Warren Brings Populism Down South. Is Hillary Paying Attention?

[NorthCarolina]

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/warren-brings-populism-do_b_5548415.html

Well, now, this is interesting. Elizabeth Warren went to Kentucky to campaign for Allison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic Secretary of State who's looking to unseat Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The Louisville Courier-Journal reported that "A wide range of people from college students to people in their 80s attended the event at (the University of Louisville), billed as a college affordability rally."

"I'm a little surprised to be here," Warren said, "partly because I'm a little surprised to be in the United States Senate. I am the daughter of a janitor and I ended up in the United States Senate. America is truly a great place."

Intentionally or not, Warren's invitation sends a message. A Southern campaign asked a Massachusetts progressive (and a Harvard professor, no less!) to campaign for it in a close-fought race with one of the country's leading conservatives.

Remember, we're talking about Rand Paul country here. Some smart people have clearly concluded that progressive economic populism is a winning strategy in the South.....

Kind of makes you wonder if it really ever was truly necessary to run a reliably "conservative" Democrat in red states, or if we were only fed a line of BS from the DLC. After reading this, it seems as though all that ever needed to be done is discuss actual issues affecting every day folk and give them details of how you, as a populist, would seek to handle those issues. May even lead to folks discovering that they are actually more liberal/populist/progressive than Fox and Rush have led them to believe.....maybe

[MannyGoldstein]

1. !!!

For a couple of decades, we needed far-right "Democrats" in the South.

But times have changed, most Southerners now realize that Republican/Third-Way Rightist policies are a disaster for them. They're looking for FDR Democrats like Warren, even if they can only instinctively *feel* it at this point and can't mouth the words.

[pscot]

2. If Warren helps knock out

senate minority leader and obstructionist-in-chief is Hillary still inevitable?

[JDPriestly]

3. Hey! Huey Long's populism won Louisiana in spite of his

terrible corruption.

FDR was very popular in the South.

With reason, I think of the South as a racist place. But maybe we should give them reason to vote on some issue other than race. Elizabeth Warren is the candidate to do that. Her Oklahoma background is helpful too.

http://www.hueylong.com/

I have to say that Elizabeth Warren is I suspect far, far further to the right than Huey Long when it comes to the role of the government. Huey Long approached socialism a bit. Elizabeth Warren was a law professor who taught at one time contract law and who studied bankruptcy. She is probably really very middle-of-the-road in terms of her attitude toward the role of government in the economy. What I like about her is her sense of fairness.

She advocates for regulation. I agree strongly with her approach because regulation helps to insure trust and rewards people and companies for conducting their business in a way that is positive for society. Without regulation, criminals take over. We have seen that. Enough of it.

[delrem]

4. Hillary makes more in an hour's worth of pillow talk with Goldman Sachs

than I make over years of labour providing goods that help brighten the homes of my neighbours.

I wouldn't want her as a client. How she gets her money, how she promotes right-wing military/economic programs, would make the transaction demeaning. To say nothing of self-defeating, since if people who think and act like Hillary R. Clinton continue getting their way in politics, small businesses like mine are bound for total extinction - if that hasn't already in effect happened.

The third-way plays the extreme-right MIC game (I'm tempted to write "MIC/MSM game", a la Michael Hastings, but I'm unsure if people would understand that the symbiosis is real). By it's nature, by definition, third-way triangulation promotes the right, it triangulates further to the right as each third-way victory makes deeper inroads, while strangling the left and denying the left any semblance of a voice. That is: except for *very* specific "social causes" that have no immediate economic impact and where sound bytes having *no* depth of expression can be cued up for a wholesome sound byte by slick political handlers.

It's time we got our voice back from those fuckers.