U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren talks real pocketbook issues, as in, why yours is empty.
And she means what she says, writes Margery Eagan in the Boston Herald. In barely a year in the Senate, she’s turned into a Robin Hood for the “hammered” middle class, her endlessly repeated line. But are you in the middle class? Then you know: You are hammered. Can’t afford to retire. Can’t afford the mortgage, taxes, car repairs, college. If you’ve just finished college you can’t afford to move from mom’s basement. Why? The four-figure college loan payments you owe each month.
This is not how it’s supposed to be if you work hard and play by the rules in America. But this is how it is.
Who’s talking about this mess nonstop?
Elizabeth Warren.
The rich keep getting richer, she says, while the poor get poorer and the middle class, let me repeat, gets “hammered.” The banks that were too big to fail in 2008 are even bigger now. Soon we’ll get taxed to bail them out, again.
Rant about EBT cards all you want. If every one disappeared tomorrow, you’d still be hammered. The real money’s in big corporations and on Wall Street. And they own most of our pols. “Meet the Woman who Stood Up to Wall Street.” So reads a huge headline in a fawning article about Warren in young ladies’ favorite sex-tip magazine, “Cosmopolitan.” That’s the magazine that featured a near-nude young Scott Brown, the penny stock investor — whoops! — whom Warren vanquished. Now “Cosmo” features a fetching young Warren in thigh-hugging jeans and details her rise from divorced mother to the country’s most powerful financial reformer.
Has she reformed anything yet? No.
Is she making progress? Yes — from trashing federal regulators for refusing to regulate banks to crusading for a higher minimum wage. Just yesterday, President Obama praised her for introducing a bill that would let college graduates refinance loans at lower rates. Because it’d be paid for by ending a tax break for millionaires, it will likely fail in a Republican House that takes care of millionaires instead of the “hammered.”
But since it’s finally dawning on the “hammered” millions that the system is indeed rigged, Warren, eventually, could prevail. Says Marty Walsh adviser Michael Goldman, “For politicians, the hardest thing to get is the perception that you actually, deep down, believe in what you’re saying.”
Apparently more and more of us not only believe Warren believes what she says. We also believe she’s right.
Warren works step by step on individual issues. She is graceful, calm and forceful. Watch her take down the big boys with a cool insistence. Is she ready for the big time? Maybe yes, maybe no. Interestingly, Mrs. Clinton is bringing what she knows about global politics to the front of her speeches. Is this what Americans are thinking about?
