Warren uses liberal clout selectively in new role
WASHINGTON — The fervor has hardly abated around Massachusetts’ celebrity senator, Elizabeth Warren, a fact made crystal clear one recent afternoon when a man stormed her after she delivered a fiery speech on Social Security benefits and breathlessly exclaimed, “I can’t believe I’m with you.”
But Warren’s own view of her role on Capitol Hill, and her strategy for winning influence, is much tamer and more incremental than her fans, or her enemies, might suspect.
She is certainly fanning her celebrity in the liberal activist community to further her agenda. But nearly five months into her tenure, she is using her voice for pinpoint strikes, rather than declarations of war —“looking for the place that I might be able to move the needle, even a little,” she said in an interview.
It’s a calibrated strategy that involves keeping quiet on many issues while using clout within her core sphere of admirers for bursts of attention on select causes. Warren, still a rookie with little official power in the tradition-bound Senate, has avoided using her megaphone on many of the hot topics in Washington —immigration, the IRS scandal, the war on terror — instead focusing on financial regulation, middle-class debt burden, and home-state issues such as the fishing industry.
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