On a night deliberately designed to put the focus on vice-presidential running-mate Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren went where even Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama himself feared to tread: upstaging the nominee.
Warren, who outlasted Harris in the recent presidential primaries, told a bizarre and largely self-serving story of her own experiences as a working mother who struggled with childcare.
“I get to be here tonight because of my Aunt Bee,” she said, while promoting a radical agenda that would include socialized, taxpayer-subsidized childcare.
“If you have a baby and don’t have an Aunt Bee, you’re on your own,” she continued.
The tale, however, sounded uncannily like the premise of the 60s-era sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show,” in which Frances Bavier portrayed the matronly character who comes to live with the widowed sheriff of Mayberry, NC, and help him raise his son, Opie (portrayed by a young Ron Howard).
“When I told Aunt Bee I was gonna quit my job, I thought my heart would break,” Warren said.
But the mysterious relative arrived the next day with “seven suitcases and a Pekinese named ‘Buddy’ and stayed for 16 years,” Warren claimed.
Immediately, some questioned the authenticity of Warren’s anecdote given the radical progressive’s propensity for whoppers.
Does anyone believe she had an Aunt Bee? pic.twitter.com/rKqZw8w3iv
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) August 20, 2020
Warren is best known, perhaps, for her debunked claim that she was a minority based on what DNA tests later proved to be a less-than-significant amount of Cherokee ancestry.
She blamed the misunderstanding on her family for instilling in her the ways of the Indian to such great extent that she contributed to a Native American cookbook and self-identified herself as a person of color in order to gain advantages in her career as a lawyer and academic.
After being denounced by the Cherokee for her appropriation of their culture, Warren was required to apologize as one of the early stumbling blocks in her campaign.
Despite the embarrassment, DNC organizers elected to follow the sage advice of activism guru Saul Alinsky by pushing the negative through to the other side.
Earlier in the week, they invited her to join a virtual panel discussion as part of the convention’s Native American Caucus—a move met with much derision by her critics.
Warren’s name also has been floated for a likely Cabinet position, such as Treasury or Education secretary, in a prospective Biden administration.
But her erratic behavior, which included tweeting a video of herself chugging a beer on New Year’s Eve, has led some to be concerned that she might be unfit for the role.
Native Americans have historically faced substance-abuse problems and are three times more likely to die of an overdose than the general population.
