Daily Kos starts "Draft Elizabeth Warren for Senate" campaign
A movement calling on consumer advocate, Harvard professor, and special adviser to the president Elizabeth Warren to challenge Scott Brown for his Senate seat in 2012 has taken root among the lefty blogosphere.
The idea of a Warren Senate run first popped up in the Globe when Ethan Porter encouraged her to run for the late Ted Kennedy's vacant seat, and I revived the argument here on The Angle last month. Back in January, local blog Blue Mass Group endorsed the idea, and just this week progressive powerhouse Daily Kos began a full-fledged "Draft Elizabeth Warren" campaign, urging members of its community to sign an online petition.
According to Daily Kos Campaign Director Chris Bowers, the organization started the petition after surveying the 2,850 members of its Massachusetts mailing list. Of the 444 people who voted, 89 percent believed it would be a good idea to encourage Warren to throw her hat into the ring. In an email announcing the petition, Bowers wrote:
In order for Democrats to win in 2012, we need to do a better job connecting with the millions of voters who are suffering real economic hardship. To do this, we need a populist message that clearly separates us from both Republicans and Wall Street. That’s why at Daily Kos we think Elizabeth Warren would be an excellent Democratic nominee against Scott Brown. ...Virtually no one has done more than Professor Warren to fight against the bloodthirsty excesses of today’s financial sector. She rooted out corruption in the Wall Street bailout and basically created the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) which launched yesterday.
This is exactly the type of grassroots excitement I argued a Warren candidacy would elicit. As I wrote last month:
[That] enthusiasm could provide Warren with the volunteers and fund-raising prowess to build a strong operation quickly, which would be important for a candidate entering the race without the benefit of a tested electoral machine. And that association with the left wouldn't be as much of a problem here in Massachusetts as it might be in other states, like her native Oklahoma. Bay State voters bucked the national trend favoring Republicans last November and picked Democrats in every statewide race. That's good news, of course, for any Democrat challenging Brown.
What was true in January is true now, and it will still be true in the coming months, when Warren is expected to finished her responsibilities at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Globe file photo: Elizabeth Warren at an April 2009 press conference.
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