The Horse Race That Is Now Massachusetts

Posted: February 14, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, Elizabeth Warren Campaign, polling, Scott Brown, Senate, U.S. Politics | 13 Comments

Recent polling puts the Elizabeth Warren vs. Scott Brown race at 46-43%, a reminder to voters that it’s a long way to election day.

Warren, the political newcomer, has come out of the box fast and furious, being able to introduce herself and general ideas to Massachusetts’ voters.  Name recognition is critical for election success.  In that regard, Scott Brown has the advantage, having held the late Ted Kennedy’s seat since 2010.  But that also means, Brown will need to defend his record.

The breakdown in the new WBUR [NPR news affiliate, Boston] poll shows Warren leading 28 points with 18-29 year olds and 23 points with over 60 year olds.  Brown holds the middle with a 24-point advantage with 30-44 year olds and a 2-point lead in the 45 to 59 year old slot.  Warren’s favorability/unfavorability rating was at 39/29 trailing Brown’s numbers at 50/ 29.  The poll was conducted by Steve Koczela, head of the polling group at the independent think tank, MassINC.

An interesting detail emerging from the poll was the importance of middle-class identification for November 2012.  I would suggest that this is a direct result of the Occupy Wall Street Movement that has effectively raised public consciousness regarding the plight of working class Americans.  At the moment, Koczela found that Scott Brown had a slight lead in voter perception—the man and his truck meme.  However, the Boston Globe ran an article on Warren’s hard-scrabble background, which could go a long way in changing hearts and minds.

In adulthood, both candidates have done well for themselves.  Brown owns a home and several rental properties in Wrentham valued at $1-2.3 million.  He received a $700,000 payout for his autobiography.  Warren’s Cambridge home is valued between $1-5 million and reportedly made more than $500,000 in 2010.

Obviously, neither candidate is struggling financially, so the test could very well come down to ‘the narrative’—who will convince the electorate that they understand and can identify with the reality of economic hardship and lack of job opportunities for our dwindling middle class.  The Globe article on Warren “The Girl Who Soared but Longed to Belong” is an extraordinary step in that direction.

Brown has made several missteps recently.  Though his push for the insider-trading bill is a plus, he came out through a spokesman in support of Republican Roy Blunt’s bill on a conscience exemption.  The amendment was in response to the contraception fury last week and would effectively allow employers or insurers to deny health coverage that they find ‘morally objectionable.’  This is clearly outside the electorate’s position on the topic.  According to the latest Fox News poll, 67% of women agree to contraception coverage and 58+% of independents agree with the President’s decision.

Brown’s response through John Donnelly was as follows:

Senator Brown appreciates President Obama’s willingness to revisit this issue, but believes it needs to be clarified through legislation. The senator signed onto bipartisan legislation that writes a conscience exemption into law, which is an important step toward ensuring that religious liberties are always protected.

This is hardly a strong position since [as has been discussed here and across the media expanse] this is not and never has been about religious liberty.  The Republicans would love to frame the issue that way but it’s a losing strategy as found in the Fox survey.

Though sampling in the WBUR poll was small [503] it provides an intriguing snapshot of voter sentiment.  It should be noted that the poll was taken between February 6-9 before Brown’s statement on his contraception position and support of the Blunt proposal.

Make no mistake, the election is not going to be a slam-dunk for Elizabeth Warren.  What she has shown, however, is that her initial momentum has been sustained. And her ability to raise money is impressive with reportedly $5.7 million raised in the last quarter as opposed to $3.2 million raised by the Brown campaign.  This still puts her behind gross fund raising for the 2012 contest with a total of $8.8 million to Brown’s $12.8 million in his war chest.

Still, no one should underestimate Warren’s appeal.  As the Globe article makes clear, Elizabeth Warren is intimately familiar with setbacks, a woman who grew up amidst sprawling wheat fields and prairie, who lived a childhood she’s described as ‘teetering on the ragged edge of the middle class.”  Money anxieties, the problems that income shortages create for families, have been the focus of Warren’s professional life—in her books, in her Harvard career in bankruptcy law and certainly in her dogged persistence in midwifing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in DC.  Against fierce opposition.

If middle class identification is the thrust of the 2012 senatorial election then Elizabeth Warren is very well situated.  That and her ability to distill issues and policy into understandable language is a true gift, something she shares with the likes of Bill Clinton.

This will be a race to watch right up to the finish line.  And I love a good horse race!

The Problem With Peace Treaties [Of the Political Kind]

Posted: February 2, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 primaries, Democratic Politics, Elections, Elizabeth Warren Campaign, Republican politics, Scott Brown | Tags: , , | 7 Comments

It was sweet while it lasted, a lean across the Great Divide by two political opponents, namely Elizabeth Warren running for the US Senate seat in Massachusetts and Scott Brown, hoping to keep that seat planted firmly under his fanny.

The agreement was sensible after an early barrage of negative political ads. Karl Rove’s group first claimed Warren was a secret socialist, her blood line running straight to Stalin [the Matriarch of Mayhem], which evolved into an accusation that she was somehow a sympathetic friend to Wall St. financial institutions.  No doubt the banks did a double take.  Conversely, Warren’s admirers claimed that Brown was financed by those same financial institutions [which happens to be true].  He also claimed that the press was giving Elizabeth Warren a free ride, not hitting her with the really ‘hard’ questions.

Whining appears to be a Republican strategy for 2012.

Nonetheless, both parties agreed to reject the outside, 3rd party organizations funding these less than complimentary videos, ads and press releases.  But as history tells us, ceasefires and negotiations are dicey at best.  Even signed treaties can have gaping loopholes.

Such is the case in this wobbly agreement [hattip to TPM].  The Boston Globe reported earlier this week that Warren’s people were breaking the pledge by allowing an unflattering website, Rethink Brown.com, to surface in an expanded form.  The site displays several of Scott Brown’s quotes.

What are these quotes?  So, glad you asked.

The first statement is: “I go to Washington representing no faction, no special interest . . . ”

The quote is from Brown’s victory speech the night he won the Massachusett’s Senate seat in 2010.  Full quote:

I go to Washington as the representative of no faction or interest, answering only to my conscience and to the people. I’ve got a lot to learn in the Senate, but I know who I am and I know who I serve. I’m Scott Brown. I’m from Wrentham. I drive a truck, and I’m nobody’s senator but yours.

The comment is dated January 19, 2010 and fits nicely into Brown’s debate performance, where he corrected a moderator, regarding the former Senate seat:

With all due respect, it’s not the Kennedys’ seat and it’s not the Democrats’ seat.  It’s the People’s Seat.

That single comment literally turned Brown and his handsome mug into household familiars.  It was a star moment.

The dirty trick is that Elizabeth Warren jumped into the 2012 race and turned things upside down.  The recent complaint, the way this rabble-rousing, pro-Warren website is smearing Scott Brown, thereby breaking the peace accord and the public’s love affair?   The website places Scott Brown’s own words against facts, then properly cites and corroborates them.

For instance, the unfortunate fact that Scott Brown has accepted $1.1 million from Wall St. contributions, ferreted out by Center for Responsive Politics.  Or that Brown used his swing vote to water down Wall St. regulations, a story reported by the Boston Globe.  Or that Forbes magazine cited Scott Brown as one of Wall St’s favorite congressmen, with the article provided for reading pleasure.

Not only that but the Rethink Brown site manages to wiggle around the deal’s agreement because it’s not paid advertising, simply a group making a rather pointed statement on its own site.

Dastardly!

Color me suspicious when Brown claims these revelations break the spirit of the agreement, that this is just a way of peddling lies and misinformation.  Where are the lies?  What is the misinformation?

There’s a vast difference in pointing out a candidate’s contradictions to bold-face fiction and prevarication.  I would consider the latter approach the sort of thing Karl Rove’s GPS Crossroads’ group relies on consistently.

As for my suspicions?  No sooner did the Globe article come out ‘exposing’ Rethink Brown.com than the Massachusetts GOP launched an anti-Warren ad [also not covered under the agreement].

Okay.  That’s true.  Warren has done very well for herself. I can’t confirm the numbers but Elizabeth Warren is certainly no longer struggling financially. The comment on the Lawrence O’Donnell show?  What sort of wealthy was she speaking of—the top 1%, the top 5, 10, 20?  We don’t know from this video because we don’t have the entire clip.   But here’s the complete quote:

You know, I’m with you on this. Either don’t own it or put it in a blind trust, you know, where someone else manages it and you literally can’t see what’s in there. I realize there are some wealthy individuals — I’m not one of them — but some wealthy individuals who have a lot of stock portfolios. But you’re exactly right. I don’t understand how people can be out there in the House, in the Senate, they get inside information and they’re making critical decisions. We need to feel like they’re making those decisions on our behalf, not as an investor who would do better if the law goes this way instead of that way. I agree.

How clever.  They chopped off the ‘qualifier.’  Warren is not a wealthy individual of the sort who has a lot of stock portfolios, which would cloud her legislative judgment.  This was a discussion about insider trading and conflict of interest.  But look how easy it is to draw an inference—Warren lied about her wealth. She’s a wealthy woman. Oooooo.

And this is a Republican attack?

In fairness to Scott Brown he has a 2-year record he needs to support—things he said, things he did.  As for Elizabeth Warren?  She too has a record in Washington where she stood for protecting consumers against unfair business practices and how she developed then midwifed a Financial Protection Bureau into being, one to protect consumers in those same deals and contracts.  She’s also said quite bluntly that the American people got a raw deal in the economic debacle of 2008.  I don’t recall her ever saying Americans shouldn’t strive for success or eschew all monetary reward.  What I remember Warren stating unequivocally is that successful individuals are obligated to pay their fair share to the system that made their success uniquely possible.  Including the 1%.  Why?  Because it’s equitable.

Mr. Brown, I have nothing against you personally.  You seem like a perfectly nice man.  But tell your ad-meisters to use the truth-o-meter next time out.

And do yourself a personal favor—stop the whining.  It’s extremely unattractive.

From Matriarch of Mayhem to Pampered Princess

Posted: December 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Banksters, Elections, Elizabeth Warren Campaign | 9 Comments

A recent Boston Herald interview with Scott Brown found the freshman senator from Massachusetts bemoaning the ‘fluffy’ treatment that Elizabeth Warren has received from the press.  This is the same Elizabeth Warren [who has jumped to a 14 point advantage in the MA Senate race] accused of socialist political leanings; called the woman who would throw stones; cited as an elitist who would indoctrinate our children, leading them to violent mayhem; and most recently, smeared as a staunch ‘supporter’ of all things TARP and Wall Street.

Needless to say, the war of accusations launched by Karl Rove and his Crossroads GPA advertising has produced tepid to reverse results.  Despite all the slamming, Warren has not only held her own but gained traction, leaping ahead in the polls.

This sobering news has put Scott Brown into a whiney funk.  According to Brown, Elizabeth Warren is ‘very, very liberal.’

Oh noes!  Say it ain’t true–in the bluest state in the Union.  A liberal?  OMG.

But is Brown’s declaration true?  Elizabeth Warren is a former Republican, who after years of analyzing what was happening to the American middle-class by destructive economic policies, jumped ship and parties.  Does supporting the middle-class make one a liberal?  Does criticizing the unfair advantage of the rentier class transform one into a wild-eyed Commie?  Does speaking on behalf of working men and women label one a radical?

Karl Rove would have the Massachusetts electorate believe so. Although not too successfully.

However, it appears that Scott Brown has bought into the advertising blitz.  Not only is Warren ‘very, very liberal’ but:

when she’s stating that she’s created the intellectual foundation for the Occupy Wall Street — and you know all the problems we had with those folks here. And then the fact that she’s gonna leave blood and teeth in the street, and she’s not gonna compromise and only wants to work on big things. Well you know, we have plenty of ideologues down there, and a lot of partisanship down there already.

Oh yes, the American public really needs to be reminded of ideologues [down there] and all the bitter partisan wrangling over the last 3 years. While virtually nothing has been accomplished to put Americans back to work.  Just yak, yak, yak about protecting the mythical job creators from any and all taxation and the enduring pretense that the 2007-2008 financial meltdown was unforeseeable, thereby rendering Wall St. participants and their horrified handmaidens innocent bystanders, terribly sorry but not accountable.

Oh and btw, Mr. Brown, it was blood and teeth left on the ‘floor,’ not the street.  The reference was citing the fight for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild, a reform agency that Republicans [and sadly Democrats] have attempted to smother in its crib.

This would be almost funny if the fallout of tanked pension funds, bankrupt municipalities, massive unemployment, record numbers of Americans sliding into poverty were merely a morality play, the audience shuffling home after the last, cautionary curtain call.

But it is not.

The recent Census Report stats picked up by the AP indicates that nearly 50% of the American public is considered low income.  That alone should horrify and shame everyone.  Nearly 50%!  In this country, the United States of America.  The financial debacle, politely referred to as a ‘recession,’ has wiped out staggering amounts of wealth from and security for millions of American households, while the upper tiers of the population, the infamous 1%, has reaped mega-bucks.  Not through brilliance and hard work but through accounting tricks and outright fraud [pull up any number of William Black’s essays for the particulars—here’s one to get you started].

And what do we hear?   Whines and endless excuses, obfuscation and diversion; outright lies and numbers that never add up. Btw, this does not let Democrats off the hook.  Personally, I find the unemployment numbers nothing short of obscene.  8.6% my ass!

Scott Brown’s other complaint about Warren is:

“She’s going to have every advantage. … I don’t have a machine behind me like she will, and she does clearly,” Brown said.

Really?  What do you call this from Karl Rove’s wondrous elf workshop?

And why should Scott Brown or Karl Rove be surprised at the public’s reaction to blatant lies countered by a clear and direct answer?

This response isn’t a Machine talking.  It’s a real live person talking to other real live people who are fed up with business as usual and are waking, slowly but surely, to the greatest heist in history.  Elizabeth Warren is speaking the language of ordinary men and women.  Yes, she wants to do ‘big things,’ as in looking out for the public’s interest.  And yes, I believe her when she says she’ll leave blood and teeth on the floor. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Music to my ears and dare I say to many other voters.  In fact, Elizabeth Warren sounds like the real deal.  Better yet, she has a record of standing up, while under intense, obnoxious fire–a record to match the words.

What a concept!  A candidate for our times.

From Marxist to Corporatist, Elizabeth Warren Drives the GOP to Insanity

Posted: December 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Economy, Elections, Elizabeth Warren Campaign, Senate | Tags: , , , | 13 Comments

Anyone who has been following the Elizabeth Warren story, her bid for the Senate seat in Massachusetts, which would put pinup Scott Brown into early retirement, knows the attacks from the Right have become increasingly frantic.  Particularly since Warren’s numbers continue to rise and contributions pile up in surprising amounts.

What’s the Republican machine and Wall Street to do?

They’ve tried the expected smears.  Warren has been painted as a woman prone to violence.  She was the Woman Who Would Throw Rocks.

Okay, that was pretty silly.

Let’s try: Warren is a socialist/Marxist.  Really?  Yet her message that no one becomes a success all on their own resonates with a lot of voters.  Why?  Because many people actually believe in the public/social contract that provides roads, education, police and fire protection etc. , the very things we all rely on, rich or poor.

Back to the drawing boards.

OMG.  Elizabeth Warren has voiced support for the Occupy Wall St. Movement.  She said she’d actually been championing OWS principles for years and that she was the ‘intellectual foundation’ of the Movement.  Now, we’re cooking.  The Republicans have declared the Occupiers hippies, losers, people who want something for nothing and . . . anti-capitalists.  Bring in the cameras of police beating on those vile, violent, dirty protesters and . . .

Oops.  Problem is many Americans agree with OWS positions, believe that Wall St was given a pass, while Main St was left to wither.  In addition, many voters are beginning to realize that unemployment, the housing debacle, the unsustainable debt can be directly linked to financial fraud and malfeasance, and that many politicians in DC are on the lobbyist take.  That’s known as the Washington ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ two-step.

What to do, what to do?

The woman is obviously a problem.  So . . .let’s make her part of the problem and the Big Lie.  Let’s roll out the word TARP.  She was involved in that, yes?

Well, actually no.  Elizabeth Warren headed the oversight panel,  investigating and tracking how those TARP funds had been spent.  TARP itself came right out of the George Bush White House.

But she spoke to those evil bankers, the very ones who stole the country’s wealth?

Well, yes she did.  While creating and then assembling the Consumer Protection Bureau, an organization to prevent consumers from being suckered into confusing, complicated financial instruments, as in home loans and credit cards that only give the bad news in the tiniest of print or in a foreign financial legalese.

Why quibble about the details.  Guilty as charged!

And so, we have the new bewildering ad from GPS Crossroads [Karl Rove’s love child], which declares Elizabeth Warren . . .

A champion of Wall St!

We’re beginning to see GOP flop sweat in action: when you have no good ideas, go with the truly stupid.

This is going to be a most interesting year!

Let’s Hear It For the Girl

Posted: November 15, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Banksters, Democratic Politics, Economy, Elizabeth Warren Campaign, Feminists, income inequality, investment banking, Media | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments

Elizabeth Warren, the Woman Who Would Throw Stones, The Matriarch of Mayhem, the Socialist Whore [according to an irate party crasher] dedicated to turn your first born into a Marxist revolutionary and the woman who dares to run for the late Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat in Massachussets has produced her first political ad.  Ooooo, scary!

Now think about the ads Karl Rove’s outfit, Crossroads GPS, has run against Elizabeth Warren–the attacks, the baseless accusations.  This straightforward introduction is a breath of fresh air.  And that is why Elizabeth Warren is so very dangerous.

Let’s hear it for the girl!

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