That’s SENATOR Professor Warren to you, Scott Brown! Charlie Pierce:
There will be a lot of talk in the coming days about how Warren managed to hang the national Republican party around Brown’s neck, and she did. But, more to the point, she ran as though she already knows what kind of a senator she wants to be. She ran as though she knew exactly the kind of hell she plans to raise down there. She ran as though she had some kind of idea of how to fill out a great office. For his part, in an almost perfect counterpoint, Brown made himself look small. He made himself look cheap. He ran a campaign of tawdry invective and unfunny laff-lines. Part of electing a senator is sizing people up to the dimensions of the office. Only one of these candidates could win by that metric, and the right one did.
To me, the most revelatory moment came in the last of their debates, when Warren, asked about the war in Afghanistan, said simply,”It’s time to get out now.” No qualifications. No relying on the generals. No crawfishing. Out. Now. A few weeks later, I was riding around with her and I told her that, as far as I knew, she was the only Democratic candidate in a contested race who has said that simple thing as plainly as she did. She popped her eyes at me in the way that she does.
“There was no other answer,” she said, as though being asked to explain why she had come to start breathing that morning. Oh, dear Jesus, she’s going to cause so many people so much trouble down there. She can fill that office right up to the ceiling.
Yea, and she’ll end up being another John Kerry. That’s how hopeless I think this election was.
Yea, and she’ll end up being another John Kerry! I’m just a tad cynical this AM. But am I correct in saying that the defense of marriage amendment in Minnesota was defeated?
http://electionresults.sos.state.mn.us/ENR/Results/AmendmentResultsStatewide/1
I shouldn’t be so cynical.
Another John Kerry? Nah.
Maybe President in 2016.
Here are the three choices for president in 2016 on the Democratic side: Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Elizabeth Warren (MA) or Claire McCaskill (MO). In that order. That’s it. Nobody else need apply.
Remember how unhappy we were that Barry didn’t appoint her to head the CFPA? That turned out great. Now she has her own bully pulpit, and a strong nation-wide constituency. And she’s not under Barry’s bipartisan, middle ground, conciliatory, pre-compromising thumb.
Did you hear her victory speech. She basically cut Barry off at the knees on the GRAND BARGAIN.
Go Liz. And Alan.
The roomate of my friend with the stroke comes from a Republican family, but is himself now a Democrat. And reads a lot, just not on the blogs. But he gets it.
I said that Elizabeth Warren was one of the few politicians running who really gets what we in the lower economic quintiles are going through, that she speaks clearly, directly, firmly with utter common sense.
He said, “Absolutely, and may she raise holy hell down in DC.”
Damn straight.
BTW, Imhotep? McCaskill for prez? FSM help us.OMG.
Other tgan Rmoney being rejected, Warren’s victory is probably the most important element of the 2012 election.
And Nate Silver’s perfect prognostications are probably the third, showing the Repugs and most of the official punditocracy to be a bunch of lying sleazebags whose goal is to misinform us as much as possible.