WARREN SWITCHED FROM REPUBLICAN TO DEMOCRAT AFTER WATCHING BANKS DESTROY FAMILIES

[Omaha Steve]

Story below

Donate to Warren for POTUS with our DU ActBlue link here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/duforwarren



BY SHANE CROUCHER ON 4/12/19 AT 8:33 AM EDT

A former colleague of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Senator Elizabeth Warren said she shifted from conservative to liberal in a Damascene conversion after years of watching bankrupt families pushed to the brink by big banks.

Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is a former finance professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Texas at Austin. But for many years she was a Republican, until the mid-1990s, when she registered as a Democrat.

The 69-year-old is an expert on bankruptcy law and worked with the Obama administration to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011, a regulator now under threat because the Trump administration wants to scrap it.

"She really did have a ‘Road to Damascus’ conversion when she saw the bankrupt consumers really were suffering—forced into bankruptcy by illness, firing or divorce—and not predators,” Calvin Johnson, a law professor and former colleague of Warren’s at UT Austin in the 1980s, told Politico.

FULL story: https://www.newsweek.com/elizabeth-warren-2020-republican-democrat-bankruptcy-1394282

[stonecutter357]

1. after years of watching bankrupt families pushed to the brink by big banks. after years of watchin?

[stonecutter357]

3. I don't do whataboutism . the OP is not about Joe Biden .

[MaryMagdaline]

5. As they say, converts are often the most devout of all believers

She has been an ardent and true liberal since her conversion. I was raised as a liberal. Who knows if I would have found my way out of the bubble if I had been born into a conservative Oklahoma family.

(BTW it amazes me that Oklahoma has produced 3 of our greatest populists ... Elizabeth Warren, Woody Guthrie, Will Rogers. Something in the water.)

[frazzled]

4. What has bothered me about this

is the sense that it was money issues alone that sparked her enlightenment. I’m about the same age as Elizabeth, so it strikes home to me that all the things I cared about in my young and middle adulthood (aside from unfair economic issues ... though my concerns had more to do on that count with wages and workers’ rights, tenants rights, etc.) went unnoticed by her, apparently: the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, “women’s lib,” ... Nixon, Reagan, etc.

I just can’t relate to someone who throughout the turbulent sixties and into the seventies, eighties, and mid-nineties, chose to ignore important social and foreign policy issues of the times to vote to support Republican regimes.

[MaryMagdaline]

6. She saw that the economic system was rigged because she was in that system.

That opened her eyes to the rest of the system (racial inequality, etc). How does one ever justify being blind once you see? Maybe that’s why she’s on a mission ... she knows she has to make up for lost time.

What I am absolutely sure about is that she was not a “go with the flow” politician. She saw what was wrong; worked on the inside to change things; and then ran for office to be a voice for economic fairness. She is known for her principles more than for herself.

[backtoblue]

9. Thank you for saying this

She's got compassion to go along with her intelligence. There's been some other major politicians who were once repubs. They learned how the people were getting the short end so they made a decision based on their conscience.

And thank goodness they're on the people's side!

[MaryMagdaline]

10. Yes! We're lucky she is on our side

[dalton99a]

7. She wasn't born an aristocrat, and she was trying to make ends meet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren

Warren lived in Norman until she was 11 years old, when the family moved to Oklahoma City.[11] When she was 12, her father, a salesman at Montgomery Ward,[11] had a heart attack, which led to many medical bills as well as a pay cut because he could not do his previous work.[8] He later worked as a custodian for an apartment building.[14] Eventually, the family's car was repossessed because they failed to make loan payments. To help the family finances, her mother found work in the catalog order department at Sears.[8] When she was 13, Warren started waiting tables at her aunt's restaurant.[15][16]

Warren became a star member of the debate team at Northwest Classen High School and won the state high school debating championship. She also won a debate scholarship to George Washington University (GWU) at the age of 16.[8] She initially aspired to be a teacher, but left GWU after two years in 1968 to marry Jim Warren, whom she met in high school.[15][8][17]

Warren and her husband moved to Houston, where he was employed by IBM.[8][18] She enrolled in the University of Houston and graduated in 1970 with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech pathology and audiology.[14][19]

The Warrens moved to New Jersey when Jim received a job transfer. She soon became pregnant and decided to remain at home to care for their daughter.[20] After the child turned two, Warren enrolled in Rutgers Law School at Rutgers University–Newark.[20] Shortly before graduating in 1976, Warren became pregnant with their second child. She received her J.D. and passed the bar examination.[17][20]

The couple had two children, Amelia and Alexander, before they divorced in 1978.[8][21] Two years later, Warren married Bruce H. Mann, a law professor, but kept her first husband's surname.[21][22] She also has grandchildren.[23]

[frazzled]

13. Neither was I

And I’m well aware of her biography. But that’s not the point. The point (to me) is that liberal Democratic politics should always extend beyond one’s own interests and needs. It’s about the common good, and it extends beyond any single issue. I appreciate her interest in bankruptcy (that’s her legal field). But the story of government policy doesn’t end there.

I’m still bothered.

[stonecutter357]

8. +1000

[ecstatic]

12. That really bothers me as well. Thing is, she did notice civil rights,

but in a weird cynical way. She went out of her way to misrepresent her racial background--convinced that it would somehow give her a leg up. Because Native Americans have had it so easy.

That being said, I will support her if she's the nominee, but I will not support her during the primaries.

[Hortensis]

11. She's one of our most effective progressive leaders AND

among those senators who today are economically toward the right edge of the liberal senate caucus. Not conservative, but less liberal than average.

As for being Republican before, tending to be socially liberal but economically conservative is a very common mixture, especially in women. She's proof that many conservatives do believe in progressive government, as did President Eisenhower, proudly.

I especially admire her for the strength and good character that caused her to not just leave the Republican Party but to join the Democratic to work for the progressive goals she believes in. That undoubtedly cost her former friends and connections.

Would that even 1% of her fellow Republicans had her good character and strong convictions. If only the many hypocrites who left the Republican Party to call themselves independent but vote Republican anyway had a fraction of her guts and honesty with herself. That's sadly rare these days, though.

[dsc]

16. there is no evidence she was a social liberal back then

She was a Texas Republican.

[Hortensis]

17. Sure there is. Plus, the nation's known her for years now.

Social liberalism and conservatism are inner, personality characteristics. She brought hers with her when she changed party labels.

[riverine]

14. This is puzzling

forced into bankruptcy by illness, firing or divorce

How are those the bank's fault?

I suspect she is playing populist and a certain segment of the left just hates banks.

[Omaha Steve]

15. Because the banks called in any loans etc they couldn't pay

[riverine]

18. They should.

Don't pay the loan then take the asset.

It is called "collateral"

definition = something pledged as security for repayment of a loan, to be forfeited in the event of a default.

It is not the bank's fault if the borrower lost their job or got sick.