https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/06/us/politics/elizabeth-warren-dna-test-2020.html
An excerpt:
The plan was straightforward: After years of being challenged by President Trump and others about a decades-old claim of Native American ancestry, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts would take a DNA test to prove her stated family origins in the Cherokee and Delaware tribes.
But nearly two months after Ms. Warren released the test results and drew hostile reactions from prominent tribal leaders, the lingering cloud over her likely presidential campaign has only darkened. Conservatives have continued to ridicule her. More worrisome to supporters of Ms. Warren’s presidential ambitions, she has yet to allay criticism from grass-roots progressive groups, liberal political operatives and other potential 2020 allies who complain that she put too much emphasis on the controversial field of racial science — and, in doing so, played into Mr. Trump’s hands.
Advisers close to Ms. Warren say she has privately expressed concern that she may have damaged her relationships to Native American groups and her own standing with progressive activists, particularly those who are racial minorities. Several outside advisers are even more worried: They say they believe a plan should be made to repair that damage, possibly including a strong statement of apology.
The advisers say Ms. Warren will have to confront the issue again if she announces a presidential campaign, which is expected in the coming weeks, and several would like her to act soon.
For some Warren allies and progressive groups, Ms. Warren’s standing by the DNA test amounts to profoundly poor judgment. Some said she was too reactive to Mr. Trump’s attacks — tests results would never silence a president who often disregards facts, they said — and created a distraction from her own trademark message of economic populism. The president revels in repeatedly slurring Ms. Warren as “Pocahontas,” and conservative commentators like Howie Carr of the Boston Herald have enjoyed holding the DNA issue over the senator’s head.
“The biggest risk in engaging a bully is that bullies don’t usually stop, regardless of what the truth is,” said Charles Chamberlain, executive director for the progressive political group Democracy for America. Mr. Chamberlain’s group had, in 2014, launched a “Run Warren Run” campaign to encourage her to seek the 2016 presidential nomination.
“When you can’t win an argument,” he added, “then sometimes it’s not worth having that argument.”
Ms. Warren’s allies also say she unintentionally made a bigger mistake in treading too far into the fraught area of racial science — a field that has, at times, been used to justify the subjugation of racial minorities and Native Americans.
Racial justice advocates, keen to cast race as a socially constructed issue with little biological grounding, said Ms. Warren’s actions gave validity to the idea that race is determined by blood, a bedrock principle for those who believe in racial hierarchies and castes. Native American critics, including Kim TallBear, a prominent scholar from the University of Alberta, said in October that Ms. Warren’s actions relied on “settler-colonial” definitions of who is an indigenous American and amounted to a haughty refusal to hear out her longstanding critics.
This line of criticism has particularly stung Ms. Warren, who has made a point to hold several private talks with Native leaders since taking the DNA test, emphasizing her respect for tribal sovereignty and making clear she does not claim tribal citizenship.
Three people close to senior members of Ms. Warren’s team, who were granted anonymity to speak freely on the issue, said they were “shocked” and “rattled” by the senator’s decision to take the DNA test, which they described as an unequivocal misstep that could have lasting consequences, even on 2020 staffing. One former adviser, who also asked not to be named, called it a “strategic failure” that was “depressing and unforgettable.”
Gotta say, I have actually been surprised because right away after the DNA test I have seen quite a few liberals discard Warren's possible candidacy due to it.
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