Before Elizabeth Warren was a potential nominee to run the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, she once wore a lesser-known hat: blogger. The Harvard Law School professor was one of the founding writers of CreditSlips, a blog that’s “a discussion on credit, finance and bankruptcy.” Her posts ended shortly after she headed to Washington in the fall of 2008 to head the Congressional Oversight Panel, monitoring TARP. Law and bankruptcy scholars, as well as lay consumer finance junkies make up the blog’s core audience, which serves as a digital water cooler for Warren and her colleagues.
The contributors lean decidedly pro-consumer, which is refreshing. They somehow missed the national directive that said every advocate has a duty to make the other side’s argument. They must believe (sensibly) that lenders have millions of dollars in advertising and an army of lobbyists to “tell their side of the story”.
Cat Lady
I really do hope she’s chosen. I get a Tanta vibe from her. I’m not firebagger level obsessed about it though.
arguingwithsignposts
I’ve read creditslips for a while. I didn’t know she was a founder, although I knew she wrote for them at times. The blog is run mostly by academics (probably east coast elitists), but I haven’t found a decided slant either way. Maybe that’s just my reading. They seem pretty straightforward, just the facts type folks.
kay
@arguingwithsignposts:
I agree.
I meant in an oversight “is this a good deal for the borrower?”
sort of way.
Definitely not shrill. No shrillness.
Earnest, and somewhat concerned.
kdaug
@Cat Lady: Yeah. At once I don’t see what the big deal is (plenty of other candidates, right?), and then I catch her on the Daily Show or hear an interview or whatever, and there’s just – something – that says she’s the right person at the right time for this particular job.
Maybe it’s just the best PR ever. But my gut says I can trust her.
Nick
@Cat Lady: Everybody likes Elizabeth Warren, everybody thinks she would go a great job, but some people think turning her into a wedge issue only increases the possibility that she becomes a partisan lightning rod, either doesn’t get chosen, confirmed, or ends up recess appointed in a controversial move where her true self is never seen as anything more than a scary communist liberal radical nut.
MikeJ
@kdaug:
I trust her too. But what do I know. I think Kagan is going to make a great Justice. Maybe my trust of Warren is just blind faith.
mr. whipple
@Cat Lady:
She seems cool enough, but don’t understand the public option level of obsession/fervor of her.
kdaug
@mr. whipple: Look up some of her appearances on the Daily Show…. You’ll see the appeal
kay
@Nick:
Oh, Nick, how about we just support her because consumers need a persuasive and smart advocate?
I mean, really. I don’t know how we get up in the morning and go about our day if we’re going to parse every decision by its potential to be a “wedge issue”, and run away.
She’s not in the least divisive. She presents the consumer side in plain language and without demonizing lenders. That’s what principled advocacy is, and, make no mistake, there are two sides here. If we could just admit that, maybe we could have a slightly fairer fight? Maybe I could have a single advocate on my side? There are thousands on the other side, and they’re really well compensated.
In a country that is currently “debating” the 14th Amendment and whether certain people have basic civil rights, I refuse to get all upset and frightened because Elizabeth Warren insists on full disclosure on a mortgage contract.
Spiffy McBang
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the shrill thing, but doesn’t this make her totally shrill? Like Krugman-level shrill?
Dee Loralei
If anyone cares, Steve Cohen beat his democratic primary challenger ex Mayor WW Herenton of Memphis tonight, 79%-19% with 59% reporting. So YAY! I love that guy. Now if only we could get someone to run against my own most odious congresscritter, Marsha Blackburn. (sigh) And Dammit, Basil Marceaux only got 172 votes, less than 1/2 of 1% in the Republican primary. So much for that Colbert bump.
kdaug
@Spiffy McBang: She’s shrill in that FDR kind of way. And all the right people (Geithner, Bernake, ergo Rubin) hate her guts.
kdaug
@Dee Loralei: Damn shame about Marceaux. Could have been even more fun than the Angle / Reid debates.
Spaghetti Lee
@Dee Loralei:
I bet Steve Cohen wishes “Can’t I just run for office once without someone calling me a dirty Jew?”
He’s the only white guy to represent a black-majority district in America, and there’s only one black guy representing a white-majority district. That’s kind of sad.
djork
I have a huge crush on Elizabeth Warren, yes I do.
Dee Loralei
@Spaghetti Lee: I agree. And this is the second time he’s been primaried because he is white and Jewish and the 2nd time he’s won with 79+% of the vote. In his original election, for the open seat Harold Ford Jr vacated he beat a bunch of comers, including a lesser Ford and won with 40+% of the vote. Both Herenton and the Nicki person from the ’08 election ran rather bigotted campaigns against his whiteness and jewishness and lost soundly. I’m betting money no one will challenge him again in the same manner.9And he’s beaten two of the biggest machines in Memphis Dem politics. And maybe now the Congressional Black Caucus will allow him to join, since they did endorse him and give him money. Anyway, I love Cohen and am glad he’ll be around for another 2 years at least.
And Kdaug@13, LOL I voted for Marceau just for the hilarity factor, and he also seemed much less evil than the other Reps and mostly harmless. The Dem primary in my district had nothing interesting going on and we have an open primary so I went Rep.
Uloborus
@kay:
I think it’s more that he supports her, he’s just a little spooked and punch shy that there’s going to be another Dawn Johnson style debate about exactly where IN the liberal base’s back Obama has stuck the knife.
I haven’t heard that this debate has actually started yet, have I? Just a few really enthusiastic recommendations of Warren that make us Obots get nervous. With any luck it’ll stay just nerves.
General Stuck
If Obama doesn’t pick Warren, I will hurt myself, swear to gawd!
mr. whipple
@General Stuck:
I will never vote again, and run away to follow the Dead and sell hummus burgers in the parking lot before shows to get to the next one.
Mark S.
God, Nick, you are the biggest defeatist I’ve ever seen. Are there any battles you think the Democrats should fight?
jeffreyw
Ack! So I’m in the tub, getting a good soak on, and groovin to Alastair Reynolds’ Terminal World when a fucking spider and now my Nook is all wet and not workin.
General Stuck
@MikeJ:
Do What You Like
kdaug
@Dee Loralei: Heh. For me, it was the way that he was so damn earnest about what he was saying. Didn’t catch a hint of sarcasm, irony, or even self-doubt in his affect. He knew what HE KNEW, and let’s go marching forth.
In psyche-speak, I believe that he believed exactly what he was saying. To my eyes, even if the ideas themselves were of limited utility, he at least wasn’t lying or being duplicitous. It could have made for an awesome debate.
Corner Stone
@Mark S.:
Nope. They can’t win any of them so what’s the point in trying?
Yutsano
It’s real simple actually: Elizabeth Warren is a Midwestern grandmother. For me that sums it up right there. Yeah she’s hella smart and knows her material backwards and forwards, and yeah she already has a strong record of advocacy under her belt, but the fact is she’s just…likable. I mean, she wouldn’t have to ever raise her voice, just give a disapproving look, and the contrition would flow like water. She’d be all kinds of awesome.
Nick
@kay: I was infering the “line in the sand”
Advocating for her is one thing we should be doing, but when Huff Post said “If obama doesn’t pick Warren, he’s lost us all,” they put her potential nomination in jeopardy. That turns her into a wedge issue.
Mark S.
@Yutsano:
What I like about her is that she’s about the only person in the Treasury side of things who seems to care about us non-billionaires. Guys like Geithner, Paulson, Bernacke, etc. I don’t get the impression that they care about anyone who isn’t an executive at Goldman Sachs.
Nick
@Mark S.:
The ones that are the top of their agenda.
and yes Corner, Democrats will always lose fights, they can never win battles in this political climate. A Democratic majority is like a IPod, using it will suck up the battery, so you pick the best things to do before the battery goes dead.
and btw, i never said don’t fight for Warren, I said liberals shouldn’t turn her into a suicide mission by telling their enemies they can sink the President by opposing her. People like Scott Brown, the Maine twins, Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman couldn’t give a shit about the consumer protection agency or whether or not the person running it as a fair advocate for consumers, they care abot the political ramifications and how they can effect or create them. If they think they can drive a wedge between him and liberals and him and rest of the population and create pain for him, they’ll do it, just for fun, because its good for them politically.
Especially in an election year, especially when the President is struggling. Did the 9/11 bill fiaso not prove this to you?
Yutsano
@Mark S.: That too, and good point. That of course is why the oligarchy was throwing up bullshit about Geithner not supporting her. She’s not in the good ol’ boys network, so she is the ultimate outsider, yet she understands their world as much as if not more than they do.
Nick
@Yutsano:
Huff Post started that bullshit
Yutsano
@Nick: That was supposed to disprove my point? Ariana has been trying to get street cred by bashing Obama as much as possible. Plus she’s been a wealthy aristocrat all her life.
Nick
@Yutsano: Wasn’t sure you included her in that.
BTW, she’s apparently decided to take aim at St. Alan of Orlando. Wonder what that response will be?
gwangung
@Yutsano: Hm. Shouldn’t that be a way to sell her?
Yutsano
@gwangung: I consider it a major point in her favor. She could chide you for acting like an irresponsible banker then get you a mug of cocoa at the same time. I’ve never felt more comfortable with a public figure in my life.
Corner Stone
@Nick: How much do you get paid to troll every fucking thread here with this nonsense and bullshit?
Nick
@Corner Stone:
A lot less than you
Mark S.
@Corner Stone:
I sometimes wonder if Nick hails from a universe where Rush Limbaugh is the most beloved man in America.
Nick
@Mark S.: Oh no, it’s pretty clear everybody hates Rush Limbaugh. No one listens to him. *rolls eyes*
kay
@Uloborus:
Right. I see what you’re saying.
But, I’m not going to ignore her because “the firebaggers” support her. I hate the word “firebaggers”, by the way. I just call them “liberal Democrats” because that’s what they are.
Aren’t you letting Arianna Huffington determine what you do if you fret every time she makes some big, dramatic pronouncement? She’s drawn about 25 ‘lines in the sand’ by my informal count. Have any of them come to anything, besides raising her profile and revenues? She’s a conflict personality, because that works with her business model. Frankly, I wish Huffington had stayed on the conservative side. I think she’s ludicrous and laughable as a populist, and I would like it very much if she would stop speaking for me.
I don’t think Warren’s comparable to Dawn Johnsen (who I really wanted, liberal favorite or not) because no one in the general public knows anything about judges, ever, so they’re easy to demonize.
It would be helpful for the general public to become familiar with an actual, working advocate. Not a cable tv populist to express our collective rage, but an effective, unapologetic advocate, who occasionally succeeds at something. I think there’s room for both screamers and workers, but we don’t have any of the latter out there in public.
Ralph Nader was like Warren, before he became bitter and started running for President. He was the high-profile spokesperson for the “consumer law” movement. People still rely on all those 70’s and 80’s state and federal statutes that he helped to inspire when they get ripped off: he was the public face and driver of that. At the end of the day, I think he (and we) would have been much better off if he had stuck to what he is good at. No one since has been as broadly effective.
WereBear
@kay: Yes, I miss the old Ralph. He seemed so sensible; though it was never was an empathy thing so much as a “rightness” thing; I know that sounds odd.
But I’ll never forgive him for the “Gore is the same as Bush” thing.
Nader was a contender. Now he’s a bum.
kay
@WereBear:
There was empathy there, too.
I took a consumer law class once (because it was at 2 o clock, and I was there at that time, my usual rigorous standard for class-taking) and we watched tape of Nader’s appearances on television. He was on television all the time, in the “golden age of consumer law”.
Nader used to talk about his mother a lot, in interviews. She was frugal and sensible and a good cook, and his inspiration.
Nader was close to cuddly, before he went completely insane.
Joey Maloney a/k/a BadExampleMan
@Dee Loralei: Weasel-faced little Jewish guy crushes oversized African American with funny-shaped head. Democracy in action.
Seriously, though, I like Cohen and Herenton would’ve been a disaster. He combines the worst characteristics of Harold Ford and Bob Ney. And back in 06 Cohen’s staff was remarkably good-humored in thefae of my weekly harangues about why their boss should push for impeachment hearings.