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“Beyond monitoring how the government is mopping up after the financial crisis, Warren is pushing a proposal that could help prevent the next one: creating a Financial Product Safety Commission to protect consumers from abusive lenders. Mortgages and credit cards, she wrote in a 2007 journal article about the proposal, “should be subject to the same routine safety screening that now governs the sale of every toaster, washing machine, and child’s car seat.”
Straightforward as that sounds, it would represent a fundamental shift. “Regulating financial products based on fairness, simplicity, and appropriate risk is an entirely new paradigm,” notes Reid Cramer, director of the New America Foundation’s asset building program. In the wake of the financial meltdown, the idea has gained traction in Washington, thanks in part to Warren’s plainspoken advocacy. “Almost unique among people with deep financial insight, Professor Warren speaks a language that ordinary people can easily comprehend,” says Laurence Tribe, a colleague at Harvard Law. For example, when testifying before a congressional committee in June, Warren summed up the shift in banking this way: “Today’s business model is about making money through tricks and traps.”
via Bank Buster: Elizabeth Warren is Wall Street’s Worst Nightmare | CommonDreams.org.
We’re coming up on the one- year anniversary of Barack Obama’s election. I think it’s maybe time that we asked ourselves how he’s doing.
He didn’t close Guantanamo Bay, and not only didn’t reject the idea of pre-emptive detention but added spice to his own new version of pre-crime prosecution, “prolonged detention.” He promised health care reform and campaigned on a public option, and we all know how that is going to turn out.
But most importantly, he came into office amidst sweeping crises in the financial sector and did not do what needed to be done, and what had been done the last time the U.S. was sent careening into a depression because of Wall Street: he failed to push for tough financial reforms. Barack Obama needed to be the FDR figure who remade the American capital markets and made them fair again, and he barely laid a finger on the whole scene.
Instead, he put the people who created the problem in charge of fixing the mess, and ended up bailing them out instead of the rest of the country, at huge current and (presumably) future cost.The total bill for the Bush-Obama bailout is certainly above ten trillion at this point — Inspector General Neil Barofsky thinks it might hit nearly $24 trillion ultimately — and this went through without much fanfare. Meanwhile, the congress is stuck in the mud, panicked at the thought of paying three or four trillion over a decade or so for a health care program.
None of this is new news. What is new is the question of what to do about it. I’m personally of the opinion that our main problem lay with the fact that the Democratic Party as currently constituted is more afraid of losing the financial support of Wall Street and the health insurance industry and the pharmaceutical industry than it is of losing progressive voters. In fact, I think I’ve put that wrong, because it implies that the Democratic Party pushes the agenda of industry insiders out of fear. That is a misread of the situation, I think.
I think they prefer those people to their voters. I think they feel more comfortable with them. I heard a story recently from a Democratic Party operative who tells me that certain members of one of the president’s cabinet departments only got wind of how hard it is out there for ordinary people to pay their bills when they invited in a major corporation to give them a presentation about their financial outlook for the holiday season — and through that report found out that this company’s prospective customers were spending less because large numbers of them had been laid off, or had huge medical bills, or had maxed out their credit, and so on.
Letters from customers, survey answers and such, were read to the cabinet group. And they were shocked. This is how they find out about the economic reality of this country — accidentally, from a major campaign contributor! That’s how out of touch these people are.
On these financial issues, not just the issue of financial regulation on Wall Street but the larger issue of income distribution and what kind of country we want to be — the Democratic Party no longer has a policy that makes any sense. They do not seem to understand or even recognize that real wages in this country have not grown for most people for decades. Or if they do understand, they refuse to imagine any solutions that are not in some way a compromise with their major campaign contributors. They talk about closing tax loopholes and phony corporate addresses in the Caribbean as solutions to economic problems, policy initiatives as absurd and inconsequential as then-comic Al Franken’s fictional decision (in the novel Why Not Me?) to run on a campaign promise of “ending ATM fees.”
This is all a long-winded way of saying that we have problems whose solutions involve taking on powerful interests, political challenges that will necessarily involve prolonged and hard-fought conflicts, but what we have in the Democratic Party is an organization dedicated to avoiding such conflicts and resolving issues in the manner of a corporate board, in closed meetings with the chief cardholders where things get hashed out to the satisfaction of everyone present.
The problem from the standpoint of the typical voter is that he is not terribly present in those discussions. When Rahm Emmanuel met with Billy Tauzin and Merck and Pfizer in the Roosevelt Room (how ironic!) of the White House earlier this summer to work out the details of exactly how much of a bite the new health bill was going to take out of the pharmaceutical industry — the answer turned out to be none, and all the insane subsidies of big Pharma are going to remain in the final bill — were you there? Was anyone representing you there?
The Democrats feel safe in leaving you and me out of that room for two big reasons. One, our main electoral alternative is the party that put George W. Bush in office. Two, the last time significant quantities of Democrats decided to buck and send the party a message, they helped get George Bush elected by giving Ralph Nader the deciding votes of what turned out to be the tightest of elections. Or at least that’s the storyline that’s been popular since that incident. The Nader “debacle” forever closed the notion of third-party progressive challenges to mainstream Democrats, at least in the minds of the Democratic Party bigwigs, anyway.
It seems to me then that the only hope of getting any of these problems is to get ourselves a national candidate who on the one hand is a mainstream politician and on the other is willing to embrace the notion of an open protest against the Democratic Party doctrine. We need for someone who has some legitimacy with both the media and the Democratic Party constituents themselves to come out and publicly campaign to re-seize the Party from the Wall Street interests that have come to dominate it. We need someone who understands the finance stuff (which automatically reduces the pool of possible applicants to a small handful), will know the difference between real regulatory reform and a dog-and-pony show, and will not be likely to fill a cabinet with bankers from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
The question I have lately is, why not draft Elizabeth Warren to run for president? And I don’t mean in 2016, I mean in 2012.
This sounds like a crazy idea for a couple of big reasons. One, a primary challenge to Barack Obama will almost certainly fail and may hurt Obama enough to get a Republican elected to the presidency. The other is that if this is done as a third-party run, it’ll probably achieve the same thing.
That all might be true. And it may, indeed, be a terrible idea. If it is, I’m genuinely open to hearing the reasons why, and I’m sure it’s a long list.
But I’d like to see it get talked about anyway. The way I look at it, the problem with the Democratic Party is not the voters, it’s the 19 or 20 people who are paying for the campaigns and sitting in at those meetings with Rahm and Billy Tauzin. We have to get rid of those people, herd them all to the edge of a very tall cliff and push them off and be done with it. I think this can be done by electoral referendum if we actually put it all on the table openly and let people decide for themselves. And maybe it takes an electoral cycle or two to get it done, but it has to get done. This stuff won’t get fixed otherwise.
We need someone in there who is willing to run one this one issue: who owns the Democratic Party? Is it the voters, or is it Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and United Health Care? There are plenty of candidates out there who’d fit — Toledo’s Marcy Kaptur got a nice bounce from the Michael Moore movie, and Jan Schakowsky is another who comes to mind — but Warren to me makes the most sense for the simple reason that it will be virtually impossible for the Democratic Party hacks to dismiss her as a fringe character, given that they themselves gave her such a big public position as chief of the Congressional Oversight Panel.
This is a woman who understands the finance issues as well as we can hope to expect from any politician and moreover seems to connect the dots when it comes to dissecting the problems on Wall Street:
I just don’t think we could talk yet in terms of a recovery. I think the right way to understand this is that we stabilized the patient. No one goes to bed at night wondering when you wake up in the morning and will this financial system have collapsed. We clearly are past that point, but we have to remember the way we stabilized it. We stabilized it by saying the American government is going to put its money, its guarantees, the taxpayers’ money behind our financial system to hold it up…
And that may have given, you know, some cheery news to investors in the stock market who say I want to invest in some of those companies that have those sorts of government guarantees to back them up, but it doesn’t tell us that the economy itself is turning around. It doesn’t tell us that there are good jobs out there or even that we’re starting to build the infrastructure that’s going to produce those good jobs.
I think someone needs to put a scare into the Democratic Party leaders. Someone needs to make it clear that the progressives in the House might really kill the Health Care bill if it comes out of the Reid-Pelosi consult sucking as much as we expect it to, but even more importantly, someone needs to let Barack Obama know that someone else’s face is going to start being silk-screened on t-shirts at political rallies if he doesn’t get real on the finance stuff.
Barack Obama ran an incredible campaign last year, managing to turn himself into the stuff of political iconography — he captured and owned amorphous and happy concepts like “hope” and “change” through a brilliant 18-month run of painstakingly careful imageering, and through the force of his own remarkably genial and patient personality. He took a country which historically has always been divided powerfully by race and he managed to win a hotly-contested race with grace and class and in that sense advanced the cause of racial tolerance to an incalculable degree. He made the racist electoral strategies of Karl Rove and Mark Penn outdated. And he gets credit for restoring respect for the American presidency abroad.
But he also inherited a terrible financial crisis and he completely whiffed on it, siding with the financial status quo, who happen to be the bad guys. And in general, policywise, he has turned out to be eerily in sync with the previous administration, even down to some of the more obvious and egregious stuff, like the Guantanamo business and his amazing, perhaps illegal, and completely inexplicable refusal to investigate the ICRC (Red Cross) claims of systematic torture there.
And because of that, he can now be attacked on the iconic level just as he as once elevated there, made now into a symbol of anti-change — which in fact is beginning to be what he represents. We need some courageous politician to step up and offer us a symbol not of reassuring pablum but of that spirit which is needed at the moment, revolt and a return of political power to the voter. And when people coalesce around that image, it will throw the real meaning of the Obama phenomenon into relief. This will be too bad, given the historic import of Obama’s amazing run, but it’s just necessary, unfortunately.
We need someone who will run on one very basic principle — the refusal to accept corporate money. That someone will have to be willing to be a symbol of voter empowerment. If someone like Elizabeth Warren doesn’t want that responsibility, well, she shouldn’t have gone into office and gone on TV making all that sense and shit. She’s pushed for transparency in the Fed, is openly furious about the misuse of bailout money, and seems to take personally the chicanery that credit card companies and banks use to game the suckers out there. I simply cannot see her suddenly flipping and holding $2000-a-plate fundraisers with Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon.
And sure, a good loyal party member would never step up and take an axe to a powerful and popular incumbent. Maybe that kind of disloyalty is not what Elizabeth Warren wants to be known for. But someone out there on the landscape has to be willing to take that step. Because really, what’s the alternative? How can we keep voting for these guys, when they never, ever deliver?
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I believed I was the only person in the country that had thought of backing her for president. Now, I don’t feel so lonely.
Thanks for all your hard work and insight, Matt. I’m so glad you have become a FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH.
Or Alan Grayson? I am for this. Obama won’t change anything *unless we make him*. A popular primary challenger, especially this early, would do that.
I’m ready for Iowa with a few hundred of my closest friends.
Why not Matt for Pres or VP with Paul.? Your analysis is far and away supeior to anything else I’ve seen. Now maybe well-meaning billionaires like Pete Peterson and Warren Buffet will stop yammering about entiltlements–payable to paupers, and use their consideable resources to help posecute this gang of swindlers.
I think you are talking about a Eugene McCarthy candidate – a progressive challenger who’ll stand up to the party establishment. But the Democrats have had one all along – Dennis Kucinich – and what has Dennis done? True, he’s not a tall man, and he can run on, but his ideas are pure progressive and he hasn’t made a dent.
No, if you want things to change, you should probably move to another country. The US is going the way of California; it will soon be ungovernable. As Nobellian as Barack Obama may be, 30 years of Reaganism have pretty much killed the American Revolution, and I no longer believe that anyone can fix it.
I love it. I read an article that said what the electorate (and the europeans) really liked is the “idea of Obama” and I think that has captured things perfectly. No one spent much time looking at the actual candidate they just liked the idea of a post racial america. Had they looked at the candidate they would have seen a) that he had never really done anything with his life except get himself elected (very much like Bush you relied on his family connections instead of his “life story” to get noticed) and b) he wasn’t really very progressive (they had to dig up a speech no one even noticed at the time to give him anti-war credentials because his actions certainly showed that he NEVER bucked the system). America is doomed if it keeps electing our presidents like we are electing the next american idol- they need to have real accomplishments before they become president ( and that does not mean winning beauty contests)
Conyers for VP: smart, knows government inside out, dedicated, takes no bullshit.
Conyers is a good man, but he’s tainted. He was in the middle the the MI debacle in which the party ended up taking some delegates from Clinton, and fabricating others for Obama. No one who does not believe in one person, one vote will be viable with the faction that agrees with this article.
conyers is also very old, almost doddering.
genial campaign? Tell that to the Iowans, or the Texans that filled out hundreds of affadavits under penalty of perjury attesting to Obama’s thug-like tactics in Texas.
No one who thinks Obama was a good candidate, a smart man, or a decent human being should have anymore credibility than anyone who voted for George Bush. They’re the same person and they ran they same campaign.
I don’t want anyone who went after Clinton on Obama’s behalf telling me that they know better than I do who should be the next candidate for the Democratic party.
Hear hear, Lori. I especially don’t want to hear advice from an Obamaphile/Hopium-addict going into political rehab.
Mr. Taibbi: you get who you vote for!
Good idea,and Alan Grayson for VP. I won’t vote for Obama again. He’s surrounded himself with corporate Dems and Republicans.
She (E. Warren) is the best thing to come out of the financial expose’/crisis.
Another bullet point: today over 55 million households have an interest in stocks/bonds/mutual funds; in 1952 only 6 million persons owned stock. More than half of all households are involved. The advent of IRA’s, 401K’s, Sep’s, ease of ownership, mass marketing of ownership/trading, has created a nation that is invested in the markets, their interests need to be represented by someone other than investment bankers or stock brokers.
“And sure, a good loyal party member would never step up and take an axe to a powerful and popular incumbent.”
That’s the problem. We need politicians who are not loyal to the party machine, but to the citizens. To the country, and what is good for everyone, not just the latte crowd.
The Democratic Party is the “new” Republican Party. They don’t care about their voters because they are the working/middle class – not the people who buy their votes. It is time for a third party.
I think that when you are remodeling you want to be around the project as much as possible!
If you can do a lot of it yourself that helps on quality and money.
Usually the best job done is the one you do because you know how you want it done and you
want it done nicely because you’ll be seeing it everyday – the contracter wont!
Thanks for this blog it had a lot of great information!
Matt,
How about Robert Wexler? Or Jesse Ventura? Or a Kucinich/Paul ticket, (like they should have done in 2008)?
I do like your thinking and here’s to getting the Dem’s to being like they used to be under FDR.
“If someone like Elizabeth Warren doesn’t want that responsibility, well, she shouldn’t have gone into office and gone on TV making all that sense and shit.”
Which is how Jesse Ventura won in Minnesota – by making sense and shit – not putting up with BS questions and framing by traditional media and opponents. It takes a strong personality to run that way. The candidate has to be so memorable that it partially negates the party effect where 30-40% of the vote you get just for being on the ballot in the R or D column.
But many progressives will be open to a challenge to Obama and corporate Dems if health care turns out the way it looks like it will.
I agree with the outrage but disagree with the proposed solution.
What is needed is not necessarily new politicians, but new voter advocacy groups that can communicate our vaules and needs to Washington, and threaten the loss of a signifigant voting bloc. Basically we, as ordinary citizens, need to organize ourselves into groups that can effectively lobby our legislators. Though we would still lack the financial resources of big business, we could have real popular democratic voting power. In such a hypothetical political envrironment, the ethical shortcomings of particular government officials would be marginalized.
To put it briefly, it does not matter much if we elect Elizabeth Warren or Noam Chomsky. After all, we are not electing them to be Overlord, only President.
Jason, I am not sure I understand what you’re proposing but if you’re saying that the citizens need to come together and use their votes in some predetermined and singular fashion, then I think you have just described our current system. As such, I respectfully disgree with you that we don’t need new politicians. I could not scream this loud enough: WE NEED NEW POLTICIANS!!!
The other thing I would mention is this ridiculous fallacy that somehow democrats are better than republicans. In my eyes, they are exactly the same. They have both sold us out and the only thing that can change that is another party or another hundred. I voted for President Obama and I will not do it again. He is no different then George Bush — they both allow the Lobbyists and Corporate America (and the now the Unions) to run America. I want politicians that act for the benefit of the guy in the middle.
Martin. First, I agree with you that democrats are little better than republicans. There are some differences, particularly on cultural issues, where I at least prefer the democrats in general; but as far the distribution of power and decision making goes, both parties are deeply conservative. Ie., they believe in the maintenance of the status quo. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than Obama’s choice of Geithner and Summers to deal with the financial crisis. Though I would say that these men are less ideologically constrained than their hypothetical republican couterparts might have been, their intention is to enact the minimal possible reform with the priority of not upsetting the major institutions involved too much.
In regard to the idea that I was “saying that the citizens need to come together and use their votes in some predetermined and singular fashion” and that this represents the “current system”, I don’t think you understood my point. The reason why corporate and industry lobbyists are successful is because they present their interests and concerns in an organized and intelligible fashion that makes the lives of legislators easier. Professional lobbyists understand the political pressures faced by lawmakers, and the complex process of actually drafting legislation. Contrast that with the relatively incoherent, from congress’s point of view, voices of the masses. Incoherent precisely because they are the disorganzed voices of isolated individuals rather than a well organized bloc of voters; and because they are not articulated in a way that is easy for legislators to understand or act upon. I would even go so far as to say that much of what we perceive to be corruption is the political equivalent of “the squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Of course, the “wheel” isn’t “squeaking” so much as it is eloquently and precisely describing what it requires, alongside the liberal use of the “carrot and stick” of campaign contributions or the withholding thereof.
I will give you an example of what I mean. If I were a conservative christian, I would be demanding that my church relinquish its tax-exempt status, organize with other churches willing to do the same, hire a professional lobbying firm, and agressively enter the political arena advocating specific legislation that reflected my views. Financially, such a group we could not compete with corporate America in terms of campaign contributions, but a sufficiently large, well-organized, voting bloc represents real power in a democracy. (Of course, such a scenario is a potential nightmare for non-christians,and would be bad for the country, but it would be politically effective.)
In short, I would say that we need to organize ourselves into groups large and inclusive enough to wield signifigant voting power, and use the same professional lobbying firms used by the coporate sector to communicate our views. There is nothing easy or simple about this, especially with media outlets stoking controversy and demonizing one side or the other. But I believe it is what needs to be done. New, different policians may be marginally better than the old; but if they are forced to do their job in the current political environment, then even assuming they are honorable, what they could practically accomplish would be limited. In a hypothetical world where corporate lobbying were at least balanced with lobbying on behalf of citizen groups, I believe the ethical quality of particular politicians would become more of a secondary issue. We would obviously prefer honorable men and women to dishonorable, but even the dishonorable would be forced to respond to us in order to keep their job.
The person mentioning contractors vs DYI is correct. I’ll take it further. What about the fox guarding the hen house? How many times must we fall for that? We have a problem with Agents. Not the double O seven type, but brokers of all types. Oh, yes, they tell us, as contractors do, “We are the experts, [see Foxes] and trust us, we have the expertese you don’t have, so let us do the thinking for you, [let us guard your hen house]. And we fall for that over and over again.
I invest in real estate, buy real property from real people. I don’t have a real estate licence and I do all the renovation to a home I buy myself, takes a long time for one person to do all the work, but I know it’s done right.. and my renters are safe, comfortable, and happy to pay the rent, which I set as low as possible. [I'm NOT a flipper and I'm NOT trying to get rich, quick or otherwise].
I don’t deal with the Real Estate industry, as far as the recent economic problems they are guilty as anyone, once again greed, looking the other way and the fox guarding the hen house is rife in that industry… and besides all that most Realtors have no skills in knowing whether or not a house is an accident waiting to happen for the prospective buyer, all they know is the “Comp” … what other houses comparable nearby have sold for… and the “housing inspectors” only really benefit the mortgage lenders, only rarely helping the new buyers to get a realistic idea of what they are “getting into”. [Housing inspector: think Fox working for other Fox guarding .. etc.]
I’ll save my rant on stock brokers, it goes about the same as the real estate industry, altho if you take the entire financial sector industries, banks particularly, it is so corrupt, greedy, selfish, manipulative, the fox in the hen house analogy falls far short of encompassing magnitude of it.
No one gets thru life with out falling victim to these types because so many of them are nice, reasonable and even impressive people, who think they are in honorable professions. . they’d be the last to think “I’m the fox.. heh, heh”.. but the damage they help create still goes on ..
All we can do to protect ourselves, a bit, from this is to test our “agents” for their realistic skills and honest accomplishments, track the “rewards” they garner for their work, hoping it is within reason.. and warn others away from any of the bad agents we come in contact with..
Finally, everyone, needs to meditate on the subject of how much is enough, to combat humanities innate penchant for greed. It’s one thing to earn enough money to own a home, provide for a family, and a comfortable old age, it’s all together another thing to strive for multi millions of dollars..
Kudos to MT and everyone contributing to this blog!
Not that it matters but you are so wrong on Obama that your credibility with me is gone. I think Warren is great but your cynicsm seems to distort your thinking.
I imagine as soon as she took office you would go off on her the same. You are smart,and entertaining but not realistic..
Warren is not better than Obama. The Dems talk a good game but when it comes down to putting country before party, or country before corporate interest or the Union interests, they won’t do it. Obama raised my hopes only to let them fall crashing back to the ground. Now I am done with the Dems too. The Repubs and Dems are exactly the same.
Why on earth did Obama follow Bush’s idiotic plan to give billions to the banks to unfreeze the credit markets when they never used the money to lend. By February 2009, it was very clear what the banks were up to — he should have cut them off then. Now he finally decides to give money to community banks so maybe they’ll lend it.
I for one, say f*ck you, Mr. President. I don’t need you to give me back my own money. How about we just cut out the middle men and I just keep it.
Matt,
Sorry – too late – where were you when some of us wanted the tough questions asked of Obama? How many times does someone have to vote “present” before you realize they won’t provide leadership? How many times does one have to say one thing and then do another – FISA vote anyone? How many times does a party have to move delagates to someone who hasn’t earned them – New Jersy anyone? This life long Democrat is now an independent – my party left me this last cycle – I did not leave them. Hope you all choke on the change that was forced on us.
Matt, keep up the good work.
[...] Even most disconcerting are the figures showing that actual spending by regular citizens seems to have hit the wall. This is very similar to America. While our economy has grown in the last few decades, the actual incomes of middle-class families have not. The income gap, which we discussed briefly in relation to China, is continuously growing in America. Is that what is happening here? (For a great article explaining what is happening in America, click here.) [...]
The Dems have turned into the Incumbency Party, and the only way we’ll get real change is to pry them out with a crowbar. I love Elizabeth Warren and would love to see her run, even if we have to draft her.
But really, Matt, what did you expect with Obama? You weren’t all that hard on him, as I recall. It’s the Jackie Robinson syndrome: he HAD to be the most status quo-loving corporate-friendly black man on the block or he wouldn’t have gotten all that early money from the financial services industry. Are you really surprised? I’m not.
[...] Taibbi makes the case, and it’s a good one: I’m personally of the opinion that our main problem lay with the fact [...]
[...] From Matt Taibbi Blog [...]
[...] is checking his wallet to discover how much money he wasted getting wasted with other fools at the Obama Hopium Bar & Grill. We’re coming up on the one- year anniversary of Barack Obama’s election. I think it’s maybe [...]
Stop thumping on Matt, he’s right.
Most of you wouldn’t know a hole in a ground if you tripped on it. I deal with your type everyday you can’t even tell me basic information and you expect me to trust you with making the correct decision with a Presidential Candidate???
As much as I hate to admit I just see too many things around me to have any faith in Federal Politics. For those that say California is a lost cause, you have another thing coming I can assure you.
We just need to make a change at the top and then its off to the races….
I only fear what will happen to my elderly parents, who aren’t that elderly anyway (numbers don’t mean shit).
But I have to do for self and for self means as long as have to mark “African-American” on any form, I’m not held in high regard at least not like other Americans and my place is ELSEWHERE.
I haven’t decided and recent events might increase my debt when I was on the verge of having NO DEBT at all.
So you all have fun righting the Titanic.
Anyone (left right center fringe) who’d disatisfied with the current two-party system (and the resulting two parties) needs to get on two issues, and these two ONLY:
1) Instant Runoff Voting. This is the only way, short of a constitutional amendment, to avoid the “a vote for a third party is a vote for your enemy” FACT of third parties.
2) Public financing of elections, which is the only proven way to open the candidate pool to people qualified by their representation of their fellow citizens, and not their fellow corporations.
Read up, wake up, get on it. And if you ain’t doin’ it when I get back, your bitchin’s nothin’ but noise.
And ain’t reality a bitch, whiners.
Nothing will change until money is taken out of politics and I see no ground swell for that. We ‘peasants’ are too busy trying to survive.
By all means give Obama a run for his money. And next time you try to foist ‘Mr. Vague Generalities’ on us, remember that being older just might mean more experience recognizing marketing techniques and brainwashing.
YES! Someone is raising this idea publicly, so other folks will start looking at her in this light. The very first time I heard her talk to a journalist, she blew me away. Incredibly smart, personable, excellent communicator, no-nonsense, leader, genuine, wise and has a way of putting people at ease. I would vote for her in a heartbeat.
Matt,
this is what is needed, dialog about what we want for office before the media hand picks it’s favorites, as we saw with Hillary and Barack, McCain and Romney, immediately after the 2006 elections. To those who watched the credit card industry lobbying and the bankruptcy act passed under republicans, the campaign donations and the dems that voted for it, there is an iron-clad connection.
However, Elizabeth Warren is not mean enough survive the sound-bite environment of modern American politics and it’s media-based rules of engagement. She is a fine challenging voice on issues, as was Nader, to bring substantive issues into the campaign cycle, but Obama won partly for his ability to deliver noble-sounding backlash after media attacks. It sounded great when I wanted the republicans out of office, but now it feels like teflon. Mr. Obama is scary in that he keeps his friends close and his enemies closer.
If we want to light a fire, I think Kucinich or Grayson, or maybe even Feingold, have the force of voice and the track record, but of all,
Jesse Ventura is the only one of my day with a track record, that I think could be bigger than the corporate media and lobbying. I have heard him speak lately, and though he downplays his self-importance, I think he is ripe.
The important thing is that Obama feels hard-working and jobless Americans are scrambling for a replacement and that “not-being-bush”, is not a good enough calling card, not that he has been able to do that either.
Very interesting and very apt. Thanks for all your on-target journalism.
I’m a several-years disenfranchised conservative, without representation. What I found interesting is your solutions for Democratic party reform are the same I’ve advocated for the Republican party. It made me realize the majority of the entire American electorate feels they have no representation. The same could be said of our so-called leaders on Wall Street. Wall Street and Washington is now a collection of the worst examples of leadership I’ve ever seen or read about.
If Americans want to sieze power and wake these people up, there’s only one way to do it. Toss all the incumbents and pull your money out of Wall Street and go local with it. Then, and not until then, will these people wake up and even begin to listen. Vote with the ballot and the purse. If you don’t do that you’ll get exactly what you vote for.
How about Brooksley Born as a running mate.
I was about to order myself a custom-made bumper sticker from Cafe Press that said, “Elizabeth Warren for President.” (I thought it would be fun to answer the questions it would surely generate.) So somebody else has thought of it, too! Thanks for giving me the feeling that there is hope for the world, after all.