2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumMichael Tomasky: The Most Powerful Democrat in America
Michael Tomasky
The Most Powerful Democrat in America
Elizabeth Warrens weekend heroics have endeared her even more to the Democratic base, and its time Hillary started getting worried.
Are future historians going to look back on the past weekend as the one in which Elizabeth Warren took over the Democratic Party? She didnt win the fight she led over the weekend to have the provision weakening the Dodd-Frank law stripped out of the spending bill, but she was never going to win that vote. What she did win, though, was the ever-more intense ardor of her growing number of liberal fans. Theyd march with her over hot coals. Theres no other Democrat in the country with that kind of following.
So its hardly impossible that Warren could come to be the leader of the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton, who hasnt been cutting an inspiring figure across the landscape of late, makes a few more dead broke missteps. Warren decides to run after all. The two go head to head through the primaries, but somehow Warren taps into Democrats emotional nerve-endings in a way Clinton simply cant, and she becomes the nominee. And then...
As I said, thats hardly an insane scenario, and its one Clinton should heed, and heed pretty quickly. The general assumption has been that Warren wont challenge Clinton, and thats probably correct. But Warren is well aware of how adoring and numerous her followers are and how much leverage that gives her in the party, and what she wants is to push the party to embrace her economic views. I doubt she really expects that she can be elected president, and I wonder if she even would really want the gig (shes shown practically no interest in foreign policy, and that is destined to be by far the hardest and most hair-graying part of the job). But if she becomes convinced that challenging Clinton is the bestor onlyway for her to maximize her leverage, then she might just do it.
Surely, after this last week, she cant be blamed if shes feeling a bit more intoxicated. After watching her astounding call to break up Citigroup, her admirers have been rushing forth with pleas and petitions for her to run. Referring to Citis role in the lobbying effort to get that anti Dodd-Frank provision put in the spending bill Congress just passed, Warren said on the Senate floor last Friday: If a financial institution has become so big and so powerful that it can hold the entire country hostage, that alone is reason enough to break them up. Enough is enough. Enough is enough, with Wall Street insiders getting key position after key position, and the kind of cronyism that we have seen in the executive branch. Enough is enough, with Citigroup passing eleventh-hour deregulatory provisions that nobody takes ownership over but everybody will come to regret.
more...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/15/the-most-powerful-democrat-in-america.html
Scuba
(53,475 posts)The cognitive dissonance is reeking.
Cal33
(7,018 posts)Cal33
(7,018 posts)most powerful Democrat in America. She has the integrity, honesty, and courage to point
directly at the wrongs going on in our country, and say what is wrong, and name those who
are committing the wrongs. And in addition, what the right thing to do is.
Sanders and Grayson have also done so, but somehow, Democrats at large have responded
to them not as much as they have to Warren. There is that "something" about her that
inspires and appeals to more people than any other Democratic leader of late. She is
reminiscent of a Kennedy, a Roosevelt.
The Democratic senators recognize it, too. When was the last time that they have created
a new and special leadership role for a junior senator with only two years' experience? I
don't know of any other.
Elizabeth Warren is the right person to come along at the right time to halt the downfall of
our nation into ignominy, and to begin the long and hard climb back on the trail to where we
used to be a nation that was honored and respected worldwide.
She is already doing this right now - and as a senator!!!