Warren Brown Debate Winner: Warren On Top in Mass Senate Debate as Brown Commits Huge Blunder

[Playinghardball]

LOWELL, Massachusetts — Make no mistake: Elizabeth Warren won Monday night's debate, as she and Senator Scott Brown squared off in their second debate on Monday night in Lowell in the race for U.S. Senate. PolicyMic covered the event live from the Tsongas Center at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. The first debate was held in a television studio without a live audience but Monday's event was a very different atmosphere, as the Tsongas Center sold out all 5,700 tickets available. The debate was moderated by David Gregory, host of Meet the Press, who asked the audience before the debate to hold their applause for the end, but to no avail.

Warren and Brown traded barbs for approximately 55 minutes, with Warren slamming Brown for his opposition to the DREAM Act, and for his vote against extending the Bush tax cuts for all but the top 2% of income earner. Warren said the senator was holding 98% of Americans hostage to secure tax breaks the wealthy. Brown, meanwhile, was able to come out guns blazing on Warren's alleged Native American heritage, as Gregory's first question of the night was spent asking Warren about it. Brown has been unrelenting in his position that Warren's questionable claims about her ancestry speak to her a character — a narrative the Brown campaign has been pressing. Brown also hit Warren for her work as a lawyer for Traveler's insurance, which successfully fought off a class action lawsuit by asbestos victims while they were a client of Warren's. The senator said that the lawsuit showed that Warren is not the fighter for the middle class she says she is.

Brown chided Warren at one point when his challenger tried to interrupt him. "Excuse me, I’m not a student in your classroom," prompting applause from supporters in the audience.

Toward the tail-end debate, Brown was asked by Gregory who his "model" Supreme Court justice is, to which he answered, "Justice Scalia" — a notoriously conservative judge — prompting audible gasps from the audience (and the press room). Realizing his blunder, Brown went on to name Anthony Kennedy, John Roberts, and Sonia Sotomayor, who is one of the court's more liberal judges. Brown has tried to portray himself as a bipartisan senator who reaches across the aisle, but his naming of Scalia will be a problem for him going forward. Upon hearing Brown's response, a split-screen shot caught Warren smiling, as she realized Brown's misstep.
http://www.policymic.com/articles/15681/warren-brown-debate-winner-warren-on-top-in-mass-senate-debate-as-brown-commits-huge-blunder

[arthritisR_US]

1. The crowd booed him when he made his snide "professor" remark! n/t

[Patiod]

2. I'm sure that was a pre-rehearsed "zinger"

Wonder if the RNC is selling them?

[ChairmanAgnostic]

5. Yup, and about as good as Romney will give tomorrow.

[movonne]

3. That's what I thought...it might have been

first the clapping and then the boos....

[HopeHoops]

4. My NA heritage goes back to the 17th century. The DNA is still there - me, my mother, & my youngest.

It didn't surface in my eldest two daughters, but it's still there. I've got roots that pre-date the European invasion of this continent. And yes, I'm offended by Brown's bullshit.

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

6. You should be offended.

Imagine if he went off on any candidate for their ethnic background?

Imagine him calling out Elizabeth if she said she was told her roots came from European, African or Asian heritage?

This is a offensive issue. I know I am partly of Dutch descent, but there is no way of telling for sure since most of if not all of the records of them have been lost.

Only an asshole would bring this up; an asshole who has nothing else to run on.

[AlbertCat]

9. she was told her roots came from European, African or Asian heritage

Well we know they come from Africa... because EVERYBODY's roots are from there.

Just what ARE the statutes of limitations on ancestry?

[valerief]

13. My ancestry is amoebic. Unfortunately, I don't have any documentation to prove it. nt

[R. Daneel Olivaw]

23. I was writing in realistic terms of tracable or recent ancestry, but you never

know. Had Warren stated your reply they may have targeted her as being anti-religion and one of those libruls that believe in science and stuff.

[HopeHoops]

16. No argument there. My family goes back WAY further than the "anti-immigrant" assholes.

[existentialist]

11. the best estimate of the best historian specializing in European/Native American relations

estimates that over 30,000,000 U.S. citizens have Native American ancestry.

You are in good company, both in your ancestry and in being offended by Brown's bullshit.

[HopeHoops]

17. I've seen similar numbers. We're all immigrants at root, even NAs were.

Brown's grasping at straws with that one. It won't help him.

[bigdarryl]

7. Don't underestimate the STUPIDITY of voters she won the first debate

and yet most people in Mass who watched the debate thought Brown won so we have to be very careful at predicting how voters think.Plus why in the hell are they having four debates the last two were more than enough

[PragmaticLiberal]

8. Scott Brown can't be this shallow.

Because frankly, other than being a fairly attractive guy, he doesn't seem to have much substance to him.

[valerief]

14. Rich people like him. That's all that matters in this world--what rich people want. nt

[tarheelsunc]

10. Perhaps even worse than his admiration of Scalia

was just how badly he mispronounced "Sotomayor." If you are a knowledgeable person about the Supreme Court, you know how to correctly pronounce her name.

[hifiguy]

12. If you're gonna step in the dog leavings,

you might as well step in them up to your knees. Poor Dopey McDreamy.

[Erose999]

15. He realized he fucked up and then just started name-dropping all the justices, lol

he's a shithead. David Gregory too, for that matter.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

18. Well You've Got To Give Him Some Credit...

for naming people who are actually on the Supreme Court. Could you imagine some other republicans like W or Rick Perry in a similar situation? Ahh.... Judge Judy, Judge Dredd, Judge Smails, Judge Reinhold... did I miss any?

[LiberalLovinLug]

21. Yeah isn't it priceless..

..the way Gregory simply ignores his first answer and his obvious cover up, and invokes his rightwingnut self-imposed temporary amnesia tool, that so many use nowadays, and says after Brown's answer...."But if you could just choose one.....?"

[left on green only]

19. There was only *one* verbal bully.......

.....who appeared on that stage last night, and it for sure wasn't Elizabeth Warren. I laughed out loud when he complained of her interrupting his tirade with the "not a student in your class" crack, because his mode of operation for the entire debate was to talk over and interrupt the speech of both of the other inhabitants of that stage.

Upon edit for syntax.

[Jamaal510]

20. After the controversy he started about Warren's ethnicity,

it's incredible that Brown is still polling ahead in "likability". Now really...what's there to like about that scumbag? And why should likability even matter when the general public is supposed to vote based on policies?

[Maven]

22. Exhibit A in Bad Reporting

Brown has been unrelenting in his position that Warren's questionable claims about her ancestry speak to her a character — a narrative the Brown campaign has been pressing.

Questionable to whom? Certainly not to Warren, who one might expect to know her own ancestry. Race-baiting wads of fuck such as Scott Brown might be trying to construe her statements as "questionable," but that is his assertion in this manufactured controversy and ought not to be slipped into a sentence as though it were accepted fact.