Elizabeth Warren's Moment

By Brent Budowsky, The Hill

08 September 11

s President Obama prepares to offer a modest jobs program to a joint session of a Congress with unpopularity rivaling the disapproval numbers for Casey Anthony, the prospect of a progressive populist patriotic revival is emerging in Massachusetts.

I refer to Elizabeth Warren, one of the most brilliantly qualified candidates in modern history to be passed over for an important post, who appears poised to run for the Senate seat once held by the man we miss so much, the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.).

While many of the so-called Tea Party politicians are apologists for financial abuses and would have better named themselves after the mercantilist cronies of King George III in 1776, Warren is the true heir to those who threw the tea into Boston Harbor.

Warren would be one of the strongest and most exciting candidates in 2012. Her candidacy, pardon the overused expression, would be a transforming political event. Her victory, which I believe is likely, might save control of the Senate for the Democrats.

Warren is a hero to American progressives. She offers the powerful voice of a principled and courageous woman in a political era I have called the beginning of a female century, in which women bid for leadership in every field of American life and world affairs.

Warren's candidacy will shatter one of the great myths of modern politics, a myth propagated by conservative Republicans, repeated ad nauseam by many pundits and believed by too-clever White House aides who all fail to understand that the message of progressive patriotic populists is the majority view of political independents.

In a nation where some are waging a war against workers, Warren will be a powerful voice for Made in America jobs, at fair wages, with good working conditions, and with great respect for the hardworking Americans of every race and background who want nothing more than a fair deal.

Massachusetts voters with credit cards will listen carefully and respectfully to Warren's call for common sense and simple fairness in credit and an end to abuses and rip-offs that hurt Americans every day, and keep the American economy down.

Massachusetts homeowners will listen carefully and respectfully to Warren's call for common sense and simple integrity in their relationships with banks and an end to the rip-offs and abuses that plague them.

Massachusetts veterans and military families will know that Warren is a fighter for their being treated in business like the heroes they are, and that it was Warren, working with their ultimate champion, Holly Petraeus, who placed the interests of military families at the heart of the consumer protection bureau many Republicans despise.

Men and women who run small businesses in Massachusetts will listen carefully and respectfully when Warren talks of championing their need to find capital on fair terms, paying fair interest, to grow their business and expand their workforce.

Massachusetts police, firefighters and teachers will know that Warren would be their voice in the Senate against those Republicans who attack their jobs, their benefits and their right to organize and who appear to treat them as enemies of the state, in state after state, when Republicans seize control.

Warren will be the real Democratic answer to the Tea Party right with her calm and principled voice that speaks with common sense and common courtesy about common interests of real Americans in a hard economy.

In Washington, Warren has the best enemies in town: those who profit from the rip-offs that Warren opposes. An armada of dirty money and dirty tactics will be arrayed against her.

Those who favor big change will support her in Massachusetts. Enlightened donors with big money will support her directly or earmark large donations through Majority PAC to answer attacks in an epic battle that has only just begun.

Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics.