Elizabeth Warren has had a remarkable first week in her Senate campaign:
- She has taken the lead on Republican Scott Brown, erasing a 15-point deficit from June.
- She has stormed ahead the Democratic primary for MA-Sen by a cavernous 46 percent.
- She is closing in on 25,000 donors on Act Blue, and several thousand more directly through her website.
- Not one, but two videos of Warren have gone viral. The first was her rebuke against Republican charges of class warfare, and the second was her stunning appearance on Morning Joe from Wednesday morning (the second one actually has 50 percent more views on Daily Kos than the first).
Scared by Warren's rapid rise, the forces of Wall Street have suddenly made her a top target. Here is the
preposterous headline and lead paragraph from the Fiscal Times on the first week of her campaign:
Elizabeth Warren Campaign Already Hitting Snags
As she mounts a challenge to Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, former Harvard Law school professor and consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren has tried to put her controversial days in Washington behind her – but it hasn’t been easy.
Elizabeth Warren's campaign is really struggling, according to the Fiscal Times. What a terrible week she's had! In addition to basically just recycling Republican talking points against Warren, the article actually goes on to cite the viral video when she rebukes GOP charges about class warfare as one of the reasons she is supposedly hitting snags.
Then there is this hatchet job from Politico:
Elizabeth Warren became a hero of the left for her unrelenting pursuit of accountability and transparency with big banks and Wall Street firms that took billions of dollars in federal bailout money in 2008.
But when it comes to how her own bailout watchdog committee spent more than $10 million in taxpayer money, Warren has been a lot less forthcoming.
Warren, who is seeking the Democratic Senate nomination in Massachusetts to take on Republican Scott Brown, has yet to break down exactly how her congressional panel spent the money on travel expenses, meals and consultants, and the panel never revealed how much Warren was paid while she served as chairman.
So one of the problems here is that Warren didn't disclose how much she was paid, even though the article admits that she did disclose that last year.
Warren did have to report her income from the panel on separate executive-branch disclosure forms — a total of $64,289 from 2009 to 2010 – when President Barack Obama appointed her as a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.[...]
Still, members of the public would not be able to find her panel salary unless they cross-referenced it with her executive disclosures, which are available through the U.S. Office of Government Ethics.
So the scandal is that Warren actually did disclose how much she was paid, but that finding it out requires cross referencing. Calling that attack weak is a huge understatement.
More from the same article:
From October 2008 to March 2011, the TARP oversight panel received nearly $10.5 million in taxpayer money from Congress, public records show. In its final public report issued in March, the panel broke down expenses into general categories, including $8.7 million for salaries and benefits, and $768,851 for printing costs. But line-by-line itemizations have not been released to the public or lawmakers.
So Warren did disclose how the panel spent money, but the scandal is that there hasn't been a line-by-line itemization. Politico also fails to point out that staff salaries on the panel were capped at the level of congressional staff, which means no big salaries will be found in such an itemization. The article does, however, quote an anonymous source attacking her at length on an unverifiable charge.
In addition to thee Fiscal Times and Politico, overtly right-wing media has begun piling on direct attacks against Warren. Pajamas Media calls her a "mob boss"; Rich Lowrey has dedicated his latest column entirely to going after Warren's comments about class warfare. Rush Limbaugh went off on a vile three-minute rant:
When was the last time there was much much national right-wing venom being spewed at a Democratic candidate for Senate more than a year before she actually stands for election? I'm guessing never.
These attacks, including the incredibly thin pieces from Politico and the Financial Times, are a direct response to the deep vein of enthusiasm Warren is tapping. Her meteoric rise is freaking out a lot of right-wing and establishment institutions because her message, and her ability to deliver it effectively, make her a real threat to their agenda.
This fight has quickly turned into a lot more than a single Senate campaign. Please, if you have not done so already, sign the Daily Kos and CREDO Action petition thanking Elizabeth Warren for her rousing words.
