(Promoted by Steven D. A good question to discuss. Title changed to make comments easier — BooMan has got to fix the software that inadvertently disables comments when diaries have long titles someday)
Recall White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs Rovian-like attack on liberals and the “professional left” when he suggested they should be drug tested. Query: Does the Obama administration (and make no mistake, Gibbs was speaking for Obama) consider Elizabeth Warren a member of the “professional left” and is that why she has not been appointed yet to head the new Bureau of Consumer Protection?
Jerome Karabel, Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, makes some superb points in his article, “Robert Gibbs, Elizabeth Warren and the 2010 Election” over at Huffingtonpost http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jerome-karabel/robert-gibbs-elizabeth-wa_b_681858.html
Karabel notes some important points about the mid-term elections. Historically, turnout is much lower for them 37%, than for years when we have presidential elections, 53%. That’s a 16% gap so voter enthusiasm is especially important to harness in mid-term elections. But you don’t excite your base by bashing them as Gibbs has done and as Rahm has done before him.
So what better way to excite the Democratic base (and lots of independents too and even some moderate Republicans) than to appoint Elizabeth Warren to the position that she is uniquely qualified for? Writes Karabel:
One additional source of the Obama administration’s problems — one that extends well beyond its difficulties with progressives — is the widespread perception that its policies have often taken the side of Wall Street over the interests of ordinary people. In a September 2009 poll taken by Hart Associates, 60 percent of respondents felt that the banks had been helped by government economic policies, but only 13 percent felt that average working people had been helped. And when asked in a 2010 National Journal poll who had benefited most from the government’s response to the financial crisis, a whopping 76 percent said the wealthy and the powerful (banks — 40 percent, major corporations — 20 percent, wealthy individuals — 16 percent).
This is a toxic political environment for the Obama administration, and it is one in which it can ill afford to take pot shots at progressives — the very people whose votes, money, and enthusiasm helped propell Obama to victory first in the primaries over Hillary Clinton and then in the November election. But there is something that President Obama can do that would simultaneously help mend his strained relations with progressives and counter the popular perception that he is too cozy with Wall Street. He could immediately appoint Elizabeth Warren, who reportedly met with White House officials on Thursday, to lead the new Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection.
Warren, after all, is the person who envisioned the new consumer protection agency in a paper she wrote at Harvard in 2007 and she has done more than anyone to see it realized in legislation. A groundswell of average Americans, leaders and politicians have asked President Obama to appoint Elizabeth Warren to head the new consumer protection bureau.
So this is a critical test for Obama and his presidency. It is also an opportunity for the President to harness the liberal and progressive base of his party, one that quite frankly, has lost enthusiasm with his largely Wall St. policies. He has the chance but does he have the will? Recall that it was Obama himself who told a Netroots Conference “to keep holding me accountable, to keep up the fight.” Countless people have kept up the fight, Mr. President, now it’s your turn to show some fight.
Let’s hope the President does the right thing, although I think that with all of the good progressives that Obama and Rahm have frozen out of his administration, it is unlikely that the President will have the gumption to put someone in a new position that could show some real teeth. Prove me wrong, Mr. President, appoint Elizabeth Warren as the first director of the newly established Bureau of Consumer Protection. Show us you can fight for average Americans!
I want to point out that those poll results that say how people feel about who benefited…remember this isn’t how people actually did, it’s how they feel they did and they list banks at 40%. Do you think there might be a correlation with the percent who think the TARP was signed by Obama…lumping the bailout with the stimulus will get that sort of result. And it is very misleading, when you ask vague questions like that you get results that we can all like.
I do agree that appointing Elizabeth Warren to that position, which the Obama administration has said would be an excellent pick and would help him with some of his critics on the left. But I don’t think it will change those on the left who have that irrational hatred for the President. I’m sure they will all jump up and down and take credit for her appointment and claim they only did it because “we pressured them”, so Obama won’t get any credit for that either. Some on the left will never like this president no matter what he does. It’s jealousy and scorn that drives some of these folks.
I really don’t understand why this is an interesting question as it is just built out of thin air. Warren clearly isn’t part of the Professional Left that Gibbs was referring to and to ask the question is just a disingenuous way of promoting your pre-emptive criticism of Obama. Elizabeth Warren is someone with whom the administration worked extremely closely with in respect of the Consumer Protection Agency and she credits the administration for getting it in the bill. She is not paid to pontificate and punditize on cable shows – and if she ever appears on those shows you can bet she would have generally positive things to say about Obama.
Stop using Warren to push forward your mindless criticisms of President Obama.
What you said.
Homeruk wrote: “Elizabeth Warren is someone with whom the administration worked extremely closely with in respect of the Consumer Protection Agency and she credits the administration for getting it in the bill.”
Please explain then why the Obama administration appears reluctant to choose Elizabeth Warren to head the new Bureau of Consumer Protection even though countless people (including lots of important Democratic politicians) have said she is the best person to head it?
My own bet is that the Robert Rubin-Goldman Sachs guy, Michael Barr, will get the job because of the extreme influence both Rubin and Goldman Sachs have on Obama.
To all readers, my original title was something like this (far preferable to the edited title):
“Does the Obama administration consider Elizabeth Warren a member of the “professional left?”
How much of a stupid question is this? I can’t tell you why the Obama administration “appears reluctant” since it only “appears” that way to you. They haven’t chosen anyone yet so how you can frame it in that way is amazing to me.
Are you saying that the Obama administration has NOT worked with her on the Consumer Protection Agency? Because if you are, that’s just not correct.
BTW, Michael Barr is just as much a fierce consumer advocate as Warren and to my knowledge he has never worked for Goldman Sachs.
The reference to Robert Rubin, I presume is a reference to the time he worked for the Clinton administration in the Treasury. By your logic, if Warren is appointed, will she be forever known as a “Geithner-Summers” acolyte?
People on the “professsional left” — and “professional right” — will care a lot whether Warren gets appointed or not. The other 99.9% of the country has no idea who she is, nor do they care, and the impact of her possible appointment on the narrative leading up to the midterms will be negligible.
Looking at fflambeau’s post history. Yep, another self-righteous, self-important member of the far left poutrage club pushing the narrative that Obama hasn’t done anything progressive since being in office. It’s bullshit but they have an agenda to push.
“…It is also an opportunity for the President to harness the liberal and progressive base of his party, one that quite frankly, has lost enthusiasm with his largely Wall St. policies….”
So do you want to explain why 85% of people who identify themselves as “liberal” approve of the job Obama is doing so far?
Try dealing with issues and not personal attacks, Ltmidnight. Link and source for the 85% stat?
Whatever Gibbs said, liberals still like Obama
Thank you.
“Try dealing with issues and not personal attacks”
That’s a laugh when most of your posts are dependent on personal attacks and in now way deal with the issues as they properly exist.
This whole post is not about ‘issues’ but about a personal attack on President Obama and his administration for some slight that hasn’t occurred, will probably not occur and which may not be a slight in the first place.
My God, you made an attack on Michael Barr just because he happened to work for the Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton, i.e. Robert Rubin – without in any way looking at his history, his record of consumer activism or really anything else about him. How was that comment about Barr about the “issues” as opposed to a personal attack.
Getting ready for Michael Barr’s appointment, Homeruk? Conceding my point? Barr is yet another protege of Robert Rubin, who in addition to working under Clinton was CEO of Goldman Sachs and also head of Citigroup. Rubin and Goldman Sachs tell Obama what to do.
I love all of you “feet to the fire” whinercritics who go on a complaint-rampage the second you get criticized.
Harden the fuck up, you whiny ass titty babies.
Gibbs was criticizing the obamaisalways wrong self-proclaimed “true progressive” internet people. You know it and I know it.
And lol at the whiners who are just champing at the bit to complain about Obama for Warren, when there’s no news.
Exactly. I get the feeling that they want him not to nominate Warren so it will give them something else to bitch about.
Steven D, I have to question, again, why you thought this was such an important post that it should be on the front page?
Because she hasn’t been appointed or nominated or whatever yet. And the question remains why.
I picked it to stimulate conversation, dialogue and discussion. I have picked diaries in which I do not agree with every word the diarist writes a lot of times because I want to have the community respond and engage. I have promoted diaries from Arthur Gilroy also and God knows i don;t agree with him all the time.
For myself I will say that I do not blame the Obama administration for everything that has not been accomplished on the progressive side of the ledger, but there are indeed things for which you can rightly criticize him or his subordinates.
The Geithner/Summers combination as economic advisers and those to implement economic policy may have been the right move early on when there were legitimate fears about a banking/financial collapse, but now they have seemingly become an anchor holding back Keynesian solutions to the job crisis, financial reform, etc. Warren is a logical choice for the position and her lack of appointment to date is a legitimate question.
I also think that much of “the far left” as Fox News likes to call them in America would have been considered Rockefeller Republicans in my youth. The Obama administration has too often imo fallen into the trap of fighting these battles over policy on ground chosen by his opponents, and this in my mind “mythical left” (for who among the Democrats comes close to pushing a real “leftist agenda” as that term is used in other countries?) has become the whipping boy of the administration when it wants to show it isn’t too “liberal.” That in my mind is a tactical and strategic mistake from a political standpoint.
i don’t deny that the question of whether Obama will nominate Warren is an interesting one, or that it will be important politically for him to do so. I guess I just objected to the way this was put in FFlambeau’s diary which appeared to me to be very dishonest in the way that it was done. The issue of professional left has got nothing to do with whether he should/will nominate her.
How can you put such an issue in a “dishonest way”? The truth is, you don’t like people criticizing your tin god.
Homeruk, your attitude is exactly like the Bush supporters who thought any criticism of their man was unpatriotic. You remember what happend to W?
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Seems the PPP survey has a large margin of error ± 4%.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I wish I knew what polls meant nearly 4 months before the election but there are so many factors that can change between now and November that I wonder why we bother with them.
StevenD: you need a new calendar: the election is less than 2 1/2 months away. If you can’t get that right, what can you?