Tweet
Matt Taibbi calls for a run by Elizabeth Warren for the Presidency in 2012. Why? For these reasons. 1) Obama, who ran a wonderful campaign for the presidency isn’t doing well. He hasn’t closed Guantanamo, or stopped incursions of the Government into civil liberties. He’s done a terrible job with the banking bailout, and hasn’t done very much about implementing new regulations. He’s done badly on health care reform. 2) the Democratic Party as currently constituted is more comfortable with its Wall Street, health insurance, and pharmaceutical industry constituents than they are with their voters with whom they’ve lost touch. 3) The Democratic Party no longer has a policy that makes any sense about income distribution and the kind of country we want to be. And 4), and more generally:
”This is all a long-winded way of saying that we have problems whose solutions involve taking on powerful interests, political challenges that will necessarily involve prolonged and hard-fought conflicts, but what we have in the Democratic Party is an organization dedicated to avoiding such conflicts and resolving issues in the manner of a corporate board, in closed meetings with the chief cardholders where things get hashed out to the satisfaction of everyone present.”
To solve these problems we need to run someone:
” . . . who on the one hand is a mainstream politician and on the other is willing to embrace the notion of an open protest against the Democratic Party doctrine. We need for someone who has some legitimacy with both the media and the Democratic Party constituents themselves to come out and publicly campaign to re-seize the Party from the Wall Street interests that have come to dominate it. We need someone who understands the finance stuff (which automatically reduces the pool of possible applicants to a small handful), will know the difference between real regulatory reform and a dog-and-pony show, and will not be likely to fill a cabinet with bankers from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.”
And also:
”We need someone in there who is willing to run one this one issue: who owns the Democratic Party? Is it the voters, or is it Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley and United Health Care? There are plenty of candidates out there who’d fit — Toledo’s Marcy Kaptur got a nice bounce from the Michael Moore movie, and Jan Schakowsky is another who comes to mind — but Warren to me makes the most sense for the simple reason that it will be virtually impossible for the Democratic Party hacks to dismiss her as a fringe character, given that they themselves gave her such a big public position as chief of the Congressional Oversight Panel.”
I completely agree with Matt on all of this, even right down to his choice of Elizabeth Warren as the candidate of choice. Progressives can’t keep supporting candidates who are in the pocket of Wall Street and our most prosperous and powerful industries. Frankly, it is the historical role of Republicans to do that. The Democratic Party is supposed to be about the people. Right now, it is not. It always puts Wall Street first. We need to cleanse it somehow. We may need to defeat it in order to cleanse it, even if that means opening the way for Republicans again.
Matt knows about the risk of a challenge to Obama resulting in a Republican win, but he argues, and I agree, that we really have no choice. The Party as it is now is no good to progressives or the American people. Running a candidate like Elizabeth Warren will deliver a needed shock to which the Party will either adjust or open the way for a new Party to represent the people against the interests once again. Matt Taibbi talks about the possibility of waiting two or three election cycles until we can be successful at recapturing the party. I hope it doesn’t take that long. But whether it does or not we just can’t let the corporatists run the Democratic Party any more. If we do, our democracy will become a plutocracy. And the American dream will be gone.
Let’s take back “change we can believe in” and “yes we can.” They belong to us, and not to the President. Here’s to Elizabeth Warren. She has the courage, may she also have the rest of the wherewithal needed to answer the call.
(Also posted at the Alllifeisproblemsolving blog where there may be more comments)
59 Comments
Well, much as I like Elizabeth Warren (she is one of the heroes in my economics pantheon), I think this is an absurd suggestion. Warren is an academic, and a good one. But she is not a politician– and I mean that in the best sense of politician. I’d rather she be appointed Secretary of the Treasury, and dispatch Timothy Geithner to be Sheila Bair’s assistant(!) at the FDIC, with no power to do anything that hasn’t been cleared by Bair. He needs some seasoning outside of Wall Street.
Bob in AZ
Why do you say she’s not a politician/ She seems pretty political to me. You mean she hasn’t been a Senator or Governor yet. That’s true, but how well have we been doing with those lately?
The problem with our political system for a very long time now is that we haven’t had a politician as President who was both able and willing to use the people to mobilize support for his legislation in a way that Congress could not resist. Instead, our Presidents have used games played with the Congress to get what they want. The last president who worked with Congress by mobilizing public support was Reagan. Before that, Johnson and Kennedy could do that from time-to-time. But the real master at that was FDR. I had hoped Obama would do that since he seems to have the capability, but he appears to be unwilling to use populism to his advantage.
I think Elizabeth Warren would call on the people to provide the context of her working with the Congress and I think she’d be quite successful at getting popular support. She knows how to talk to people in a way that they can understand, and she’s better even than Obama at that. I think most people weren’t around when FDR was alive and so have no concept of what a President can do with Congress when a strong majority of people trust and support him. We need that kind of capability in the Presidency agauin. I think Elizabeth Warren can give us that.
The key thing to remember here is that experience with the present system and how it works isn’t critical if someone is elected who will immediately change that system. Obama could have done that. He was popular enough in the early days to get whatever he wanted. Had he gotten rid of the filibuster immediately, taken the big banks into receivership and got lending flowing again, put in a $1.6 trillion stimulus package focused on spending with a substantial multiplier rather than tax cuts with only half the multiplier, we’d have a very different political context today. The system would be working well, Obama would be overwhelmingly popular and Democratic Senators would not risk bucking him.
Unfortunately, Obama blew all that because of his discomfort with populism and his failure to use it to back his plays. One wonders if he’s read any history at all.
And what exactly have the politicians of either party done for us and the country? I have no problems with Elizabeth Warren. What we need is a problem solver, not another triangulator or ideologue. What we also need is someone who will go out to the country and tell people not simply to call their Congressperson but camp on the Capitol steps until their voice is heard and their will is done. Only direct pressure can make an institution as corrupt as the Congress pay more attention to their constituents than to their corporate masters.
You’ve got Hugh. We need a President of the United States who would call people to Washington to camp out on the Capitol steps. Elizabeth would do that. Obama should have done that. If he had we’d have Medicare for All by now.
A new party is in order–The American Peoples Party, or some such thing. Run Warren For president. She is great. Put Grayson in their as AG. Taibbi as press secretary. Take no one on board that takes industry/business money as that is what has us in this pickle in the first place. Having Wall Street guys regulate Wall Street is ridiculous. It will go on and on unless and until something brings a drastic change. I say cut loose the Blue Dogs to absorb what is left of the Republican Party. They can represent Corporate America(as they do now). Let our new party represent The People. Warren in 2012
I like Elizabeth.
Bashing Obama no matter how bad he is doing, is like killing the dog to get rid of the fleas. The dog dies and the fleas just keep hopping around.
Our problem is the Congress and all the people around it, and there is no easy fix, other than maybe a well place nuke at the Capitol. Being as that’s not an option I see little hope because our people are subservient to the government and think they can no longer fight what it does.
Voting and bitching will never change or correct the problems.
Switching Parties and even politicians is an exercise in futility. Bitching makes the heart feel good but means and effects very little.
We need to first face the fact that our Government doesn’t work, then contemplate options of living with that fact, or trying to fix it.
Maybe us all moving to Canada would be the only option.
Not all. Only the people who believe in Democracy.
Let me remind You that we are not a Democracy, weren’t meant to be a Democracy. We are a democratic Republic. That means that the majority doesn’t rule, as we are seeing in the Senate. It doesn’t matter what the majority wants as it would in a real Democracy, but what powerful groups can get passed.
We have even lost being a true Democratic Republic, because it was supposed to be run by the people. We were supposed to send to Washington our Representatives for a short time to represent us.
Now we send politicians of one of two parties, who as they will tell you view their job is to decide for us, not represent us.
They have made themselves with our consent, our deciders, and that is not representation. No matter how you cut it. We are seeing the effects of this now, in the fact that it doesn’t matter what we want or need as to healthcare. We will get and have to like what they give us.
It would be nice to have a democracy but we don’t.
The palistinians have it and Hamas won. The Venisualins have it an chavas won. Maybe even that wouldn’t help.
What a Democracy is or isn’t is a complex matter in political science, which, as it happens, is the field in which I received my Ph.D. It’s been a long time since our Republic was established, and our systtem, as well as its constitution, have both undergone enormous changes. While it is still correct to refer to the United States as a Republic, it is a Republic that has evolved in such a way that it can also be called a Democracy, since the principle of majority rule has become increasingly important in how we do things here. Modern Democracies, however, are not simply about majority rule. They are also about minority rights and about constitutions that protect those rights. During the 1930s and even more so after the WW II western democracies went beyond the political in character and became more and more characterized by economic and social democracy, though this aspect of democracy is far from perfect in any of them.
In any event, today Democracy is a complex and multi-dimensional and it can easily be the cae that a Republican Government like ours characterized by separation of powers can still be a Democracy, even if it has many anti-democratic elements. Having said that, increasingly in recent years it has been hard for the majority in the United States to have its interests served. Instead, elites of various kinds, but especially those representing corporate wealth, have had their way with the Congress and the political system, and anti-democratic elements in the Senate, in the financial system, in the judiciary, and in other places in our Government, have been beyond democratic constraints. This trend cannot go on if Democracy is to continue to exist here. Ine day we shall wake up and find that corporate control is beyond our power to overthrow. At that point, which I don’t think we’ve reached yet, we will be a plutocracy and not a Democracy, even if we are still a Republic.
Well with all that paper. You aught to not only be able to tell us what we are, but how to fix it.
Not meaning to knock You, but we have thousands with degrees in this Country, in fields like Yours that should see, or have seen what was going wrong with our Country.
Yet our problems, loss of control over our Government, and the sale of our Country to the big money interests grows worse by the day.
Please speak out, and continue to speak out. Help educate the uneducated to what we should expect from what ever form of Government we have that doesn’t work.
That paper stands for a lot of nights up until 4 or 5 in the morning and years of research. In the old days when I got it, doing it was quite an undertaking. I think over many years the degree has been greatly cheapened by trying to make it accessible to people working full time, who don’t really have the time to put in the effort it used to require.
In any case, as for the speaking out, I’m doing the best I can.
I respect You more than it may have sounded.
Unlike You though, much of our problems in Washington is that there are tons of that paper Piled high on people who may have the learnen, but little brains to go with it. I like the economists for an example, they more then we know influenced all the bad that has happened because of their theories on our economy. Dear Mister Greenspan is a great example. He was looked and listened to like He was god, and was dead wrong on most all of what He preached.
I agree. But economics is a science, not in the sense that it’s any good at what it does, but in the sense that its practitioners use methods that they perceive are scientific. This is relevant because in sciences that are not very successful there are always multiple paradigms and conflicting theories that are prevalent During the 1970s changes occurred in economics which affected the advice available to Governmental decision makers. The Keynesian school which had been dominant during the 1960s split up into saltwater and freshwater Keynesians and the Galbraithian planned economy types, the Chicago school of Milton Friedman became more important and successful and the supply side school, even though very small appealed to some militant Republicans and became influential. This meant that there was a lot of conflicting economic advice out there, and politicians could find advice that suited their prejudices and their perception of what their constituents were likely to believe.
The Reagan Administration relied on Supply Siders and the Chicago School when it came to economics to justify big tax cuts and starving the public sector. Bust continued this policy. Clinton relied on freshwater keynesianism and on the Chicago monetarist school. Bush 43 relied on monetarism also, and now Obama seems to be vacillating among monetarism, freshwater keynesianism, and much too little saltwater keynesianism and Galbraithianism. Recent events have discredited supply-side and monetarist economics and created a debate between the two kinds of keynesianism. Saltwater keynesianism is the kind we need to rely on to take us out of this mess. Summers and Geithner are freshwater keynesians with Geithner inclining more towards monetarism. Other economists in the Administration (such as Romer and Bernstein) are more open to saltwater keynesianism, but there are no Galbraithians in there. Many of the outside economists critical of the Administration practice saltwater keynesianism and Galbraithianism. The Administration has mostly taken their advice off the table.
I assume that most of these terms are familiar to you except perhaps the distinction between saltwater and freshwater keynesianism. Here’s a defintion from wikipedia:
Also check out this one from Krugman, and other references here.
All these tirms, are things that try to take the smell off of Shit science.
Scientists say there are no aliens also, but I looked into ones eye’s in His space ship as he looked down at me.
In your piece You confirmed what I said, “none of them are any damn good.”
Galbraith taught the manufacturing industry that workers didn’t matter, but productivity, “What You could get out of them was the important thing,”
to maximize Their profits. That’s why they all brag that our productivity is up while real wages and benefits are down.
Junk science, is junk science, and juck science is bullshit to the endth.
iremember54, If you think Galbraith taught manufacturers to worry about productivity rather than people, I think you have a very faulty memory of Galbraith. He’s perhaps the most steadfast of mainstream economists when it comes to pushing economic and social justice and opposing the religion of the market. I don’t understand how you can interpret him in the way that you have.
Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney and USAG commented in the the movie “The Panama Deception” that the US is already a oligopoly and we might as well admit it if we wan’t to start dealing with it effectively.
I agree with Ramsey Clark. Representative Democracy is dead. We can’t hang on to what is already gone. We have to get it back. Matt’s Idea is a good one. We should not vote for a candidate that has been selected by hidden interests, like Obama who seemed to rise to the top on charismatic rhetoric. He was chosen for us.
We have to identify someone and choose our own candidate, or we’ll get another puppet or defender of the status quo like Obama. The republicans are still fracturing, so what are the chances of them having a serious candidate?
Now you’re on it.
OT, I was walking down a New York sidewalk last year and spotted Ramsey Clark trudging slowly in the opposite direction. “Mr. Attorney General!” I said, and then shook his hand and stuttered about as badly as if I were chatting up Scarlett Johannson. I thanked him for his courageous stands and said how thrilling it was just to run into him on the sidewalk. He said something to the effect that at his age he’s happy to be anywhere.
Hi Ralph, Sadly, he probably doesn’t get recognized that much anymore.
Hi skf, oligopoly is not a political term. It’s an economic one and it applies industry by industry, not to the political system. You also said that representative democracy is dead. I hope not, because if it is dead we won’t be able to get it back without an armed revolution. If you think we can take it back using the ballot box, then it’s clearly not dead, but only sleeping, awaiting a sufficiently vigorous public awakening to our current situation. I believe that representative democracy is sleeping and that we can still awaken it. We just have to keep trying.
Would Elizabeth Warren be capable of herding the gang of stoned cats also known as the Congress? The problem is structural, and until one can mount a credible challenge to the power points required to make structural change, you’re going to be out flanked by the power points you have no chance of capturing, such as the Supreme Court.
There are no heroes who can rescue us. It will be up to us to organize our neighbors, not all of them liberal and Democrat, to build common ground and forge consensus on a populist critique of the kleptocratic plutocracy that owns and runs the USG like a subsidiary.
Marcos, To change the structure you first have to change its foundation. If you have a President who can mobilize people and support large-scale demonstrations in Washington in support of his or her programs for change, that President can also get Congress to change internal procedures such as the filibuster and the Seniority System to make legislation the President wants flow through Congress more easily. That will make the President, the leaders in Congress, and the Part system much more accountable to the voters. Many of the excuses for failure to keep promises will be gone and many more initiatives can be tried while inevitable errors can be corrected. Elizabeth Warren would not have to herd the cats in Congress. The leaders could give the cats thers and they would comply because party discipline would finally be effective. The leaders could choose to cooperate with the President or not. But if they were of the same party the likelihood is that they would and our immobilist Congress could finally help the nation to adapt to its challenges.
The conundrum here is that to get elected president under the current party system and the nature of campaign economics, you have to promise to not do any of that. Unless there is a mobilized, politically powerful base capable of challenging entrenched economic interests, then a superhero cannot have the basis on which to make that kind of jump. One example where that was the case was Venezuela. Chavez had a base in progressive elements within the military and personally sacrificed in the coup of 1992 to become a folk hero and then win the presidency and deliver on major structural reform. You might not think that Chavez reforms are what you want, but it is the most applicable example that shows what kind of political power is required to support a superhero rescue.
We do know from myriad examples that grassroots organizing can create the base from which collective action at more ambitious scales is made possible. Obama got elected for it. However, he did not democratize the process, and for all my friends over at OFA, its role is unclear. Democratization is difficult, tedious and means that you’ve got to learn to deal with people with whom you disagree. But popular democracy insulated from the demands of powerful private business interests tends to remain closer to legitimate than the superhero model.
Showing up with the right ideas is not sufficient in politics, even in a relatively liberal/progressive enclave like San Francisco. There has to be credible threats of political force constantly in place in order to keep the operation on track or it will spin awry.
The best way to exact that credible threat of force is a democratically organized grassroots. Everyone fears this because the Democrat brand and the Republican brand chafe at the notions of a social conservative and economic liberal or an economic conservative who is a social liberal, insisting that we swallow their political formulations whole. Vested interests fear that participatory democracy cannot be bought off, the veal pen fears that they will lose their exclusive franchises.
Clearly, disintermediating the political process is the best way to elicit the most democratically legitimate outcomes and to use the power of common cause, of government, to check the relentless impulse towards the ever more powerful culture of corporate dominance which is at the real root of this conversation.
Marcos, I very much agree with your analysis. But, of course, if Elizabeth Warren were to get elected in the first place, or even make a good showing in the primary there would have to be a mass movement in place to back her. It’s not a question of her being a “super hero” who alone can save us. It’s more a question that she or someone else would be supported by a popular movement exerting continuous influence. That’s what I mean by changing the foundation. You said:
I agree completely.
What You discribe is what we had in the last eight years, a President that could get the Congress to do what ever He wanted, and change the rules to do it.
In those tirms maybe we need BUSH back.
Because Galbraith was an economist.
Do You realize that our Government, all of Wall Street, and most Corporations have had in their employ Economists, who have advised them on every move they made. Even considering the different theories they have been in on the destruction of the middle class and American workers, the sell out of our Country to the world and big money interests, and not only allowed but promoted all the bad that has happened to this Country.
Now all of these entities are again using these people to try and fix the problems they were in on.
Galbraith like Greenspan was listened to like He was God, all that He pushed did little to the final outcome.
The question is. Would we be better off with people who actually knew or know something than those who think they do?
Second Question. If any, even one, knew it all, why do we have all the problems we do?
Third Question. With all of them advising everybody, why aren’t we fixing all underlying problems, as well as the very appearent problems, that this Country is experiencing.
Fourth Question. Doesn’t the facts in the questions above make my point that none of them, or the science they follow, prove that none of them are any damn good.
If someting isn’t any good, don’t be a pack rat and keep it for the sake of keeping it, get rid of it.
Look, you’ve just got your facts wrong.
Galbraith wrote books that were widely read by people and he was President of the AEA at one time. But, by-and-large he was an economic outsider because he doubted the legitimacy of mathematical economics and the most accepted economic doctrines of his day. Your statement:
is simply untrue. No President after Kennedy seriously listened to Galbraith. He was too radical and too New Deal for them. He never had the influence of Paul Volcker, Greenspan or even Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, or Larry Summers in Washington. Even in the 1940s he was never as influential as Paul Samuelson, or later Milton Friedman.
Today, his son, Jamie Galbraith, advocates economics in the tradition of his father, and if he were ever appointed to a position in the Administration, he’d make short work of the economist clique now in control.
I’m sorry if You think I’m wrong, and don’t mean to offend.
I live in the real world. “The only good economist is a dead econmomist,” so maybe that fits the bill anyhow.
It’s OK. You’re not offending me. If you still think you’re right about Galbraith, cite some writings and I’ll check them out.
Isn’t worth the effort He’s dead and can’t help us now. His son must not be much or He would be out there, callin a spade a spade.
I agree with you about there being a lot of junk science especially in politics and economics. However, I read James Galbraith’s “The Predator State” and it is brilliant and righteous. His father was all about putting full employment before the inflation myth. Young Galbraith spoke out forcefully against the pillage and plunder of the new predators long before most people here. He wasn’t listened to. He was on Obama’s advisory team and the kicked to the curb. When the economic crisis really hit in September 2008, finally Galbraith got on TV. But I think the corporate media found him to “radical” and he disappeared.
Read his book. It’s all about fixing inequality because it too much money going to CEOs instead of wages and research and development has created this casino capitalism once again.
“Righteous” is a good word for Galbraith and for Warren too.
What makes you think Jamie Galbraith isn’t doing that?
Hey! I’m a suck up like most people.
I now love Galbraith.
I’ll read HIs books.
Maybe I’m wrong and there is one good economist.
The rest of them are still a bunch of assholes.
Uh, Karl Marx got this one down back in the late 19th century:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value#Absolute_vs._relative
Relative surplus value is obtained mainly by:
* reducing wages — this can only go to a certain point, because if wages fall bellow the ability of workers to purchase their means of subsistence, they will be unable to reproduce themselves and the capitalists will not be able to find sufficient labor power.
* reducing the cost of wage-goods by various means, so that wage increases can be curbed.
* increasing the productivity and intensity of labour generally, through mechanisation and rationalisation, yielding a bigger output per hour worked.
We do have the power to go back to Kansas.
We don’t need charismatic leaders so much as we need to dust off the democratic rights still left in the constitution and leverage our collective intelligence to the hilt to pull ourselves out of this mess.
As we learned in the Green Party but Ralph Nader never quite grasped, there are no short cuts to doing the difficult work needed to put together a viable political coalition.
We don’t need charismatic leaders so much as leaders with honesty and integrity. Unfortunately, we can’t always find out about that before they have the position we elect them to.
Agreed. Apparently, Clinton didn’t choose Brooksley Born for AG because he thought she was boring.
In some areas of life, especially those concerning Justice or Finance, boring may be a good thing. Too much drama = roller coaster ride, and often an unsafe one.
Lots of people worried last time around that Obama could not get elected. And yet, he did.
This time, we have an opportunity to break another barrier and elect a woman. I think this is a great idea. Whether she wins or not, it would indeed be a shock to the powers that be… they can’t just take the base for granted (as the GOP did to theirs) and expect to get away with it. For those who have doubted, it should finally be obvious that the Democratic Party also has its own issues with women in power. Time to do something about that.
What’s that quote about making the president do something?
I can’t think of a better way to do that than by demonstrating a willingness to support an alternate candidate, one who may have a better claim to keeping the promises that the previous candidate persists in breaking while in office.
So You want SARA as President, she’s the most likely to run.
I would have nothing against any woman but Her, Kay Bailey, Bachman, and a hord of good Republican loonies.
You know, it wasn’t that important to me that Obama is black, and it’s not that important to me that Elizabeth Warren is a woman. He is what he is, it now appears, unfortunately. And she is what she is, and, I hope, all that she appears to be. What counts is whether she’s a person of great rectitude, energy, ability to communicate, and caring for the public and the country who won’t sell out to the interests. If she is, and I do think she is, I’ll do all I can to support her.
I mostly agree with you about character versus either gender or race, but I can’t help noticing how many of the dedicated whistleblowers in the last decade have been women.
And… I’m also very disappointed that Obama has not appointed more women to positions of important leadership. Instead, he tends to let them languish. His inner circle, especially regarding finance, is primarily men, and more significantly, men who actually played a role in allowing the meltdown to occur.
Frankly, I wonder whether that financial crisis would have happened at all, or if it had… perhaps it would have been less severe, if there had been more women being listened to about the many, many things that were wrong in our financial system. (I was reading about Brooksley Born earlier today, and remembering the Enron whistleblower, Sharon Watkins, plus others, whose names I can’t think of at the moment.
This is really interesting. Difference feminism and how it relates to International Relations is the focal point in one of my undergrad classes right now. The impact of men in positions of power bending to the pressures of patriarchal systems and the expectations that they conduct themselves in a “manly fashion” (i.e. displaying aggression, jockeying for the alpha spot) is one of the topics being kicked about.
It really makes one wonder how different things would be right now if there was equal representation at the highest levels of government.
Hi KarenM, I understand your point, but I don’t know if it’s true. It sounds anecdotal to me. There are lots of male whistle blowers in American history and in recent years too, like the fellow who tried to blow the whistle on AIG, but couldn’t get through to the SEC, and various folks who have blown the whistle on questionable practices in the intelligence community and on accountability.
Just the other day, I was feeling annoyed at Amy Klobuchar, because she’s turned out to be much less progressive than I’d hoped, and then I started thinking about Claire McCaskill, Maria Cantwell, Dianne Feinstein, Patty Murray, Debby Stabenow, etc. and the most progressive women I could think of in the Senate were Barbara Boxer and Barbara Mikulski. There was no one like Bernie Sanders, or Russ Feingold, or Pat Leahy. So, I thought, why are women less progressive than men, and then I realized that’s a bunch of nonsense. The numbers here are just too few for statistical generalizations. It’s all chance.
If Elizabeth Warren were to run for the Senate and win, she’d immediately begin to redress the balance and also bring some of the other women along with her.
I actually did a bit of googling on this topic awhile ago, and I found more women than men. More importantly, I wasn’t looking at elected officials, or those running for office, but at those who were in the private sector.
Now that would make a really interesting study.
Oh, one more thing. Remember Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman? Do you think things would be any different if there had been more women like them in that group of financial manipulators? Somehow I doubt it.
And they’re Republicans! One has to question the judgment of any woman who thinks that the GOP is her proper home.
God, the Republican women. Michelle Bachmann, Marsha Blackburn, Virginia Fox, Sarah Palin. What a poisonous lot!
Bill Clinton labelled Brooksley as “boring”. Didn’t have the pr personality and extroversion he thought was ncessasry for the more high profile job of AG.
Elizabeth Warren makes me smile. The idea of her. I know little about her, and I could hear the word “boring” being bandied about most women in this A.D.D. society, the right embracing the likes of wolf-huntin’ dangerous Sarah. How enlightened that would be to elevate one of the millions of strong and honest and COMPETENT women in this country. And she seems like a grounded non-political animal who calls it as she sees it.
But our misognynistic and sexualized culture and shadenfreude and addicted to excitement A.D.D. culture … are they capable of staying with her and getting her?. And before his fall to shame, Edwards was saying the honorable things and it was being ignored by the media and the narcissistic and self-aggrandizing pundits and the “pragmatics”.
We need a paradigm shift from masculine/patriarchal values of power and competition to feminine/humanist values of partnership and cooperation. And before anyone comes down on me for dissing men, it was a hubristic group of men piling on Brooksley Born the uppity woman who dared speak out against an insane dark market who was silenced ten years despite her courage and integrity. The male gender dominates, and sadly the patriarchal “anti-sissy” to anything smacking of empathy and nurturance rules. The patriarchal tightly run cabal does reward some in the gender, some females who sell out by overcompensating themselves to fit in with the old boys network. Like Palin, Rice, and on the Dem side, what Hillary has done.
I wonder what Obama would do if the “far left” he disdainfully calls it did actively support a new candidate. I guess the country can’t forgive Nader for helping to derail Gore way back when, but Ralph Nader has been calling it right, has recognized the horrifying stranglehold of the sociopathic corporations for decades and decades and fighting them legislatively and from his own soapbox. But his iconoclastic ways are unsettling to those who are seriously uncomfortable with change.
You just know, though, Ralph running on change would have been powerful change. Obama’s colossal nerve to speak of change and then perform as he is doing is unforgivable.
I remember meeting Pat Schroeder on a NY street once and stumblingly congratulating her on her good work. I can’t remember if she was still in the senate. I think she might have been gone. But I was so embarrassed by not being better informed about politics and what it was exactly she had done, though I knew she had done good stuff, I rushed away, guilty to reveal my ignorance. I am glad I am better read today with huge gaps in knowledge of the political beast that is oppressing the public.
We need a citizenry that is awake and less naive and lazy and/or distracted right now, and drowning in debt or deeper economic horror might make you angry but it puts you in a primitve survival first state whereby rallying with the fellow oppressed would be fine if you had time, energy and hope left.
So many on left are still making excuses for Obama. 80 million of us would have obama’s back and he could flex some power there and direct those forces. But instead, he is behaving like a good little corporate operative. As is the vast majority of our elected officials. And the vast majority of America still thinks the common good is on the agenda for our representatives when it has been dumped long ago.
Scott Peck said evil is when someone is so destructively and narcissistically enmeshed with another they try to “titsuck” from that person and control them at the same time. The corporate and political classes are titsucking the American public’s resources and will continue to until they are in total control and have weakened them to servitude beyond recognition. That is the slippery slope to fascism.
We do need someone to speak the truth and rally behind those with honor and morality and experience and intelligence.
Maybe we need a “boring” (and you know I am being sarcastic, here) woman to begin to repair the country. Not only is Obama not doing this, he is going the other direction.
I never felt completely good about Edwards, but always thought there was something a little off there. I just got this narcissist vibe from him. With Elizabeth Warren I get this duty and outrage vibe mixed with energy, and an ability to be civil and pleasant while explaining how much of a mess everything is. I don’t get anything selfish from her at all.
Matt Taibbi will be on our radio show Saturday, Oct 31 at 3PM Mountain Time (5PM NYC Time). You can live stream us at kmmsam.com and call in at 406 522 -TALK. I’ve been quoting Matt since I discovered him in 2005 with his book “Spanking the Donkey” about the 2004 Democratic presidential primary. He interviews Kerry in a guerrilla costume. In love ever since. With young muckrakers like Taibbi, Naomi Klein, Jeremy Scahill, Nomi Prins, we may have a shot at saving this democracy…maybe.
Taibbi is spot on when he zeros in on this country being run like a large company. We had a caller yesterday say that people in the Democratic Party don’t act like citizens but rather like employees in a corporation. That’s why we get people actually believing in incrementalism instead of principle. They are company men and women. They keep their head down and are content to tweak the system. They believe that in that long run we hear about, progress will happen. But John Maynard Keynes reminded us a long time ago that in the long run, we will all be dead.
Another favorite essay of Matt’s I love is on “The Peasant Mentality”. We bow and scrape as the lord’s carriage goes by and then we go back to our 15 hour days work and then blame our neighbor for our woes.
I think we need to find a Pecora, not a Pecora Commission. The commission spent useless hours before Pecora came along and created such a show that the public was riveted to his hearings. The Wall Street banksters called it a Circus and brought a midget to sit on JP Morgan’s lap. That just helped Pecora.
Warren has some of Pecora’s feisty style. But Pecora was also an Italian immigrant who played that against the rich elite. It was the theatricality of Pecora that grabbed the public’s attention. They demanded change in banking regulations and they got them.
We’re getting there. We have showmen like Grayson, Dylan Rattigan (capitalist,but hates corruption), Spitzer, Moore, and Taibbi. We have Stewart and Colbert. Let’s keep giving them all the support we can. At the same time we should sing the praises of the uppity women like Klein, Warren, Born, Prins, and even Bair. We must point out these anti Sebelius non toady truth tellers.
I’ll do another post about our interview with Taibbi closer to Saturday.
Thanks mm, couldn’t agree more. Don’t forget old guys like Greider either.
A new party is in order–The American Peoples Party, or some such thing. Run Warren For president. She is great. Put Grayson in their as AG. Taibbi as press secretary. Take no one on board that takes industry/business money as that is what has us in this pickle in the first place. Having Wall Street guys regulate Wall Street is ridiculous. It will go on and on unless and until something brings a drastic change. I say cut loose the Blue Dogs to absorb what is left of the Republican Party. They can represent Corporate America(as they do now). Let our new party represent The People. Warren in 2012!
I have nothing to add to this discussion, but I just wanted to say how interesting and enlightening this conversation has been to read. I frequent a couple of other blogs, and in particular one of late (Greg Sargent’s Plumline.gov) has been hijacked by two or three trolls and the entire thread — thread after thread — has been lots of back-and-forth with their nonsense. Nobody seems to be able to ignore them. So the posts are interesting but the comments are a waste of time.
I don’t want to be in an echo chamber, and I especially like reading differing viewpoints (among commenters, or different from my own). That’s how I learn.
The contrast between this thread and those other blogs is striking!
Thank you, msmolly, and thanks to everyone who has contributed to this thread.
Thank you, letsgetitdone. Sorry I’m late coming here. As I read over all your comments above, I thought that each one should be a diary instead of lost in comments. As for Elizabeth Warren: Here is a great article at informationclearinghouse which gives a YouTube clip of Eliz..Warren at her best. I don’t know if it has been used before, but wouldn’t hurt to be diaried again. Not a word is wasted, and any person with reason would admire and respect her…and maybe vote for her; I surely would!!!
Her video clip is at the bottom of the article; the whole thing is very good IMHO.
Thanks for all your work, letsgetitdone
Thank you acquarius, and thanks for the link to that great youtube of Elizabeth Warren. I’ll give consideration to expanding some of the comments into diaries as you suggest. A search on youtube for “Elizabeth Warren” will provide access to all her performances stored in youtube. There are a number by now, and each one has the ring of directness and truth. Persuasivenss anf clear communication, without manipulation.