Chris Bowers, the DailyKos Campaign Director, has picked up on David’s call for Elizabeth Warren to run for Senate. (A call, of course, made even earlier by Ethan Porter, editor of Democracy! A Journal of Ideas, on the Globe’s Op-Ed page, and reviewed by Rob Anderson in the Globe’s “mysterious blog-like thing” The Angle.)
Good for Chris and for DKos. Warren would be an excellent challenger to Brown.
If Democrats are going to win in 2012, we need to do a better job connecting with the millions of Americans who are suffering real economic hardship. This requires a populist economic message that separates us from both Republicans and Wall Street, and also a record that backs up that message with results.
That’s why at Daily Kos we think Elizabeth Warren would be an excellent Democratic nominee to challenge Republican Scott Brown in the 2012 Massachusetts Senate election.
We’re starting a campaign to draft her into the race. Join that campaign by signing our petition in support of Warren now. We’ll deliver the petition to Warren in person, along with your supportive comments. …
Last week, we polled our Massachusetts members to see what they thought about the idea of drafting Elizabeth Warren. The response was overwhelming: 89% supported a campaign to draft her into the race.
You can sign their petition here. Rep. Dan Winslow’s preferred candidate Judge Nancy Gertner may just have to wait (just kidding, Rep. Winslow thinks Judge Gertner should consider a run for Congress, not Senate).
I ask because it seems that Elizabeth Warren has almost zero. Somebody like a mid/big city mayor or Congressman surely starts with more. Perhaps that doesn’t matter much?
I think it matters a lot. If you don’t have it, you have to build it and, usually, pay for it.
for less than one term
Well played sir, well played.
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p>Frankly, I suspect the Setti has more name recognition than Elizabeth.
I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic, but I don’t think Setti Warren has much name recognition at all, especially outside of the towns bordering Newton.
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p>He’s has never been on the Daily Show, Colbert Report, Maher’s show, Maddow’s show, various Fox News shows, and regularly covered in the NYT, WashPo, Journal, etc. (even Vogue has covered her) like Elizabeth Warren has.
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p>Setti is dynamic from what I’ve heard (never seen him), but he has only received 11,233 votes in his political career. I don’t think he (or Kim Driscoll) is going to be able to get the attention and money needed to beat Brown.
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Elizabeth Warren is virtually unknown to Massachusetts voters…
I don’t have a single friend who doesn’t know who Elizabeth Warren is. Maybe that’s because my friends are mainly young professionals in Boston and Cambridge, who knows.
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p>Is there a poll or something backing up what you think is her near-zero name recognition? I think she has pretty strong name recognition, especially among active Democratic voters and progressives.
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p>If she announced in the Fall, after she’s done setting up the CFPB, I have no doubt that she would regularly be on the front page of the two papers and also raising significantly more money than Brown – from within and without the commonwealth. Could you imagine the money that would come in from Harvard faculty and alums (especially law school alums) as well as lawyers in general?
at ABI conventions
The Warren’s would probably tie at under 2% statewide voter poll at this point.
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p>Name recognition costs money. Brown has about 6 million (and more where that came from) in the bank and does not have to pay for name recognition at all. The Democratic candidate will have to pay for name recognition across the state. Food for thought…Hmmmm…to raise 6 million would require starting TODAY and raising about 10,000 per day, every day between now and Nov 1, 2012. And on the days you didn’t, that goal would be added to your next day’s goal….And that’s just to get to where Scott Brown already is. I think Doug Rubin needs to look for another very wealthy sacrificial lamb who’s willing to self-finance. it’s a sad state of affairs.
about Elizabeth Warren’s ability to raise money. She is well plugged-in to the highest echelons of the national Democratic party. I doubt she could outraise Brown, but she would be fine money-wise. Consequently, I’m also not worried about her name recognition. If she jumps in, she’ll have wall-to-wall free media, as well as lots of paid media. That won’t be a problem.
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p>The bigger question is whether she wants to put in the 16-hour days and the retail politicking that winning this race will require. On that, I have no idea.
How much name recognition did the Governor have when he threw his hat into the ring?
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p>Name recognition is definitely important, but let’s not get carried away and start dismissing people who aren’t already household names. just sayin.
Deval Patrick went out and earned his caucus, primary and general election victories starting out with zero name recognition. He started early because he wanted the job.
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p>Warren has undoubtedly has been advised about what it would take to get there and so far has expressed no interest.
An organized movement to draft a candidate is usually a pretty good sign that said candidate is interested in being “drafted.” If they’re not interested, they make that perfectly clear. Silence generally indicates a calculated attempt to appear as if they aren’t directly or indirectly involved in the draft movement or, at worst, a bit of fence sitting while surrogates test the waters.
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p>The fact that Warren hasn’t repudiated this “draft” movement speaks volumes in and of itself.
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p>Just my opinion, of course. And if I’m proved wrong, it won’t be the first time. đŸ™‚
would welcome Warren throwing her hat in the ring, whether we support her yet or not, I prefer an actual candidate with actual in-state supporters over a hypothetical candidate supported primarily by out of staters.
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p>The draft Rachel Maddow campaign went on for many weeks, organized exclusively by Bay Staters, and actually got some traction before she said she was not running. Warren’s “draft” campaign is only a day old.
OK, I love Warren. Every lib loves Warren. She’s great.
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p>What does she know about Massachusetts issues? What does she know about local industries? Health care? What about Gateway Cities? Fishing? Western Mass? And does she care?
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p>The basic theme that’s set up for her — that corporate power is flattening every other public interest — is a super-strong one, and something I can get behind. She’s charismatic, smart, and serious. And she certainly seems like she’d be an excellent campaigner, on a temperamental level. But I’m guessing that she’d really have to ramp up her knowledge of local stuff in order to a. get elected, and b. be the kind of Senator we’ve gotten used to having in Kennedy and Kerry.
good staffers make that kind of stuff possible and done well. Not to take away from Mssrs. Kennedy and Kerry, but the fact is that their staffers deserve much of the credit, and I’ll add at least one former Kennedy staffer now works for Brown.
I’m glad the DC folks have found someone they like who has some connection to Massachusetts (who isn’t Rachel Maddow). But parachuting somebody whose phone number they have into a state already spilling over with hard-working Democrats seems to be a classic Beltway solution. It’s not as if we’re Utah over here.
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p>The whole idea of a draft is to fill a hole in your team from up and coming talent. Massachusetts doesn’t need a draft as we have one of the strongest farm systems in the country.
Well, one would have thought so. But next year is not really looking so great. I could definitely get behind Markey … but I don’t really see him running. Meehan, maybe, and he’d be OK with me. Capuano screams local pol to me — scrappy, raw, not all that easy on the ears — and I think he’s too compromised by Murtha-ness to be a decent candidate. Lynch hell no, of course.
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p>Who you got?
Our alleged “farm system” is looking pretty lame to me right now. I don’t see much of an indication that any of the sitting congressfolk are even going to run, much less that they stand a decent chance of winning. Remember, Mike Capuano, who has a lot of supporters hereabouts, got smoked by the Martha Coakley. It wasn’t even close. I like Tim Murray, and I think he’d have a shot, but he’s running for Governor in 2014 and has shown zero interest in the Senate race.
We’re spoiled rotten. We have an abundance of acceptable candidates.
Many Bay Staters are making great into the enemy of good…and letting the Beltway muscle in as a consequence.
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p>If Warren wants to run, fine. If anyone wants to coronate her, they can stop thinking that way right now.
By farm system I mean somebody who will win, not somebody who sets everyone’s hearts a flutter.
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p>In terms of would quite possibly win but won’t run, Menino and Frank. Tim Murray. Deval. Joe Kennedy. The always-underestimated Terry Murray. Capuano. Why don’t we hear more about Scott Lang? Andrea Cabral? The junior Senator from Delaware is a former county guy. So is our newest Congressman. Other freshman were barely known.
…but I’m not convinced she isn’t even better for the country right where she is setting up the new consumer protection agency and hopefully being its first Director once it is formed.
but I think once the director is confirmed, she’s out of her job. I understand that she’s working her ass off in advance of a July 21 deadline when CFPB becomes operational. I’d love to see her nominated, but I think the chance for that has passed.
…on why you don’t think she is still a leading, if not THE leading, candidate for this post?
I think she would already be the nominee if she was going to get it. My understanding of the agreement she made with Obama is that she would get to set it up in the way she wanted and then would leave. That would avoid the 6-9 month process of not being able to work on it and not being able to talk to the public while her nomination was tortuously making its way through the Senate. I think she has said publicly that this is the role she and the President prefer.
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p>Of course, things could change and she could be nominee, but from what I understand, she doesn’t plan to be director and the President doesn’t plan to nominate her. The fact that we have no nominee yet could mean a number of things. It could be that Warren will be the nominee and they are just waiting for her to get as much work done as possible before having to deal with confirmation. Another reason could be that a named nominee would put a cloud over the work Warren is doing right now – if we have a nominee, why is this other person still setting things up in the way she wants? Or it could be that they are still searching for the right person.
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p>And, frankly, because Warren’s so good at her work, she may be unconfirmable. No Repub will vote for her because they won’t vote for anything, and the crappy, corporatist Dems may be scared to confirm her.
Furthermore, word today is that the GOP is slashing the consumer agency in its “budget.” So the agency, as good an idea as it is, may end up being a lot less effective than it could or should be.