(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!