Tuesday, December 03, 2013

SO I GUESS ELIZABETH WARREN IS KIND OF LIKE AN ANGRY, POINTLESS LEFTY BLOG, EXCEPT WITH VOTE-GETTING POWER

In an interview with The New Republic's Isaac Chotiner, my state's senior senator, Chuck Schumer, boasts that he was responsible for the Senate candidacy of Elizabeth Warren:
IC: One of the people you say has shaped your outlook is Elizabeth Warren. And obviously, she's someone who has a lot of support from the grassroots of the Democratic Party --

CS: You know I helped persuade her to run. There is a good little story. [Looks to aide] I can tell this. I went to Scott Brown and said, "If you give us the sixtieth vote for the Citizens United rollback, we won't go after you." I spent a lot of time lobbying him, and met some of his friends and had them lobby him. He said yes. Then he said no. So I wanted to recruit the strongest candidate against him, and I thought that was Elizabeth Warren.
Schumer seems to think Warren has important things to say about inequality:
CS: ... Before that, I had gotten to know her when she was the first person who really highlighted that median income had declined over the past decade. From 2001 to 2007, it went down, like, four or five percent. Everybody looked at average income -- which had been going up! But you remember your old mathematics...

IC: Barely.

CS: So if you made ten million dollars in 2001 and you made twenty million dollars in 2007, you'd pull the average way up, but the median could still go down.
But his admiration has, um, limits:
CS: So, Elizabeth. I got to know her. And I believe in a broad Democratic Party. I don't agree with her on everything. But it’s great she’s here.

IC: It seems like one difference would be the approach to Wall Street. I assume you're not supporting a reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, which she is sponsoring?

CS: No.

IC: You and Mayor Bloomberg, in 2007, said that reregulating Wall Street would cause people to flee overseas to London. That is very different than Warren.

CS: It has got to be, to me, a careful balance, OK? Wall Street excesses helped lead to the Great Recession. And to sit there and do nothing, or do what the Republicans want -- repeal Dodd-Frank-- makes no sense. But on the other hand, I think that you just don’t attack Wall Street because they’re successful or rich....

IC: You don't think Elizabeth Warren makes a villain out of Wall Street?

CS: I am just going to leave it at what I said.
And as for the lefty blogosphere:
IC: Forget Warren then. Is this a problem for your party?

CS: You don't want to go after them for the sake of going after them. The left-wing blogs want you to be completely and always anti-Wall Street. It's not the right way to be.

IC: So are the left-wing blogs as bad as the Tea Party ones in this case?

CS: Left-wing blogs are the mirror image. They just have less credibility and less clout.
I think it's safe to say that Schumer thinks Warren is one of those crazy, angry lefties who make a villain of Wall Street. He correctly assumed that she could beat Scott Brown, and yet he obviously doesn't think she's too dangerous to have in the Senate, despite all her regrettable anti-Wall Street anger, which he doesn't want to talk about. Can we assume he doesn't think that's a problem because he thinks Warren, like those angry blogs, has too little credibility and (especially) too little clout to hurt his precious Wall Street?

3 comments:

aimai said...

My main takeaway from that interview is that Schumer is a complete and utter sell out and moron and should not be in charge of the DSCC if he actually tried to trade a MA Senate Seat, Teddy Kennedy's in fact, to Scott Brown for a fucking cloture vote. It should go without saying that it wasn't Schumer's to give away and it would have been the equivalent of trading Manhatten for a handful of beads if he'd actually done it.

The important thing to remember about Schumer is that he is a bald faced liar and self promoter. I think we ought to assume from this intereview and his assertion that he "recruited" Warren that he tried as hard as he could to stop her selection but bowed to force majeure. Similarly his dismissive tone means he grasps that she is, in fact, quite dangerous since a vote is a vote is a vote and it doesn't matter who his paymasters are--her vote matters as much as his. I'd like to see her take over the DSCC. That would really shake stuff up. Much more than anything else she could do.

Victor said...

UpChuck's a schmuck.
Always was.
Always will be.

I want Kirsten Gillibrand to be kept as far away from him as possible.
SHE, had a lot of potential, nationally.
HE'S, a former local Congressman who, for whatever reason(s), managed to make it up to the position of Senator.

Sadly, that's a problem in both parties - even more than before, parochial Congress people, becoming Senators.

Ten Bears said...

She certainly has the Retards running scared.

I want to see her stay right where she is.

No fear.