The Democratic frontrunner foolishly plays right into Trump’s hands, again

Open this photo in gallery:

Here we go again. Donald Trump has another victim. You put up strong adversaries against him. He targets them with derogatory nicknames. They falter.

Welcome to the club, Elizabeth Warren. The 69-year-old senator from Massachusetts had emerged as the face of the Democratic Party, the front-runner for the 2020 nomination. Now, after taunts from Mr. Trump referring to her as “Pocahontas,” she’s being ridiculed as a fake Native American.

Among the Trump name-shaming targets has been “Crooked Hillary,” “Low Energy Jeb,” “Little Marco” “Lyin’ Ted."

While it is hypocrisy on stilts for Mr. Trump to skewer someone else for things such as lying, he gets away with it. They take it on the chin. They are hopeless on the counterattack. You would think they would be able to smear him with a put-down label in return. Not so, although maybe Stormy Daniels has done it for them. She dinged him with one this week, calling him ”Tiny.” If it sticks, he’ll have a fit.

Ms. Warren, a former law professor, is resolute and sharp as a tack. She may be able to put behind her the derision resulting from a DNA test to determine her genealogy. But given the might of the Grand Old Party’s attack machine, the stain could well remain.

How could she have been so foolish to take the Trump bait? He had been having great fun with her claim to have Native American ancestry. “Her mother says she has high cheekbones,” he mockingly told a rally in Great Falls, Mont. “That’s her only evidence.”

But it was getting old. He had first pinned the label on her way back in 2014. But instead of letting it go, she wanted to undercut him, as Barack Obama did when he produced his birth certificate to prove he was indeed a U.S. citizen, following it with the barb that Mr. Trump could then move on to more serious issues such as “Did we fake the moon landing?”

Ms. Warren’s test showed she had somewhere between 1/64th and 1/1024th of Native American ancestry. In other words, she was about 99 per cent not Native American. Now she was in a real fix. What to do? Hide the results or reveal them? She chose to hoist herself with her own petard. She published them, and the scorn has hit like a hurricane.

She had said she was part Cherokee. A Cherokee Nation executive, Chuck Hoskin Jr., lambasted her, saying the test was “a mockery” that dishonours legitimate tribal citizens.

Former Utah Republican congressman Jason Chaffetz posted a photo of himself with a wooden Native American statue. The cutline read, ”At Disneyland today with Senator Elizabeth Warren.”

Fox News host Greg Gutfeld chimed in, saying that using her 0.09 content criteria means he is probably Asian: “Which is why I can’t get into Harvard.” And of course, there was Mr. Trump himself harrumphing, “Thank you to the Cherokee Nation for revealing that Elizabeth Warren, sometimes referred to as Pocahontas, is a complete and total Fraud!”

Who can blame them? Midterm elections are only three weeks away, and here you have the Democrats’ big gun, who has been out campaigning everywhere, who has raised $7-million for fellow Democrat candidates, putting a target on herself the size of a barn.

As has his name-shaming for others, the use of the Pocahontas label worked out splendidly for Mr. Trump, demonstrating his skill as a retail politician. It drew much more attention to the issue than simply saying in so many words that he doubted Ms. Warren’s claim about her heritage.

Not only are Republicans delighted. Ms. Warren’s putative rivals for the Democratic nomination – likely more than a dozen will be in the hunt – are probably tickled pink. Ms. Warren was ahead in preparedness. She already has staff in the early primary states – in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

The only good thing, says long-time Democratic strategist Tad Devine, is that Ms. Warren’s vulnerability point is being dealt with now, long before the big 2020 show begins. If you have baggage, “you get it out, and then you move on.”

Ms. Warren will move on. But it will not be easy. “Tiny” will be impugning her with the Pocahontas taunt for many moons to come.