Strongest Progressive in the Room

[babylonsister]

Strongest Progressive in the Room
Elizabeth Warren: Consumer bureau chief or U.S. senator?
Robert Kuttner | June 9, 2011


Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor serving as temporary head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), must wish she had a clone.

One would stay in Washington to fight for the strongest possible consumer financial protection bureau, doing battle with predators in the financial industry, their Republican allies in Congress, and fainthearted colleagues at the Treasury.

The other Warren would run for the Senate in Massachusetts.

snip//

Why? For starters, how many political leaders can you think of who have a gift for translating the lived injustices and pocketbook frustrations of Americans into a compelling progressive policy narrative? How many combine this with exceptional expertise, charm, dogged energy, and disarming political shrewdness?

No matter how effective the consumer bureau, it’s harder to play that role when one of your job functions is adviser to the president. But if elected to the Senate, she instantly becomes a key national leader of American progressivism.

Second, Warren is authentic, superb at mobilizing public opinion, and even better at playing an astute inside game. Warren drives the right wing nuts because she is so good at talking economic issues to ordinary people and showing up the right’s phony economic populism. Her Oklahoma small-town roots are at the core of who she is.

more...

http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=americas_best_progressive

[Scuba]

1. I will support Elizabeth Warren for any position for which she sees fit to run....

...one of the finest Americans of her time, of all time.

[northoftheborder]

2. Me also. She is superlative.

[Tippy]

3. Me too.....

[Iwillnevergiveup]

4. Looks like she'll have to do BOTH jobs

Superlative human being.

K&R

[Demeter]

5. Senator, Hell--the White House!

[FailureToCommunicate]

6. Obama/Warren 2012 ?

Sure, why not?

[yurbud]

7. it's a real Sophie's choice: taking either job will likely mean the other goes to a corporate boot

lick.

[eilen]

8. Considering that our Democratic Senators

have their proverbial hands tied d/t the Fillibuster that they themselves insist on keeping, I hardly think she can be very effective in that role.

[yurbud]

9. maybe she could be the vote on rules that changes that.

[eilen]

10. I think Harry Reid is the linchpin on that item. nt