The Ascendance of Elizabeth Warren

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http://inthesetimes.com/article/12859/the_ascendance_of_elizabeth_warren


Speaking to nearly 1,000 supporters who pledged to work for her campaign during a volunteer event in Roxbury on Nov. 13, 2011. (Photos courtesy of Elizabeth for MA)

If you’re reading this, you probably already know how you feel about Elizabeth Warren. Warren is currently running for Senate in Massachusetts, in the hopes of knocking out Republican incumbent Scott Brown. Very few first-time candidates are so well-known, or so passionately beloved.

For much of the past decade, Warren has made her name as a left-wing media star, appearing in documentaries and on progressive talk shows to advocate for the middle class against a corrupt financial system. In 2008, she was appointed to chair the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). From that position, she created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), whose goal is to make mortgages and lending transparent, and to uncover predatory practices. Eighty-nine House Democrats petitioned for her to be appointed as the agency’s head.

She didn’t get the job. Obama passed Warren over, nominating and then appointing Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to the post when Congress was in recess in January. Warren’s forthright consumer advocacy was anathema to the banking industry, and reportedly rankled some Obama administration officials, particularly Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Instead of working with powerful banking interests who wanted to weaken the CFPB, Warren called out politicians on both sides of the aisle for their complicity. She proclaimed: “My first choice is a strong consumer agency. … My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.” This attitude did not make her popular with co-workers. But it did earn her massive public support. Reading Warren’s press often feels like listening in on the meeting of a strange law-professor-centric fan club. “Heaven is a Place Called Elizabeth Warren,” read the headline of a Rebecca Traister piece in The New York Times Magazine. “[A] modern-day Mr. Smith, giving voice to regular citizens astonished at the failure of Washington to protect Main Street,” wrote Suzanna Andrews, in Vanity Fair. At Salon, Steve Kornacki predicted her 2016 presidential candidacy in November 2011, when it was uncertain whether she even had a decent chance of winning the Massachusetts Senate race. For what it’s worth, Kornacki was being conservative; journalist Matt Taibbi (and, apparently, the folks at ElizabethWarrenforPresident.com) even wanted her to run in 2012.

Her platform in Massachusetts is the same as ever: She argues passionately for increased financial protection for the middle class and for strong governmental oversight and regulation of the economy. And she has a good chance of winning. Warren and Brown have both agreed to eschew campaign ads from Super PACs. This means they have to rely on direct donations – a good indicator of popular support. In the fourth quarter of 2011, Elizabeth Warren raised a reported $5.7 million. Brown raised half that.

[MannyGoldstein]

1. My next Junior Senator

A real FDR Democrat.

[Overseas]

2. K&R.

[Moostache]

3. Love Elizabeth Warren...but how long 'til Brown breaks that pledge?

If Scott Brown is not running Super PAC ads by October, I will eat my socks!

Her passion and conviction should be an inspiration to everyone...I just hope she survives the smears and hate thats coming soon to every TV near Massachusetts...