For the Record: Two Warren Topics

Cherokee Freedmen, undated, via Mid-Continent Public Library.

Wanted to try giving Roger an answer here:

I have never understood this 'controversy.' At all.

— Roger Matile (@rmatile1) January 19, 2020

Fast-forward to her political career, conservatives unable to believe a woman could be a distinguished legal scholar suggest she's a fake who benefited from affirmative action because her bio said she was Native American. Same schmucks who doubted Obama wrote for Law Review.

— Dopes 'n' Babies (@Yastreblyansky) January 19, 2020

... by announcing in some forum that Harvard Law had hired its first woman of color), but Warren took a while to understand what the problem was. And made a huge mistake in the meantime by seeking genetic evidence of her ancestry.

— Dopes 'n' Babies (@Yastreblyansky) January 19, 2020

(and if I can be a little mean for a second I'd add it's pretty sensitive among Oklahoma Cherokee, who have many blond and blue-eyed members while rejecting people with claims to be Cherokee and an African American look)

— Dopes 'n' Babies (@Yastreblyansky) January 19, 2020

Which evidently went to the point in 2011 that the tribe seems have demanded claimants take a DNA test, I'm sorry to say

The Cherokee Nation recently decided to limit its membership to people who can prove they have Indian blood. This strips of their citizenship rights about 2,800 African-Americans who are descendants of slaves once owned by wealthy Cherokees. Those rights include access to health care clinics, food distribution for the poor, and assistance for low-income homeowners.

and glad to say that the Obama administration ruled on the black Chereokees' side:

The Bureau of Indian Affairs declined an interview request, but in a letter sent to the Cherokee Nation earlier this month, it said the Freedmen's citizenship rights cannot be revoked. The Cherokee first agreed to grant the Freedmen equal rights in a treaty signed with the U.S. in 1866, following the end of the Civil War.

(On which Obama was no slouch. Trump, of course, is the most flagrantly anti-Indian candidate since Andrew Jackson, with a long record of spreading hatred because of the tribes competing with him in the casino business, but that's a long other story.)

— Dopes 'n' Babies (@Yastreblyansky) January 19, 2020

Don't know if that helps, but I wanted to clarify main points: (1) Native peoples had some real beef, which Warren has dealt with well, in the end, by learning
(2) Anti–affirmative action conservatives and the white hipster-leftist bros who have taken up the cause do not have any

— Dopes 'n' Babies (@Yastreblyansky) January 19, 2020

Also a shorter bit on health care, where the Warren contribution is less clear (it's going to take time to recover some of the courage I used to have on the subject):

Can't begin to say how strongly I agree. We should never have gotten hung up on a brand name. Focus should be on how the experience of health care should be:
1. No copays or other financial harassment at point of service, when patient is anxious and may not have money to spare...

— Dopes 'n' Babies (@Yastreblyansky) January 18, 2020

4. patients don't care who primary payer is (though on principle it should not be for-profit company)
5. encourage cooperative or group clinics as opposed to individual practice
6. seriously include vision, hearing, dental, mental health

— Dopes 'n' Babies (@Yastreblyansky) January 18, 2020

There are dozens of good models in Europe, Asia. It doesn't matter whether we imitate one or another. It matters whether the experience of getting health care is fair, easy, and not any more traumatic than it has to be.

— Dopes 'n' Babies (@Yastreblyansky) January 18, 2020

Where by "fair"I meant universal, and the same for everybody, though I'm under no illusion that the rich won't find ways to extend their privilege, as they have done in UK, where an entirely separate, private system exists to care for the upper ten percent. The main Warren point is that her proposal includes not only a transition, as I've mentioned before, but a transition in which people's lives are envisaged as getting better from day 1. The Krugman point is important too: this is not a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good, but of perfect (p) being the enemy of perfect (q) because it comes earlier in the alphabet.