Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is finally catching up with former Vice President Joe Biden in the race for the Democrats’ 2020 nomination — but with her past coming back to haunt her, that surge in support may be shortlived.
Joseph M. Pierce, an associate professor at Stony Brook University in New York who says he’s a Cherokee citizen, tweeted this weekend that he was mistreated by Warren’s campaign when he brought up his concerns over the Massachusetts senator’s history of making false claims about her heritage, the Washington Free Beacon reports.
Calling Warren out
Pierce detailed his interactions with members of Warren’s campaign in a thread of tweets published Saturday. In his message, the professor called out Warren for the “irony of ironies” that occurred when he attended local a campaign recruitment event for the 2020 hopeful.
In response to a campaign associate telling him he needed to vote for Warren, Pierce reportedly said: “I’m Cherokee and she hasn’t done enough to right the harm she has caused.” He was then taken to another member of the campaign who could purportedly put him in touch with Warren.
“Intrigued, I go with him,” Pierce explained, “and it’s a white guy with a beard, and we interrupt his conversation, because it’s important, and I say, ‘I’m Cherokee,’ and he nods.”
Pierce went on:
He says that he wants to “make real time for me” and [asks] if he can have my number so we can talk later. I say, “This really pisses me off.” And then things change: he can see that I’m upset, and then tries to figure out if I am worth talking to after all.
The professor reported that the campaign staffer told him: “I’m not sure there is anything I can do for you.” But Pierce nonetheless sought to have his message passed along: “[T]ell her, tell someone, that what she has done is not enough.”
“I mean, bro, just one second earlier you were willing to ‘make real time for me,’ and when you saw that I actually have thoughts about this, you no longer have that willingness or that time,” Pierce concluded. “That, my friend, is exactly the problem.”
Looking forward
Judging by the multitude of comments on Pierce’s thread, it seems there is a significant number of people on the left who share Pierce’s disappointment with Warren’s half-hearted efforts to explain away the fact that she had falsely claimed Native American heritage — potentially in benefit to her career — for so many years.
But this isn’t the first time that Pierce has leveled criticism at Warren over her false claims. In August, the professor penned an op-ed for Protean magazine wherein he lamented that Warren hadn’t sufficiently apologized for lying about her heritage.
Pierce closed out his op-ed by suggesting that Warren needs to personally and directly discuss the concerns of the Native American people with actual Native Americans, rather than continue to sidestep the issue — and the 2020 hopeful would be wise to take that advice.
Indeed, Warren may be on the path toward the Democratic Party’s White House nomination, but if the view of her “cultural theft” and “colonialism” expressed by Pierce and his allies are indicative of a larger majority of Dems, the Massachusetts senator may have an uphill battle on her hands. May the best candidate win.