Warren’s fast start
by digby
Here is an excellent profile of Elizabeth Warren in today’s LA Times. Seems she’s causing quite a bit of agitation among the financial elites. I couldn’t be more delighted:
The attention Warren is drawing — video clips of her first Banking Committee hearing went viral on YouTube — could catapult her even further. Some liberals have begun touting her as a potential 2016 presidential candidate.
“She has maximized the influence and attention that a freshman senator can get,” said Jaret Seiberg, a senior policy analyst with financial services firm Guggenheim Partners. “Now, when we look at issues of too-big-to-fail and of consumer protection, people want to know what Elizabeth Warren has to say.”
The fast start by Warren, one of the few politicians to embrace the Occupy Wall Street movement, has confirmed the fears of some in the financial industry that she wouldn’t hesitate to criticize them from her new, higher-profile position.
Warren’s sharp rhetoric is “certainly harmful to our industry,” said Ballard Cassady, president of the Kentucky Bankers Assn.
Oh, boo fucking hoo. The poor put-upon bankers and master of the universe just cannot get a break. Well, except for their ill-gotten billions, but other than that it’s been just hell.
I am hearing lots of “questions” from establishment liberals about Warren’s aggressive style being unhelpful because it’s ginning up populist resentment (and lord knows, we can’t have that!) My answer to that is, “yeah, whatever.” The centrist Democrat experiment in “market liberalism” and appeasement politics has been shown to be an epic failure. We are on the verge of losing the American middle class and have succeeded in growing poverty. Well done, all around.
It’s time to change direction and Warren is one of the few who both personally understands the issues and the politics of this new era. If that doesn’t go down well among many of those who have invested their lives in the idea that left populism is dirty (or even that straight-up liberalism is a big fat political loser) well, too bad. As far as I’m concerned, she is the future. Get on board or get out of the way.
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