be the dumbest of them all repeating this stuff! That she is still repeating the same Democrat economic fantasy three years later should be the final nail in her candidacy.
(yawn)
Your basic economics is off if you think that all rich people are job creators, look at someone like Flopney whose money is all in blind investment trusts, and you can bet that money is working hard to get returns for him. Most of it in places like developing economies where the jobs being created are not American Jobs. While the Right and the Republican Party likes to repeat the mantra of job creators they forget that the people who actually create those jobs are small businessmen, who would like to create and expand yet the banks are not lending. So its not the taxes on the rich that are stifiling the creators its the banks who refuse to lend out to small businesses who would like to get by.
Very frustrating.....both Brown & Warren jabbed ‘back & forth’ on their pet issues......neither discussed what they would do to avoid the so-called "Fiscal Cliff" that threatens the financial wellbeing all of us (Rep/Dem......upper class/middle class/ poor) on 1/1/2013!! Debating abortion rights, jobs bills, Obama care in October of 2012 without figuring out what to do about the pending Fiscal Disaster......is like arguing over where to put the furniture in a room with a time bomb in it. Both these ‘Jack A##es’ better wake up!!