Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

We will not go back.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Sometimes the world just tells you your cat is here.

“I was told there would be no fact checking.”

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

The snowflake in chief appeared visibly frustrated when questioned by a reporter about egg prices.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

You are here: Home / Organizing & Resistance / Don't Mourn, Organize / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: I {Heart} My Senior Senator

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: I {Heart} My Senior Senator

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We live in cynical times. At BloombergPolitics, Annie Linskey asks “What Exactly Is Elizabeth Warren Going For?“:

… She has said she’s not running for president and disavowed a super-PAC formed to push her candidacy. And yet the former Harvard Law School professor is traveling a path familiar to presidential candidates, drawing crowds that would make some potential Democratic rivals jealous. With one week’s notice, hundreds of supporters shouldered their way into her Iowa events. Once again, a first-term senator who doesn’t look like the typical U.S. president is basking in the adulation of a eager Democratic crowd. …

In just the past 72 hours, Warren has headlined rallies for Democrats in Colorado and Minnesota, in addition to Iowa. This year, she’s campaigned in 15 states, including Ohio, New Mexico, Kentucky, Oregon, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan and her home state of Massachusetts. That makes her one of the most-requested campaign surrogates this year, said Justin Barasky, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “She’s incredibly popular,” he said.

She’s also opening her campaign wallet, giving money from her political action committee, PAC For a Level Playing Field, to 26 of the 36 Democrats running for the Senate this year, including the maximum $10,000 donation to 19 of them. Her PAC ranks as the fifth most generous to Democratic candidates among senators, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Her political operation churns out a steady stream of fundraising emails–one says she has raised $6 million for candidates this cycle.

Why all the work if she has no ambitions for the White House?

The explanation, according to people who have followed her closely, is that she’s not building a presidential campaign. She’s following Obama’s lead, with a slight twist, by trying to build a movement that could redefine the party and later lead to a future White House candidacy…

Warren’s broader message for overhauling the way Washington works hasn’t changed much since her 2012 campaign to unseat Republican Senator Scott Brown. “This is not only an election,” she told a group of supporters back then. “We’ve got to make the wind blow in the right direction.” There’s some evidence the movement-building is working—even in “deep maroon” South Dakota, where Democratic candidate Rick Weiland has campaigned on Warren’s efforts to reduce interest rates on student loans…

When Warren finished in Iowa City, she and Braley rushed to their next event, another rally 120 miles west to Des Moines. They drove two hours through golden brown cornfields and arrived in another ballroom jammed with pro-Warren activists. “I am so glad to be here today,” she began. What came next—about her parents, her brothers—was not going to make news to the reporters following her for the past couple of years. But it just might make a movement.

A movement which does not necessarily end with the words … now elect me your God-King President. It’s not required that every politician looking to support their agenda must make a move on the Oval Office — it might very well be a distraction from Warren’s focus on leveling the financial playing field. Right now, she’s giving the best kind of support to other Democrats who need it badly, and that’s more than good enough.
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Apart from Our Failed Media Experiment, what’s on the agenda for the day?

Reader Interactions

78Comments

  4. 4.

    Chris

    A movement which does not necessarily end with the words … now elect me your God-King President. It’s not required that every politician looking to support their agenda must make a move on the Oval Office — it might very well be a distraction from Warren’s focus on leveling the financial playing field. Right now, she’s giving the best kind of support to other Democrats who need it badly, and that’s more than good enough.

    And this is exactly why I don’t want her in the White House: she can do far more good where she is, and a movement requires much more than the White House in order to make a meaningful, long-term impact on American politics.

  5. 5.

    Hal

    I saw some clips of her last night and she was damn good. A very sincere and power message about our dwindling middle class. Still, I would rather she stay in the Senate and help elect another 50 like her.

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    Golly gee whiz, what a toothsome treat found on YouTube.

    A broadcast of the complete Broadway revival of The Man Who came To Dinner starring Nathan Lane and Jean Smart.

    Nathan Lane is, well, Nathan Lane. It’s really the actresses in this production who are the glittering gems. Each of them is superb.

  7. 7.

    Mustang Bobby

    ACORN went out of business in 2010 thanks to convicted felon James O’Keefe and his lily-white pranksters. But the fear of people power keeps it alive in the fevered mind of the bonkers. Check out the language included in the rules and regulations of a grant from the Department of Justice received this month:

    Recipient understands and agrees that it cannot use any federal funds, either directly or indirectly, in support of any contract or subaward to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) or its subsidiaries, without the express prior written approval of OJP.[Office of Justice Programs].

    What, nothing about the Black Panthers?

  11. 11.

    raven

    @Mustang Bobby: The kids that lived there went to my high school, Willowbook, in Villa Park. There were 4 or 5 African American students in a school population of near 4,000. I really didn’t know what York Center until years later.

    York Center was founded immediately after World War II as a co-op on the principles of shared ownership “to promote and develop good will, high moral values, wholesome cooperative activities and healthy civic spirit.” Louis Shirky established a Church of the Brethren purchasing the Goltermann farm for the housing cooperative. [4] At its founding the co-op was an experiment in what was then considered radical living.[5] Chicagoans who wanted to escape grime and prejudice flocked to what was then a bucolic farm, which the people bought and the co-op subdivided. Members learned to tout the 100 acres of communally-owned property as an economically mixed society that was tolerant of all races, religions and ethnicities.[6] Many early residents, including Louis Shirkey were members of the York Center Church of the Brethren. The purpose was to establish a new kind of community, a housing cooperative based on open membership “to all persons of good will.[7]

  12. 12.

    raven

    Archivist Dennis Bilger of the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., has stated, “It is probably true that the York Center Cooperative was, if not the first, one of the very earliest integrated housing developments in the United States.`[8] In 1949, President Harry Truman issued an executive order declaring racial discrimination illegal in the granting of Federal Housing Administration loans. The watershed edict came after York Center Co-op members teamed up with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in a test case.[9]

  13. 13.

    Amir Khalid

    Interestingly, the next Bloomberg story is about how being chairman of the Republican Governors Association might boost Chris Christie’s chances in 2016. It’s not particularly convincing, let’s just say.

  14. 14.

    bemused

    @Mustang Bobby:

    I saw on msnbc last night that little punk O’Keefe tried to get Dems in CO? to commit voter fraud which they didn’t fall for. He “disguised” himself with a cheesy looking mustache.

  17. 17.

    Keith G

    I think we need a movement as much as we need a president, if not more. We need an infrastructure of popular political focus and ambition that is in place even after any individual leader leaves office. The devolution of the old political parties has made this all the more necessary.

    If Warren can help do this, it might be a more substantial legacy then if she were to occupy the office of President.

  18. 18.

    Baud

    Good on Warren. This stuff impresses me more than her speeches (which are impressive in their own right).

  20. 20.

    gene108

    @Keith G:

    Sustained movements cost money. The reason right-wingers keep pushing on and on and on is because of billionaire sugar daddies, who fund their idiocy.

    If Warren can dole out some cash to keep an agenda going, it is a first step to trying to sustain a counter balance to the right-wingers.

  23. 23.

    bemused

    @Mustang Bobby:

    He’s pathetic. He has gotten away with avoiding jail so far but I have a feeling that eventually one of his plots is going to put him there. It’s like watching a stupid criminal episode on a cop show.

  26. 26.

    Botsplainer

    @Elizabelle:

    Snowplow driver was allegedly drunk; survives the accident. 4 on jet do not.

    If I had to operate a snowplow at Sheremyetevo, I’d work drunk, too.

  28. 28.

    Botsplainer

    @bemused:

    I saw on msnbc last night that little punk O’Keefe tried to get Dems in CO? to commit voter fraud which they didn’t fall for. He “disguised” himself with a cheesy looking mustache

    I found it … odd … that the sleazy little shit chose such a gay persona and vintage Village People pornstache for the stunt.

    He’s got the stench of self hating Log Cabin Republican dripping off of him like a bukkake party gone bad.

    Don’t google it.

  32. 32.

    Schlemazel

    @Betty Cracker:
    That is so unfair! Quasimodo was a gentle soul without malice toward anyone & deeply in love, his physical deformity hid that. The other guys is hideous from surface to bone marrow.

  34. 34.

    bemused

    @danielx:

    The quick shot of him on msnbc last night just did not do justice to his “look” like the bigger photo at the link. I don’t have any words except just eewww.

  38. 38.

    Botsplainer

    @danielx:

    Just think “entire GOP House caucus and their self hating staffers, PLUS think tank closeteds, with O’Keefe receiving in the middle”.

    You’re welcome for the mental image flooding all the areas of your brain that have any connection to any sort of passions you previously had an interest in, now crushed forever. Now you can start your day and get work done like an automaton.

  39. 39.

    Mustang Bobby

    @Botsplainer: Oh, please. All that does is confirm what I’ve been saying we need at the Radical Homosexual Agenda: an admissions committee with strict rules for qualifying to even get a review. Twerps like O’Keefe need not apply.

  40. 40.

    danielx

    @Nunca El Jefe:

    backpfeifengesicht: a face that cries out for a fist (in it). yep yep.

    skeeve: various definitions that all fit O’Keefe, whether used as verb, noun or adjective.

    Although the first one is the most….descriptive.

    (verb) to gross out; to digust; to make your skin crawl, sometimes with undertones of sexual deviance/perversion
    It really skeeved me out when he ate the gummy bear off the floor in the movie theater.
    or
    Twenty-year-old guys who date girls too young to drive really skeeve me out.

    Edit: @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I didn’t need to google that shit; found out about it years ago (unfortunately) when I read of one particularly egregious episode of Meet The Press described as a bukkakefest. One more thing I would have been much happier not knowing about.

  45. 45.

    bemused

    @debbie:

    ianal but he went right up to edge but not quite over?

    He and 3 others did get arrested in their stupid stunt at Mary Landrieu office trying to mess with their telephones. I still don’t understand exactly what they were trying to do. He pleaded guilty but I don’t think he did any jail time other than original arrest.

    So maybe he learned from that but I think he won’t be able to stop himself from going just a little too far or a lot too far some day.

  46. 46.

    bemused

    @debbie:

    Looked it up. O’Keefe and the other 3 were arrested by the feds, charges later reduced to misdemeanors. O’Keefe got biggest sentence of $1,500 fine, 3 years probation and 100 hours of community service. He got off easy that time.

  47. 47.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @danielx: Yeah, that occurred to me after caffeine and after it was too late to edit.

    I know a woman who grabbed a couple of friends to help her review the decidedly non-vanilla porn stash on her husband’s computer after she threw him out. The ex-Marine’s reactions were hilarious. “There’s a name for that? No, no, don’t tell me…. There’s a name for that?”

  48. 48.

    mai naem

    @danielx: I hope Hubbard gets the Democratic version prosecution equivalent of Don Siegelman and, then, ends up in the same prison as Siegelman. I can’t believe Obama didn’t pardon Siegelman. I hope he still does this year but I am betting he won’t.

  49. 49.

    Aimai

    @bemused: he was accompanied by the son of a VIP, local Police VIZp, thats one reason he got off on bugging a senators office. As long as he brings the mouth breathing frat boys of the gop along with him he will not really have to worry. Solo crimes or deniable crimes committed against powerless people wont get him jailed either.

  50. 50.

    gelfling545

    @Chris: This is my feeling as well. Sen. Warren’s passion seems to be domestic issues, especially the economic ones. As we have seen international affairs, including foolish ones, often demand a president’s focus by their very nature. I do not believe Sen. Warren has any desire to engage in the international diplomatic dance & juggling act.

  52. 52.

    debbie

    @bemused:

    My guess would be that he waited out his probation to the day before beginning in again with his shenanigans. Hopefully, that will be taken into account when he’s sentenced this time.

  55. 55.

    Chris

    @gelfling545:

    It’s that, plus the part that a president can’t be the voice of the economic left the way a lower ranking politician with a smaller base can. The president has to be the president of the entire country, appeal to too many different people, cut too many deals. I’d rather Warren remain where she is as a voice (hopefully with more someday soon) trying to pull the national discourse to the left, than put herself through that grinder.

    As FDR said (at a time when the national mood was as far to the economic left as it ever has been in history), the president needs people to his left to make him do the things he wants to do, even though he wants to do them. There’s not a whole lot of that at the moment. People like Warren building a left wing to our politics are sorely needed where they are if we’re ever going to get it back.

  57. 57.

    Lihtox

    Maybe she’s gunning for Harry Reid’s job instead. Elizabeth Warren, Senate Majority Leader… :)

  58. 58.

    rikyrah

    Greg Carr @AfricanaCarr

    #OscarPistorius sentence: 5 years,could do as few as 10 months, for killing somebody. Du Bois right again: “The color line belts the world.”
    Retweeted by PragmaticObotsUnite

  59. 59.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @raven: Now I am jealous. There is nothing like Athens anywhere near here. A few singular outposts of art, that’s all. The closest “community” is up in STL. I find it really cool that my little bro is so heavily invested in it, but it would really be nice to find a collaborative like those 3 wonderful women out here.

  60. 60.

    raven

    @OzarkHillbilly: The art scene is certainly alive and well, we had 5,000 this weekend in a half marathon that benefits AthFest, the summer music festival. The only thing that gets me is how the artsy people bitch and whine about football and, like their thing, Athens wouldn’t be Athens without it.

  61. 61.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Lihtox: I think the reason Harry Reid has the job is not overwhelming fondness for Harry Reid but because he’s seen as a broker between the segments of the Democratic Party. IOW, it’s precisely because he’s colorless and flavorless that he’s accepted as a leader. IMHO, making Warren Majority Leader would stick her in that same position, having to articulate the compromise positions of the party and its course, rather than what she really thinks. Better to have her be Wellstone II.

  63. 63.

    aimai

    @FlipYrWhig: Still, I’d like to have a majority leader from a blue, blue state who won’t ever feel pressured to compromise to keep his/her seat in the first place. I’d like a Majority Leader who is confident about dragging the country towards a more progressive space rather than apologetic about it. I think Warren would be a kick ass Majority Leader–she has a laser like focus on detail.

  64. 64.

    WereBear

    Why all the work if she has no ambitions for the White House?

    A classic example of the Screaming Narcissism* of the Village in one sentence. Well done!

    *potential band name

  65. 65.

    Alex

    Anne, this is an axe you’ve been grinding for awhile now. For some reason, you, like tbogg, see fit to run cover for the monstrosity that is the Clinton family. Hillary & Bill are not even remotely liberal, and they would sell out the Democratic base in a heartbeat (as Bill did, again and again). You want Social Security privatized? Dollars to doughnuts, Hillary Clinton will compromise with the GOP on that issue. You want a new, broader war in the Middle East? Obama has failed on this point in Libya, Syria & Iraq, but Secretary Hillary Clinton was always – always – the one pushing for broader and broader intervention in our Forever War.

    I think Elizabeth Warren, like Barack Obama did, should kneecap the Clinton coronation and ensure those people are permanently removed from the political scene.

  66. 66.

    Bruuuuce

    You know, “Justice Warren” sounds pretty good, too, especially if one of the Awful Four should find himself unable to perform his duties (I know, my keyboard to His Noodly Appendages :-) )

    Not that “President Warren” sounds bad, but a lifetime appointment compared to eight years sounds like a great deal to me.

  67. 67.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Bruuuuce: She’s old already. A lifetime appointment at age 65+ is not such a hot deal. That’s one thing the conservatives got right – stick in young judges, who will be there forever. Roberts was appointed to SCOTUS at age 50.

  68. 68.

    Bruuuuce

    So she only serves fifteen years. She’d still have a bigger voice in SCOTUS than almost anywhere else than the White House. As I said, I’d love to see her there. Either one would give the GOP pearl-clutching palsy and apoplexy, which would be just Such A SHAME, as my mom used to say :-)

  69. 69.

    Chris

    @WereBear:

    What kills me isn’t even that they can’t imagine people who aren’t narcissists – it’s that they can’t imagine anyone with any notoriety at all not wanting the White House.

    Even if you assume that every politician in Washington is a narcissist: some people would rather be kingmaker than king. Some people would rather have a safe seat with no term limits than a fifty-fifty shot at a position that won’t even last a decade. Some people don’t want all the attention and scrutiny that the White House brings. Some people prefer being a big fish in a little pond to the other way around. And so on, and so forth.

    But no, not only can they not imagine a non-narcissist’s point of view, they can’t even imagine anyone not sharing their weird fetish for the office of the President, God-King of our Republic.

  71. 71.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Sounds to me like Warren understands the underlying principle behind Dean’s 50-state strategy: fight ’em all.

    It worked, got the Senate and the Presidency. And then it was dismantled.

  72. 72.

    cokane

    Ya that’s a dumb article, plus even if she isn’t trying to be president in 2016, maybe at some later date? What’s so wrong with that? Or not at all?

  73. 73.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Chris: The other thing they appear to be unable to imagine is that Senator Warren might be doing this because she thinks it’s the right thing to do and it needs doing. Like, she might genuinely believe that politics can be a tool to make people’s lives better and that’s what she wants to accomplish.

    The Villagers are so used to seeing the whole thing as a kind of spectator sport, the outcomes of which are interesting only in that sometimes you win the bet and sometimes you lose the bet. The fact that actual human beings are materially affected by the outcome is not relevant.

  74. 74.

    Tree With Water

    I’d like to hear Hillary Clinton’s answer to the question, “Do you agree with Senator Warren that “the game is rigged”?

  76. 76.

    El Caganer

    @Tree With Water: That would certainly be interesting, especially if she attempted to agree with Sen. Warren’s additional contention that it was Republicans who rigged it. After all, it wasn’t Ronald Reagan who signed NAFTA and the Financial Services Modernization Act.

  78. 78.

    Mike in dc

    Warren as DNC or DSCC chair would be awesome, particularly if she picked up the discarded 50 state strategy and ran with it. We have to start pumping up base turnout in mid term and off year elections.

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