Yesterday, Elizabeth Warren assumed control of the Democratic Party [View all]

[MannyGoldstein]

Yesterday, Elizabeth Warren assumed control of the Democratic Party in a bloodless coup. I'm not even sure she was trying.

I can't prove it, but I've had a sneaking suspicion for a few days that Elizabeth Warren was about to take the reins of our party, and yesterday's announcement has helped fuel my fire.

At this point, I think that few of us can credibly argue that the bulk of elected "Democrats" are behaving well, or performing well. In some cases, they're just grabbing as much cash as they can with both hands; but in many other cases, they just don't know what else to do.  They are very smart people, very socially adroit, who've gotten ahead in life by doing what's been asked of them by wealthy people wearing impressive clothing. They eventually became politicians, in charge of important stuff.

Excellent Sheep.

But no matter how excellent the sheep, they are still sheep, in need of a shepherd.  The wealthiest people in the most impressive clothing for the last few decades have been the Wall Street crew, with high-pressure hoses of cash to spray down anyone with the ability to spray back even more cash. So the excellent sheep followed Wall Street's shepherds, passing law after law aimed at grabbing cash from the 99% and handing it to their shepherds, while taking a nice chunk for themselves and their families.

And the American Dream was destroyed.

And here we are.

I don't think that the wholesale destruction of our country has gone unnoticed by our Democratic Excellent Sheep. They must surely realize that six years ago they held the Presidency and both house of Congress, and had a mandate from America to fix the @#$%ing thing; and that now they have no  houses of Congress, a near-impotent Presidency, and things have only gotten worse for the 99%. I suspect that somewhere, deep inside, most of them feel terrible about it all when they lie in bed at night, or when they pass a homeless person begging for money to feed their kids.

They are powerful. They are adroit. But they are utterly clueless as to the way forward.

Here's the thing that makes Elizabeth Warren special, the thing that made my brain boing like a rubber band when I first noticed her years ago: Warren is as smart and adroit as any person alive - that's how one gets to be a Harvard Law School professor. But unlike the Excellent Sheep, she also has a big heart, a big vision, and one hell of a punch. In a few short years, that difficult woman from Massachusetts has set up an agency to protect the 99% from financial predation, publicly told Geithner and company to take a flying @#$% at a rolling donut, beat a popular incumbent senator like a drum, fended off yet another attempt to unleash Summers on the 99%, got financial regulators to start thinking about doing their jobs, changed the conversation in Democratic circles, and won the hearts of FDR Democrats.

I don't think that these things are lost on the Excellent Sheep.

I suspected that something was up last week, when three days after the elections Warren published an op-ed in the Washington Post instructing the President to not do what he does best, which is caving in to Republicans before they even ask in the bizarre hope that they'll somehow like him one of these days. Instead, Warren wrote, he must get up and do the right thing for working Americans.

A Democratic Senator instructed a Democratic President, in public: when was the last time something like that happened? Something interesting was up: Warren clearly felt like she had serious mojo.

Then, yesterday, Sen. Warren was given some sort of leadership position in the Democratic Party, she's now their "envoy to Liberals" or some such thing. It's not clear what that means. But, this unclarity may actually make the intent clear: I suspect that Democratic leadership, particularly Harry Reid, just want an excuse to bring a senator with only two years of tenure into their Mt. Olympus. Reid's had enough of the bull@#$%, and wans the horror to stop. He understands that Warren knows the path forward, and he wants her to lead.

And Warren being Warren, she'll grab a machete and plow through the dark jungle ahead until we find bright light and good drinking water. You totally know she will.

Great things ahead, I think. I could be wrong, but let's hope I'm not.

Excelsior!

(Copyright note: I gave myself permission to copy this, in its entirety, from my new blog which has almost nothing on it yet and will probably get abandoned in a few weeks, but I'll give it a go.)