ID’ing problems and offering solutions is rare and risky for pols. Yet it worked for the one who became Gov. Deval Patrick and may for would-be U.S. Senator candidate Elizabeth Warren.
Her stump speech and and public responses to questions have gotten sharper, more detailed since her summer listening tour before announcing. Last evening at Florian Hall in Boston’s Dorchester, she was stronger than ever.
The following, including her wrap-up sound clip, is a cross-post from Marry in Massachusetts.
For such a thin woman, Elizabeth Warren’s handshake is astonishingly strong. It matches her intense gaze, focused attention and full, clear responses to each person — a.k.a. voter — she touches. She couples her sincerity and energy to vast knowledge and analysis.There’s no political or economic question you could ask that she hasn’t already considered.
Last evening at Florian Hall, I saw and heard her engage about 300 as a group and then one at a time. She owned the room every second.
Disclaimer: At Left Ahead, several candidates for the U.S. Senate seat up in 2012 joined us. That includes two still in the race, Marisa Defranco and Warren. We found the former powerful and with a strong platform, and were even more impressed with the latter.
I’ve heard and seen Warren personally a few times since last summer, before she officially announced. Of course, she’s also been on talk shows as well as in media interviews. I went last night to catch the evolution of her stump speech and how she worked a larger group. Afterward, we chatted just a minute. When I complimented her on the advances in her presentation, she gave that winning little grin and said, “Yup. I’ve been working on it.”
She’s gone far beyond the too-often-repeated phrases like growing up “on the ragged edge of the middle class.” She’s ready to bring values campaigning to a contest and national conscience where values has been a code word for excluding, hindering and harming other Americans.
Click the under-2-minute clip below to hear her wrap-up last evening. The previous hour had detail and background, but here she rouses the crowd with vision of both a past and future America. Her values include opportunity for all and clear steps how to make that happen. As she put it, “What kind of people are we and what kind of future are we going to build?…This is our moment in history!”
Listening to her, I noticed the obvious, that she won’t have to lie or generalize. Unfortunately for Sen. Scott Brown, in his two years since winning the special election, he has not advanced laws to help our troubled nation. In a clear record, he voted down all three jobs bills to protect the tax breaks for those making over $1 million a year. Moreover, in interviews and public appearances, he is wont to say he isn’t sure about this or that.
Head to head, there’d be no competition. I’d bet that she has 30 IQ points on him, carries a huge bag of knowledge, and is plain about both the problems and the solutions for what ails America.
Yet in this first real test in a post-Citizens United world, we know the mailboxes, email boxes, doorknobs, and most of all airwaves and cable will drip with political venom. It’s highly likely she’ll be the Dem to run in November. There’s certainty that her supporters will do nasty work in revealing Brown’s record, and no doubt that the other side will be far worse. I guess that the Brown side will have five to ten times as many millions to attack her. I don’t have to guess from what we’ve seen already that his supporters won’t bother with truth or anything verifiable. Theirs will be emotion, particularly fear based, lowest-common-denominator spots.
The best news for her side has two plies. She’s tough, can take the attacks, and will call out the lies. Also, she has a clear platform of short-term and long-range goals, with the ways to achieve them. Brown? No, nothing. The cliché is that attack ads work, but it’s also true they don’t always decide the result.
Refined Roughness
Warren’s also been working on presenting her personal story. Brown can stretch and fake his upbringing (absentee executive dad, Tufts’s education, and very brief money troubles for his divorced mom). Warren has real experiences that most of America, far less privileged than Brown, can relate to personally.
Her mother answered phones at Sears when her maintenance-crew dad had a disabling heart attack. She worked as a baby sitter at 9, waitress at 13, and earned her way through public university for teaching and law degrees — with a kid, her own divorce, and a remarriage. She and her hubby teach at Harvard Law, but as she put it, she “scratched my way” there.
She also has compelling sibling tales of one brother who had 288 Vietnam combat missions, another who has been a serial entrepreneur (whom Republicans would call a “job creator” except he actually did that).
She has actual struggles overcome. She can even note that she literally hung out her attorney’s shingle in front of her house when she passed the bar, nine months pregnant and thus unemployable. She kept the shingle to remind her of what determination can bring.
So, from the listening tours in the living rooms of MA, she’s watched and heard what voters care about. As she put it last night when she started out personal, “I think you have the right to know the heart of anyone who’s going to represent you.”
Past and Future
Warren has the other personal advantage of being a boomer. She grew up when the positive effects of economic reforms and laws made for the commonweal were still strong. She could work her way through public college and earn out her loans by teaching, for example.
She does not gloss over that period either. She says that women, blacks, Latinos and others were not yet welcome in many places and to many jobs. She notes that nation had laid the track with white men that then led to opening up more education and employment opportunity for all…until the terrible lawmaking from the 1980s that nibbled and chomped away at the post-Depression stability.
Refreshingly, she speaks of the related values. She wants us to stop subsidizing “those who have already made it,” and instead invest in education, jobs and infrastructure. She provided a list of specific investments that would support those, thus bring back the ideal of an America of opportunity for all that she grew up knowing.
I have no doubt that in debates, or those dreadful debate-like-objects known as forums, she’d skunk Brown. She has specific proposals for clear aims. She accomplished more in her appointed position that led to the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau than Brown has in his entire MA and U.S. Senatorial career.
Yet debates won’t be the only factors in this election. Attack-ad weight will surely go to Brown, but she’s smarter, more credible and far more humane than he and will win the personal appearances. Fortunately for her, she had only the commonwealth and not the whole nation to cover for this one. She also has an amazing level of energy.
It’s possible that MA voters will go with the incumbent, fearing change and fantasizing that the always failing GOP economics lies really will work this time. I wouldn’t bet on it. She’s hot stuff.
Would she have voted for it?
Anybody know?
…whether or not the conservative Senate leaders who are helping to fund her campaign had enough votes to pass the NDAA without her help.
Provided there were enough voted lined up to the pass the NDAA, then of course, she would be given permission to courageously vote against it.
Her website does not say a word about the fundamental progressive issue of our time: the corrosive impact of big financial interests on our system of democracy.
Also, has she expressed an opinion regarding the continued existence of the six “too big to fail” banks? She talks a lot about consumer protection, but what about systemic protection?
…to find something about Warren to complain about. Can you not tell that Warren is likely not a fan of either the amount of money in politics or to-big-to-fail banks? Plus, does she really strike you as the kind of person who will seek “permission” from anyone before voting however she darn well pleases?
…and, I love the general thrust of Elizabeth Warren’s message, and I also think she’s an amazing, wonderful person, but to my ears she is missing the mark with her priorities.
To take one example, a few weeks ago she outlined a three-step plan to hold Wall Street accountable that includes confirmation of a Consumer Protection chief, prosecution of Wall Street crimes at the state-level, and full funding of oversight agencies. While these steps are all very well and good — they really miss the mark — because her underlying assumption is that Too Big Too Fail is okay.
The reality is that our financial system is hardly any less flawed than it was three years ago — so the main focus shouldn’t be on protecting the consumer within this bad system, it should be on a full-scale overhaul of the system. Otherwise, we are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Likewise, the focus shouldn’t be on merely litigating the crimes of the past — it should be on breaking up the Too Big To Fail banks that continue to threaten the entire global economy right now.
The bottom line is that all of her positions lack any serious critique of the failed, corporate-sponsored Democratic party platform of the past 20 years. Nevertheless, I love her, and I hope she wins, but I just wish she would blaze a more substantive, more progressive path to Washington.
“…her underlying assumption is that Too Big Too Fail is okay.”
Please link to anything supporting this assertion. She has actually said something very different:
Kirth:
I wrote that “her underlying assumption is that Too Big To Fail is okay”
You provided a quote where she was asked: “Should the government break up big banks?” She answered: “No…”
In effect, her position is, let the banks bring us to the precipice of disaster once again — and, when we find ourselves in the moment of peril, that’s when we will break them up.”
I take that to mean Too Big To Fail is okay. I guess you could say I am calling for preemptive action against the six Too Big To Fail banks, but she is saying that if they do it again, next time we won’t let them get away with it.
She’s OK with too big to fail because she says they should fail when they screw up? I have no idea how you can come to that conclusion.
This is Karl Rove’s genius. Subtly inserting in to the largely naive public’s “understanding” of Democrats complete falsehoods. See: ( http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57339840-503544/crossroads-elizabeth-warren-responsible-for-bank-bailouts/ )
The lie that that Elizabeth Warren is actually responsible for and a promoter of the “too big too fail” policies is outright spin. The idea, apparently, is that she was appointed to oversee the Bush Administration’s TARP bailout plan. So, somehow, it’s all her fault. Ridiculous.
As early as 2009, Warren was already saying things like “”There are a lot of ways to regulate ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions: break them up, regulate them more closely, tax them more aggressively, insure them, and so on. And I’m totally in favor of increased regulatory scrutiny of these banks. But those are all regulatory tools. Regulations, over time, fail. I want to see Congress focus more on a credible system for liquidating the banks that are considered too big to fail.”
By “liquidating”, Warren means “breaking up.” She has promoted exactly what you criticize her for not promoting, bigmike. Look in to it a little more. She’s blazing quite the substantive, progressive path. I have high hopes that she will be more Bernie Sanders than Chuck Schumer.
and that my concerns are misplaced.
Recall that Chuck Schumer was one of the Washington power brokers who were involved in EW’s decision to run.
I simply read her Priorities page, along with her plan for dealing with Wall Street, and there was no hit that she was in favor of breaking up the six Too Big To Fail banks.
Also, just examine the text of the quote you provided. She says, “there are a lot of ways to deal with Too Big To Fail banks.” That statement itself if contradictory on its face. If the bank is in fact too big to fail, then there’s only one way to deal with it: break it up.
Warren also said this (much more succinctly) in an earlier November 2009 interview: “”Until we have a credible liquidation threat, we don’t have capitalism in America. It just doesn’t work without that.”
( http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/14/elizabeth-warren-until-we_n_285694.htm )
In the sense her longer answer is internally contradictory, it goes more to her rhetorical style than anything else. Warren is setting up a straw man in the earlier part of her answer: regulations. In essence, she’s saying sure regulations can be tried, that’s probably better than nothing but ultimately they will fail.
For clarity, here’s the full question and answer from this December 2009 interview: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/12/07/reining-in-and-reigning-over-wall-street.html
Those answers from 2009 are all well and nice, but it’s 2012, and our nation’s future is being seriously threatened by the six Too Big To Fail banks (PMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and Bank of America).
I am offering criticism of her stated campaign priorities and her published plan for dealing with Wall Street, and you are parsing words and offering your interpretations from interviews from 2009.
Also, let me please reiterate, I want her to win, I want her to do well, but the amount of money that she is raising means that we should look closely at what she is saying on a substantive level.
Looking closely is all well and good; I’m engaged in this debate, right?
But you are making the perfect then enemy of the very, very good here.
Elizabeth Warren is one of the most progressive Senate candidates ever and has an unprecedentedly strong background in national economic policy. I respectfully suggest that it is you who is parsing her words (and pretending that a 400 word op-ed is all she has to say on financial reform) to imply she is fare more moderate on economic issues than history shows.
One more recent quote on my side:
– “Elizabeth Warren would have been my preferred leader of that (consumer watchdog) agency. But she is running, and I think running well, for the U.S. Senate and I hope she wins.” (Bernie Sanders December 2011
(Sanders – the lead proponent of breaking up the big six banks – also led the charge for Warren’s appointment and in a July 2011 letter, Sanders said Warren was a “Champion of open, honest and responsive government” and that “No one in our nation could do a better job.”)
and tell me how Elizabeth Warren is more progressive. DeFranco has a lot to say about multiple issues on her campaign web site Click on the Issues drop-down choices.
DeFranco is more progressive than Warren. I meant viable candidates.
On what basis would you call Elizabeth Warren one of the most progressive Senate candidates ever?
Today’s Democratic party is by and large a corporate-sponsored, top-down organization that protects the interests of Wall Street and generally stands for the priorities of moderate Republican like Bob Dole or George H.W. Bush. Therefore, any truly progressive candidate would stand in opposition to today’s Democratic party.
Elizabeth Warren does not stand in opposition to today’s Democratic party. Ergo, she could not possibly be a progressive candidate for Senate.
You make a good point (the most progressive candidates do stand in opposition to the Democratic Party in many ways). But I meant *viable* candidates for a high-ranking position like U.S. Senate. And by saying “one of” I purposely meant to reference the rare exceptions like the Vermont Progressive Party & U.S. Senator Sanders who do stand proudly in opposition to today’s Democratic Party.
This piece did not analyze her platform, goals and methods. I have that in the works, although it will take some preparation.
Short-term, Anyone with narrow questions on specific bills or topics should certainly go to one or more of her many public appearances. She loves answering specific questions, from the stage or hand to hand and eye to eye. I’ll almost guarantee that she’s thought about any big topic you’d bring up.
More generally, she started with a vision (remember when pols had those?). That comes with many short-term and long-range goals and steps to achieve them.
Consider the vision first. It uses the economic and other policy advances following the Great Depression. That included financial rules to prevent abuse of markets and customers, as well as speculation that would require federal support if the bet was wrong (sound familiar?). It also meant investment in public higher education, jobs programs, and infrastructure.
She speaks of the half century of relative economic stability and of growth in real income for individuals and families. It was a healthy, prospering middle class, one anyone could aspire too, particularly once civil-rights legislation kicked in.
Her planks largely relate to recapturing that zeitgeist (my term). Financial controls have eroded or been removed. Congressional spending is on the wrong things. Tax laws are wacky, benefiting only the few who have gotten wealthy already. The middle and lower classes have little hope and lose ground.
So, Warren uses herself as just one of millions who benefited from the previous national aspirations and POTUS/Congress values. Yes, she’s opposed to current campaign funding. Yes, she knows capital gains need to be taxed like ordinary income. Certainly, she calls for shifting winding-down-two-wars funding to education, infrastructure and jobs.
Each of those has related laws that need overhauling to reflect what she knows were the post-Great Depression values that served the nations so well for 50 years. She has a list and how they map to the values of the America in which she grew and prospered.
I’ll get more specific as I break it down. I’ll likely attend more of her sessions. I’m sure we’ll have her on Left Ahead again.
Interestingly enough last night, she was in front of why-are-you-running questions. She burrowed down to the why would you want to be the most junior of all in a Senate ruled by seniority? She pointed to the dogged struggle that led to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as one measure that she will not be deterred when she’s sure she knows what has to be done.
I’ll do my part in analysis. I hope all you will go to her, DeFranco and Brown’s road shows too. Warren is a marvel of the modern age, rooted in post-WWII history and economics. Imagine 100 of her in the Senate.
Fair enough. I must admit your enthusiasm is warm and contagious. It all sounds quite wonderful.
But, if she’s opposed to current campaign funding, why doesn’t she set a positive example for how you fund a modern campaign for public office? I know, I know, many will say: “but she could not compete with Scott Brown if she limited her funding.” To that I say: if you can’t figure out a way to win an election without using huge amounts of money, then you’ll never figure out a way to make progress on any of your lovely priorities in the United States Senate.
Last night, she did answer a question about where her money is coming from. She said that about 94% or 95% is plain folk, under $100 per with some down to $5.
However, she noted that she had a limited amount from financial sorts, not the millions Brown has gotten and seeks, but some. She claimed that these folk told her in effect that they realized supporting her would be short-term harmful to their interests, but that the current economic rules and policies are not long-term sustainable.
That raises my cynic antenna, but I can have her on Left Ahead to discuss that unless I hear it before elsewhere.
It’s really cool that you get to dig into these issues on Left Ahead.
However, here’s where my mind goes when I think about her statement from last night…
Suppose 95% of her donations are from people giving $100 or less. And let’s be generous and call it $100 even per person. That’s 95 x $100 = $9,500.
Now, suppose her other 5% of contributors, people maxing out at $2,500 per individual, couples maxing out at $5,000 total, PACs, SuperPACs, Leadership PACs, and lobbyists. Let’s be conservative and suppose in this post-Citizens United world, they all average $2,500 each. That’s 5 x $2,500 = $12,500.
So, roughly 57% of her money is coming from very, very wealthy people.
Anyways, why do I point all this out? It’s not to be a jerk. It’s because I think all that money sets a poor example for democracy and ultimately limits her potential to effect transformative change in the United States Senate.
at least not in this case. I am voting for Senator, not for saint.
I think the real metric should be what she would do in office (and what she does, of course, if elected.) Meanwhile, she’s got to get there, and as I think you know full well it’s a dirty game.
A very different sort of candidate might (might) be able to challenge that by a very different kind of campaign (or, more likely, would Quixotically try to do so). I guess Warren is guilty of not being that candidate, but I’ll take what I can get.
You may be making another sort of point too, but this is the one I pick up on.
What is EW’s vision of a rebuilt middle class? More security for the 19% who are just below the top 1%? A better life for the top 75%? I haven’t heard much mention of our most financially strapped citizens. Are they on her radar? How would she define/describe a rebuilt middle class? It’s a nice-sounding phrase that can mean different things to different people.
How concerned is EW about climate change? The word “climate” cannot be found on her “priorities” web page. If I’m looking in the wrong place, or if she has additional policy pages on her site, someone please correct me.
How concerned is EW about civil liberties, whistleblower protection, habeus corpus, and warrantless wiretapping? What does she see as the role of Congress in protecting our democracy and our basic rights?
How does EW expect her priorities to be funded? I think it’s possible to do that, but I’d like to hear an explanation from her. Without a funding plan, what good is a wish list?
What priority does EW place on tax policy? Does she favor allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire? Does she see the need for any other major tax code changes, or is she satisfied with the current laws?
What priority does EW place on preserving the Social Security and the protections provided by Medicare/Medicaid?
I think it’s nice that EW babysat when she was nine but that fact is not nearly as interesting to me as her answers to above questions would be. I do not want to have to look for an EW event and get in line to ask all of them. These questions involve topics that have been addressed by many of the other Democratic candidates for the same office. They frequently come up in public discourse. Why can’t EW flesh out her web site to include more of them?
However, Warren has said that we should consider legislation that would, for example, require shareholder approval before lobbying government and more disclosure. She has also said that if amending the constitution proves to be the only way to stop the post-Citizens United world, then that may be what has to be done.
I don’t think it was ever a secret that what she was going to be talking about were, the middle class, or the 99%, or anyone other than the 1%, how the not-1% has been taking it on the chin both economically and politically. In these times that is precisely WHY so many people coming at it from different angles were urging her to run. I’m amazed at how long the litany of, “why hasn’t she said anything about…” has become at a point in the campaign when honestly its only people like us paying any attention.
is because she is accepting piles of money from many directions. That is the reason for the intense scrutiny.
that at this point she has nothing to say about a host of important issues. A senator has to make decisions on many issues, not just those s/he chooses to run on. Having felt burned by many disappointing decisions on the part of Obama, I am not ready to give Warren a pass on topics she does not choose to discuss.
It is ironic that you refer to the 99% vs the 1%. A debate clip shown on yesterday’s Greater Boston show on WGBH, as part of an interview with candidate Marisa DeFranco, showed Warren equivocating on the legitimacy of Occupy Wall Street. Warren’s comment was that “Everyone has to follow the law.” DeFranco was shown calling her out on this, trying to determine exactly what was meant. I agree with DeFranco’s objection that Warren was sidestepping the question. Watch the interview, including the debate clips.
should have said “showed Warren equivocating on the right of Occupy Wall Street to camp out over the winter” and not …”on the legitimacy of Occupy Wall Street”. This correction for accuracy does not make Warren’s non-answer look any better.
She said that 95% of her take has been small donations. I think in your reply to the comment above that first pointed that out you interpreted that as 95% of her donors, but I read it as 95% of what she has made in dollar amount. In other words, I believe I read that she has raised $3 million, so $150,000 from large donors and the rest from small donors. Direct to campaign contributions are IMO reasonably limited ($2500 per person is not that much compared to how much a campaign costs.) and I have no desire to see any of our candidates unilaterally disarm.
For the most recent report — from the quarter before last — the campaign indicated to the Boston Globe that it was in fact 95% of donors were “small”, not 95% of donations in total (as you may have read it).
by organizations including MoveOn and Progressive Change Campaign Committee. They solicited donations for Warren using their national mailing lists without bothering to mention that she faced several very qualified and progressive primary opponents.
I cannot help thinking that much of the early campaigning, ostensibly with the purpose of challenging Scott Brown, was done to swamp the other primary candidates with an insurmountable financial disadvantage before the general public got to learn about them. Since the primary field has been narrowed, I have not been receiving nearly the volume of requests/news related to the Warren campaign.
MoveOn asked their members to endorse a Democratic party candidate for Senate more than a year before the primary election, and also before any of the candidates had a chance to debate. This is simply not in keeping was basic principles of democracy.
“protecting the interests of Wall Street” – really? Sounds like you’ve seen the latest Karl Rove commercial a few too many times.
Mizjones…
There’s really no need in this case to get into a “my candidate is more progressive than yours” spitting contest on this one. Both Warren and DeFranco are very progressive and even among the others no longer running I don’t think we had anyone going after the Steve Lynch niche in the Democratic Party this time. We should be putting our efforts into recruiting more like them to running for more offices rather than pull the never-can-be-satisfied act.
Actually, I have never seen the Karl Rove commercial — because I don’t watch a lot of T.V. I prefer to read and listen to NPR, and yes, the Democratic party protects the interests of Wall Street.
Again, I hope Elizabeth Warren wins. I live in Cambridge, and if the election were held today, I would vote for her. But let’s get real: she is not running a progressive campaign, and the Democratic party of today is the Republican party of 10 years ago.
I was more confident about Warren when she was working to set up the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. I even hoped she might mount a primary challenge to Obama.
Since she declared her candidacy I haven’t seen much follow-up to the fire that first interested me. Her thin web site policy statement has barely changed since the summer. Even on economic issues, the recommendations on her web site are very general. For example, she states the need for education, construction, renewable energy, and research but says nothing about what role government should play to address them. Her suggestion of a level playing field for small businesses sounds good, except it does not address the main reason (according to businesses themselves) for lack of hiring, which is low consumer demand.
I do applaud Warren for her other two stated priorities: workers’ rights and fair trade. She devotes two sentences to each of these. A nice start, but not enough to convince me that she will expend serious effort and political capital in these areas.
I’m not criticizing Warren in order to build up DeFranco. I like DeFranco but I wish I could find reasons to like Warren as much. I wish Warren’s campaign style were more like DeFranco’s – answering questions directly, being willing to commit to a position or stating clearly why she can’t commit.
I can indeed be satisfied, even enthusiastic, with a candidate; it’s just that I set a high bar. A candidate needs to do more than talk about broad goals in a way that tells me little about what she will do once in office. To gain my confidence, a candidate needs to have a story about how s/he plans to achieve them.
Every time I talk about Elizabeth Warren, I feel the need to go to great pains to declare that I wish her well and I generally support her…
It’s just that so far, her campaign has been a carbon-copy of the Obama’s 2008 “Change” campaign. Perfect imagery, soaring rhetoric, and strong emotions, but scant detail, and positions that are technically in full compliance with the prerogatives of corporate America. And oh yeah, HUGE PILES OF CAMPAIGN CASH!
The Dems maybe the GOP of 40/50 years ago, but the GOP started down its current path 30 years ago (though I did see footage of Reagan recently sounding like OWS, basically making the point that the superrich shouldn’t be paying less in taxes than a wage-earner).
To the comments about the national organizations, there was felt a need to find someone early to get behind and I don’t fault them for not waiting. It’s the EMILY’s List principle where EMILY is an acronym for “Early Money Is Like Yeast” because it “raises the dough”. I don’t think they cared one way or the other or had anything against the other candidates. They just decided, with membership input, that Elizabeth Warren was someone who first needed encouragement, then assistance, to run. Yes, membership is nationwide, but I have opinions which I occasionally act on for whom I want from other states since they all vote on policies affecting us, so I’m not going to complain that outsiders are trying to influence our race.