Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry problem

Senior Republicans have joined Donald Trump in openly mocking prospective presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren over claims she has Native American ancestry.

The liberal Massachusetts senator, widely touted as a potential Democratic candidate for the White House in 2020, has long claimed to have a small amount of Cherokee blood.

This was met with widespread derision when she first announced it in 2012 during her bid for the Senate and Trump has repeatedly mocked her for it since taking office, giving her the nickname “Pocahontas”.

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The president recently doubled-down on his attacks and, in what some believe is a coordinated effort to discredit a potential rival, has been joined by two of his top allies in the senate.

Earlier this week, Warren released details of her background, including a DNA analysis that revealed she had at least one Indian ancestor between six and ten generations ago, meaning she is between one-64th and one-1,024th Cherokee.

Speaking to Fox and Friends, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham announced that he would take his own DNA test.

“I've been told that my grandmother was part Cherokee Indian,” Graham said. “It may all be just talk, but you're going to find out in a couple of weeks because I'm going to take this test... I'm taking it, and the results are going to be revealed here. This is my Trump moment. This is reality TV.”

Referring to Warren, he said: “She's less than one-tenth of 1%. I think I can beat her. I think I can beat her.”

CNN editor-at-large Chris Cillizza says Warren's goal “was to take the issue of her heritage off the table for nervous Democrats and to show that she was ready, willing and able to stand up to President Donald Trump if and when the time came that she was the party's nominee against him in 2020”.

Jonathan Bernstein of Bloomberg View called the video the “latest in a series of solid moves Warren has been making” to persuade Democratic insiders that she can take on Trump.

But rather than putting the issue to bed it only seems to have emboldened Trump and the Republicans further. In that sense “it's becoming increasingly clear the strategy amounts to a swing and a miss”, says Cillizza.

As well as giving Trump an opening to keep the story going on his terms just three weeks from make-or-break mid-term elections, “liberals generally should regard this whole thing as a cautionary tale”, says Ros Douthat in The New York Times.

“There is an obvious appetite on the activist left for a candidate or candidates willing to take on Trump on his own brawler’s terms. But if you come at him that way, you best not miss,” Douthat writes.

In her effort to pre-empt Trump’s familiar refrain of “Pocahontas”, Warren only revealed that she is not up to the task of beating him, says Yahoo News, adding that: “If the 2020 presidential campaign comes down to a name-calling contest, Trump will easily win re-election.”