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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2012 / “Heaven”, Not Scott Brown’s Description of Elizabeth Warren

“Heaven”, Not Scott Brown’s Description of Elizabeth Warren

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Rebecca Traister has a good, long article with a silly title in the NYTimes Magazine:

… Temperamentally, Warren presents as the opposite of certain bombastic and arguably chauvinistic members of Obama’s economic team. Katherine Porter, a former student who is now a bankruptcy-law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said that “a strong epithet for Elizabeth is ‘golly gee.’ ” Warren told me of an afternoon, about 10 years ago, when she picked up her office phone and was shocked to hear a man cursing on the other end. “I thought, Whew! My first obscene phone call!” Just before hanging up, Warren paused. The accent sounded familiar. She put the receiver back to her ear, waiting for the speaker to take a breath before asking, “Senator Kennedy?” It was indeed the man whose old seat she is now competing for, phoning from the Senate cloakroom to report that Democrats had unexpectedly won a fight over bankruptcy legislation. “He was so revved up!” Warren said.
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But the expectation that she’s Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle also allows Warren to wield a shiv. Carol Kenner, a retired bankruptcy judge, recalled watching her friend Warren, who went to college on a debate scholarship, fiercely engage another legal scholar who was attacking her. “It’s exercise for her,” Kenner said, “like swimming a faster lap.”

How to sell hope when so many feel hopeless is Warren’s biggest messaging challenge. Her supporters may be willing to forget the past four years and renew their faith in her as their next salvation, but Warren clearly thinks about the dissonance of what happened when the last change-peddlers hit Washington.
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“I thought, 2008, that’s it, that is the watershed moment,” Warren says. “We put sensible people in the House, in the Senate and in the White House.” But even with the new leadership, Warren said, “the people who broke the market doubled down on the failed policies. This was not supposed to happen. But it did happen.”

Of course, the Wall Street banksters would prefer to strangle Warren’s campaign in its cradle, and they believe they have the perfect weapon. From an earlier NYTimes article, “Vilifying Rival, Wall St. Rallies for Senate Ally“:

The warning has ricocheted around the financial world in recent weeks, in conversations at Midtown restaurants and Washington fund-raisers, carrying urgent appeals for money from financial executives around the Northeast: The battle to re-elect Senator Scott P. Brown, the Republican from Massachusetts, just got a little more interesting…
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Mr. Brown, a freshman who harnessed populist Tea Party anger to win the seat once held by Edward M. Kennedy, has taken more money from the financial industry than almost any other senator: all told, more than $1 million during the last two years, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.
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Of the 20 companies that accounted for the most campaign donations to Mr. Brown, about half were prominent investment or securities firms like Morgan Stanley, Fidelity Investments and Bain Capital. His donors include such blue-chip names as Gary Cohn, the president of Goldman Sachs, and the hedge fund kings John Paulson and Kenneth Griffin.
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Mr. Brown, in turn, has been an important ally at critical moments, using his swing vote in the Senate to wring significant concessions out of Democrats on last year’s financial regulation bill, including helping strip out a proposed $19 billion bank tax and weakening a proposal to stop commercial banks from holding large interests in hedge funds and private equity funds….

Reader Interactions

29Comments

  1. 1.

    Raven

    It’s early and I’ll be on the road before anyone read this but I thought you’d enjoy this little uproar we have in Athens over a proposed WalMart near our beloved downtown.

    Tim Denson, a member of Occupy Athens, said the new development might be the local anti-Wall Street movement’s next target.

    “People say we’re unfocused,” said Denson, no relation to Athens-Clarke Mayor Nancy Denson. “They ask what we’re against. This is what we’re against.

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @JPL:

    Thanks, JPL. I’m still in Ottawa for another couple of days, then over to see the cousins. If I don’t cross paths with you on BJ, have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

  8. 8.

    Violet

    From the top article:

    Warren, who went to college on a debate scholarship

    That I didn’t know! Will there be a debate between Senator Himbo and Elizabeth Warren? I already thought she’d wipe the floor with him, but this nugget makes me really hope there is one.

    And I didn’t know he’d taken more money from banksters than almost any other senator. What a creep. In this anti-Wall St. environment, at least that kind of info should hold a bit more traction.

  9. 9.

    YellowJournalism

    “Tiggy-Winkle?” I’m wondering if she meant Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Anyone who’s read those books knows that Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle helped parents teach their unruly children in creative ways that the kids didn’t know what they were truly in for. That fits Warren.

  10. 10.

    Nora

    And when will the MSM retire the stupid “populist” tag for the bought-and-paid-for Tea Party movement? Every time I see that, it raises my blood pressure.

  12. 12.

    butler

    “Vilifying Rival, Wall St. Rallies for Senate Ally“:

    That’s pretty much all that needs to be said. I hope the Warren campaign is smart enough to remind the voters daily of this connection, and the fact that Wall Street loves Brown and hates Warren. Nothing else should be needed.

  13. 13.

    RalfW

    Well. I’ll be writing to Fidelity’s CEO to express my considerable displeasure at their “investment” in a wanker like Brown. I’m certainly not a high-buck guy, but I’ve been a customer for almost 20 years. I’ll also write to the President of my church’s denomination, which has been doing some good shareholder advocacy work (and has an endowment fund) to see what they think of Fidelity being in the top ranks of Brown donors.

  16. 16.

    Hal

    I read the article, and I’m amazed that Scott Brown’s strategy is to climb into bed with Wallstreet, and try to villainize Warren on the basis of OWS, which isn’t exactly off putting to many Americans. Seems like a shit strategy that will ultimately make him appear as a patsy for bankers.

  17. 17.

    Judas Escargot, Populist Asshole.

    @Violet:

    I didn’t know he’d taken more money from banksters than almost any other senator.

    And his (upper middle class white self-employed) supporters seem to know this: “The Senator from Fidelity” is one of the few lines that gets a snicker from both sides in meatspace.

    They’ll still vote for him, anyway, so Warren’s chances probably hinge on GOTV efforts.

  18. 18.

    karen marie

    @cat48:

    Bubba’s mama baked pie, and her mama before her baked pie, and her mama before her mama baked pie, too.

    Really? Do tell! I love me some pie!

  19. 19.

    Lol

    Brown wouldn’t have been able to extract any concessions if Feingold hadn’t decided to throw a temper tantrum and vote against the financial reg no matter what.

  20. 20.

    Jim in Chicago

    @11 2016 might be a bit premature for Warren (even if Obama only needed 4 years in the Senate) but Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is looking like the real deal (and also has a target on his back as a result)….

  21. 21.

    Lolisk

    @Lol:

    Hear, hear. Feingold screwed us over cause he thought it would help his re-election chances. I don’t get why it is so hard for people to see that.

  23. 23.

    FraAnima

    @Ron: I would be happy with that choice. A pro-2nd amendment woman on the Dem ticket … the right won’t know what to do with that.

  27. 27.

    Lurker

    @jeffreyw: You always post the most delicious pictures of food. I keep wondering if you are a professional chef, or if you just cook amazing dishes at home.

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