The Elizabeth Warren Wing Of The Democratic Party?

Several of my friends have been grumbling about Elizabeth Warren's support for conservative border state and Southern Democrats, Alison Lundergan Grimes (KY), Natlaie Tennant (WV), Mary Landrieu (LA), Sam Nunn's daughter (GA), Mark Pryor (AR) and Kay Hagan (NC). On a national level, she's, by far, the biggest star in the Senate. Other than lobbyists, Wall Street brokers and special interests who would go out to a rally headlined by Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Chuck Schumer, Kirsten Gillibrand, Mark Warner, Dianne Feinstein, Joe Donnelly? Most people don't even know what states these people are from. Cory Booker? Developing story… but, for now… mostly Wall Street brokers. Liz Warren is the star and every campaign wants her to help them turn out audiences, voters, grassroots donors. Democrats and independents love her powerful Wall Street vs Main Street message. That would be a tough one for Schumer, Gillibrand or Booker to deliver.

Real people recognize something they don't see in other senators: authenticity and concern for their interests. Progressives aren't necessarily overjoyed that she's using that to bolster people like Landrieu-- whose vote allowed Alito to be confirmed and who's campaigning against Climate Change amelioration-- and Alison Lundergan Grimes, whose tepid, consultant-driven campaign is the antithesis of how a bold progressive, populist wins, of how Elizabeth Warren won last cycle against Wall Street's favorite senator (who the banksters gave $7,233,298-- almost as much as the $9,891,795 they gave McConnell).

Warren has already raised over $2 million for endangered incumbents and some of the Democratic candidates. A few months ago she bucked EMILY's List, which had guaranteed ConservaDem Colleen Hanabusa they could deliver her support, and endorsed progressive champion Brian Schatz in the contentious Hawaii Senate primary. She's been raising him money as well and helping clarify the contrast between the corrupt New Dem Hanabusa and Schatz who has identified himself clearly as part of the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party and campaigns on the same populist issues that won her a smashing victory against Scott Brown in 2012.

Similarly, when Harry Reid, Michael Bennet, Guy Cecil (in effect, the DSCC) decided prairie populist Rick Weiland should be shunned for being too liberal and for scaring Blue Dog lobbyist/loser Stephanie Herseth Sandlin out of the South Dakota Senate race, Warren stepped in with an endorsement and some real money. Yesterday she sent out a letter asking for contributions from her followers for Weiland:

Democrat Tim Johnson is retiring from the Senate this year, and we're in for a tough fight in South Dakota. Luckily our candidate is ready to fight: former Tom Daschle aide and state AARP leader Rick Weiland. He's actively fighting for campaign finance reform and taking back government for hard-working people. Rick is running hard on a truly progressive agenda, and he needs your help to keep South Dakota's seat in Democratic hands.

In less than 24 hours, 936 Warren supporters gave Weiland $16,657.25, his biggest single ActBlue haul since getting into the race. (And his second biggest ActBlue haul, $12,217.31 from PCCC, was entitled "Give Elizabeth Warren the allies she needs in the Senate.")

She's helping progressives like Jeff Merkley in Oregon, moderates Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire and conservatives like Mark Pryor in Arkansas. If DSCC chairman Michael Bennet has been a 2 on a 1-10 scale, Warren has been an 11. She's going to states where Obama and Reid are not especially welcome-- like West Virginia.

Obama is unpopular in the Mountain State, having lost there by 27 points in 2012, and would not be welcomed by the Tennant campaign. But the candidate invited Warren to help her roll out her education policy agenda on July 14 in the state's eastern panhandle and to help her paint Capito as a supporter of Wall Street.

"Like Tennant, Warren grew up in a working-class family and worked to help make ends meet," the West Virginian's campaign said. "Warren took babysitting jobs and worked at her aunt's restaurant after her dad had a heart attack and lost his job. Tennant worked her way through college at WVU on a minimum wage job at a Morgantown florist shop-- her dad helped make up the rest of her tuition by selling cows."

A couple days ago, Kate Nocera speculated that "if Democrats hold onto the Senate this year, the biggest winner may be Elizabeth Warren. "Warren’s ability to fundraise for fellow Democrats," she wrote, "could help her own future aspirations, whatever they may be. Though she has emphatically denied she has any plans to run for president, it certainly doesn’t hurt to give generously to colleagues now." She's building a power base in the Senate-- and people in the crowd wore t-shirts that said, "I'm from the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party." They wanted photos with her, notespecially with Grimes. Gary Turner, who was at the rally, told Nocera, "Would I have 100% been here if Warren wasn’t coming? No." He was there for Warren. "She’s like what Obama was, she’s just got something about her. I am all for Alison and I hope she wins but I wanted the chance to see Warren."

Warren told Nocera in Louisville over the weekend that "Democrats are the same page on what’s happening to America economically. That’s what we’re all out there talking about. I don’t agree with every Democratic candidate on every issue. But on the core economic issues, the fact the playing field is tilted, on the need to fight for working families, we are all in the same place and that’s why I’m out here." And she told the crowd, "You send us Alison Grimes instead of Mitch McConnell and you change the world."

And while Grimes has tried to distance herself from President Obama and certain Democratic issues, there was little daylight between Grimes and Warren on Sunday. The two stood on stage together railing against Grimes’ opponent, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and declared that on issues of the economy they were perfectly in sync.

Grimes called Warren "someone who has fought as hard as anyone could fight in the United States Senate." And if Kentucky sends her to the Senate, Grimes noted, "will have someone to fight for the middle class right along with her."

"As the middle child, I’m used to operating from the center," Grimes added. "My husband and I don’t agree on every issue; as Sen. Warren said, we don’t agree on every issue, but we do agree that Washington isn’t working for Kentucky families or American families."

Watch a clip from her speech up top: "Alison and I don't agree on everything; we don't. But Alison and I agree that there is a lot on the line here: our economy, our country, our values. We want to work together wherever we can. We want to build a great future for this country, a great future for our children and our grandchildren. And we are willing to fight shoulder to shoulder to make that happen. That's what tough women do."

No one is perfect-- not even Warren-- and its gigantically disappointing that she is pointedly not campaigning for this cycle's Elizabeth Warren: Shenna Bellows in Maine. A contact at the DSCC told me Warren has refused to do anything that could be interpreted as a slight against Maine incumbent Susan Collins, something many progressives will remember for a very long time. One of my friends, knowing what a big supporter of hers I am, railed at me, "She's backing Nunn and Grimes and Pryor and ignoring Bellows. She's just like all the DC phonies." I just finished reading her new book, A Fighting Chance. Last night I read the epilogue as I was eating dinner. It was written after she had been in the Senate for just over a year. "I've seen our Congress up close," she wrote, "and parts of it are truly dysfunctional." But her epilogue is upbeat and filled with the kind of hope she's bringing voters in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Georgia… even as she ignores Mainers. "Every day I wrestle with the same ruthless reality that I've known for many years: Change-- real change-- is hard. Uphill, grind-grind-grind, sweat-it-out hard."

Yes, change is hard, but it is possible-- and that's the part that fires me up.

I've heard a lot of talk about what can't be done. People said the new consumer agency was a pipe dream. But now it's the law of the land, and in July, 2013 I presided over the US Senate as Rich Cordray finally became the first full-fledged, real-deal director. That agency is here to stay. After Rich's confirmation, one headline read: ELIZABETH WARREN SMILES BIG AFTER RICH CORDRAY CONFIRMATION. Got that right!

There are other ways to make change happen. Committee hearings are pretty dull affairs, the stuff that fills the 3:00 A.M. slot on CSPAN. But those hearings offer a chance to make some progress. At my first Banking Committee hearing, I pushed regulators to name the last time they took a big bank all the way to trial. They stumbled and fumbled and a video of the exchange [she below] shot around the Internet and was viewed by more than a million people. Maybe, just maybe, more government officials will think twice before deciding that some bank executive is too big to jail.

And student loans? No, I didn't get the Bank on Students Act passed. But at least the final deal on student loan interest was better than where it started: $15 billion better for students over the next ten years. And, in the end, I wasn't alone. More than a dozen senators from around the country stood up to me to say no to any deal in which the government makes a profit off the backs of our students. That's not a bad place to begin the next round in the battle-- and, believe me, we will come back to this issue again.

Of course, student loans are just a start. There are many more fights ahead, and more work to be done-- and I worry that we're running out of time. For generations now, America's middle class has been squeezed, chipped away, and hammered so hard that the foundations of our economic security are beginning to crumble.

Every day I think about the people I've met who are part of the battle. The woman in New Bedford who walked two miles so she could talk to someone who would fight for her. The father who worried that basic fairness would be denied to his transgender child. The woman who brought her tall, good-looking husband to a rally and talked with me about his slide into the darkness of Alzheimer's. The big guy at the construction site who went nine months without work last year. I remember their faces, their fears, their determination.

Every one of them worries about our future. Every one of them has anxious days and sleepless nights. Every one of them is tough and resourceful. And every one of them-- every single one of them-- has a deep core of optimism that says we can do better.

I believe that it's this optimism about the future that sets us apart as a people, this optimism that makes America an exceptional nation. We built this country by striking out on new adventures and propelling ourselves forward on a path we named progress. Along the way, we learned that when we invest in one another, when we build school and roads and research lanes, we build a better future-- a better future for ourselves and our children and our grandchildren.

Equality. Opportunity. The pursuit of happiness. An America that builds something better for the next kid and the kid after that and the kid after that.

No one is asking for a handout. All we want is a country where everyone pays a fair share, a country where we build opportunities for all of us; a country where everyone plays by the same rules and everyone is held accountable. and we have begun to fight for it.

I believe in us. I believe in what we can do together, in what we will do together. All we need is a fighting chance.

The Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic Party-- right here… especially Shenna Bellows.

Two New Presidential Candidates Today-- One Great And One Scraped Off The Bottom Of The Toilet... Let's Stick With Elizabeth Warren Though

I expect dozens of politicians for the 2020 election cycle (for Congress as well as president) to start officially announcing later in the week, or maybe next week. Kara Eastman (NE-02) and Elizabeth Warren (President) beat them to it. Kara announced she's running for Congress again-- Blue America's first endorsed candidate for the 2020 cycle-- a week or so ago and Elizabeth Warren announced that she's formed a presidential exploratory committee a few hours ago. Please watch Senator Warren's excellent announcement video up top.

Earlier this morning I thought I would take some time and do the research for another in the DWT series, Worst Democraps Who Want To Be President, to welcome corporate ambititron Terry McAuliffe into the fray. His SuperPAC sent out an e-mail this morning: "We need Terry's voice in the arena and our PAC has already raised his profile in key early states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina through early ad buys." How insider and full of crap is that? It's all about me, me, me. And the image... I wonder how much they made the consultant who came up with it; for their sake, I hope not too much:

I'll hold off on McAuliffe for the day. I like this frame from Elizabeth Warren's video so much better:

Her brand new website doesn't have much verbiage yet-- almost none at all, in fact. But this biographical paragraph, all there is, is useful if you want to understand who she is and why she's running: "Elizabeth grew up on the ragged edge of the middle class in Oklahoma and became a teacher, a law professor, and a US Senator because America invested in kids like her. She’s spent her career taking on powerful interests and fighting to give every kid the same chance to succeed." Her video shows what we should all know already, unlike Claire McCaskill, Warren is one senator who is very much in touch with the zeitgeist. As you probably may know, I'm a Bernie supporter. But I'm a Warren supporter too. I wish they were running as a ticket.

Associated Press pointed out this morning that "Now, as a likely presidential contender, she is making an appeal to the party’s base. Her video notes the economic challenges facing people of color along with images of a women’s march and Warren’s participation at an LGBT event."

Warren has the benefit of higher name recognition than many others in the Democratic mix for 2020, thanks to her years as a prominent critic of Wall Street who originally conceived of what became the government’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

She now faces an arduous battle to raise money and capture Democratic primary voters’ attention before Iowa casts its first vote in more than a year. She has an advantage in the $12.5 million left over from her 2018 re-election campaign that she could use for a presidential run.

Warren’s campaign is likely to revolve around the same theme she’s woven into speeches and policy proposals in recent years: battling special interests, paying mind to the nexus between racial and economic inequities.

“America’s middle class is under attack,” Warren said in the video. “How did we get here? Billionaires and big corporations decided they wanted more of the pie. And they enlisted politicians to cut them a fatter slice.”

I fell in love with Warren in 2014 when I read one of her books, A Fighting Chance. I was so thrilled that there was someone with her intelligence and elegance fighting on our side. In the prologue, she wrote "Today the game is rigged-- rigged to work for those who have money and power. Big corporations hire armies of lobbyists to get billion-dollar loopholes into the tax system and persuade their friends in Congress to support laws that keep the playing field tilted in their favor. Meanwhile, hardworking families are told that they’ll just have to live with smaller dreams for their children. Over the past generation, America’s determination to give every kid access to affordable college or technical training has faded. The basic infrastructure that helps us build thriving businesses and jobs-- the roads, bridges, and power grids-- has crumbled. The scientific and medical research that has sparked miraculous cures and inventions from the Internet to nanotechnology is starved for funding, and the research pipeline is shrinking. The optimism that defines us as a people has been beaten and bruised. It doesn’t have to be this way. I am determined-- fiercely determined-- to do everything I can to help us once again be the America that creates opportunities for anyone who works hard and plays by the rules. An America of accountability and fair play. An America that builds a future for not just some of our children but for all of our children. An America where everyone gets what I got: a fighting chance."

I've been an Elizabeth Warren partisan ever since, although a year earlier I had noted with enthusiasm that she led a fight against Obama's putrid deal with Republicans (and through them, Wall Street) on the student loan debacle, a bill-- likely masterminded by Biden-- which benefitted some students in the short term and crucified all students over time-- a really ugly, shameful "compromise." The deal on student loan interest rates was an unacceptable plan to sell out and profit off the backs of students. It jeopardized the long term well being of students, their families, and the country’s economy by making a college level education inaccessible for many, while locking those who do go to college into even more years of debt. Warren was one of the senators then willing-- enthusiastically willing-- to stand up to Obama, Biden and Wall Street and say that we needed legislation that protects students and promotes education and entrepreneurship, not a plan that raises rates and puts students at the mercy of the market. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie, Ed Markey, Jack Reed had the guts to go after their own misguided president. Remember, this was 2013. Bernie spoke out: "The White House is being disingenuous and is trying to sweep under the rug big increases in interest rates for students and parents in the near future. Because college costs are out of control and interest rates are rising, students are leaving college deep in debt or in some cases choosing not to continue their education because they cannot afford it."

The Amendment offered by Warren and Reed failed 46-53 in the Senate, corrupt conservative Democrats Tom Carper (DE), Joe Donnelly (IN), Tim Kaine (VA), Mark Pryor (AR) killing it-- along with Angus King (I-ME) and Tom Harkin (IA-- don't ask me what kind of fucking bee got in her bonnet that day) by voting with every single Senate Republican; Claire McCaskill (MO) coincidentally got locked into the lady's room and didn't have to vote.

After the roll call, Senator Warren sent out this brief statement, while Obama and his Wall Street pals celebrated: "Today's vote is over, but our fight to make college more affordable and a better deal for our students continues. I'm in this fight for the long haul-- we must invest in our kids, bring down the skyrocketing costs of college and tackle the more than trillion dollars in student loan debt that is crushing middle class families and threatening our economy. I am eager to work with the President and my colleagues to attack these problems head-on and find solutions that will provide a real shot at an education for all of our children."

Elizabeth Warren by Nancy Ohanian

Is Elizabeth Warren Really Moving Hillary To The Left On Something?

Last year, once Elizabeth Warren announced she would be supporting Hillary for president, my hopes for her running herself-- unless Hillary changes her mind and decides not to-- were dashed. I got over it... although I wondered why Warren didn't hold out some hope she would endorse Bernie Sanders if he ran in the Democratic primary.

The other day Warren endorsed Kamala Harris for the Senate seat being given up by Barbara Boxer. Now Harris is probably not as bad as some of the candidates Warren backed in November-- in the general election: anti-courageous conservatives like Michelle Nunn (GA), Alison Grimes (KY), Mary Landrieu (LA) and Natalie Tenant (WV). OK, they were all better than their Republican opponents (all of whom won), but... I cringed a little thinking about Warren tarnishing her brand on these weak candidates who, were they ever to win, would start voting very much on a different team than Elizabeth Warren. Kamala Harris, from California, isn't a conservative. Is she a progressive? One of her admirers and supporters told me she's sort of in between Warren and corporate shill Cory Booker, with who she is close. She may not be a bad senator but maybe Warren should have waited to see what better options presented themselves before endorsing Harris. "California Attorney General Kamala Harris is a smart, tough, and experienced prosecutor who has consistently stood up to Wall Street," she wrote to her supporters Wednesday, although Harris' vigilance against Wall Street doesn't rise to the level of Warren's own, nor of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's. "Yesterday," Warren continued, "she announced her candidacy for the United States Senate, and I’m happy to support her campaign." She made the optimal case for progressives to back Harris:

Let me take just a moment to tell you what makes Kamala Harris so special.

When the housing market crashed in 2008, California was hit hard. Home prices had shot through the roof, and families that were desperately afraid they might be priced out of housing forever took on big mortgages. But those weren’t just standard, here-are-the-payments mortgages. No, millions of people ended up with mortgages that were loaded with tricks and traps, sold by both big banks and fly-by-night mortgage lenders. When the market collapsed, these people couldn’t pay their mortgages, they couldn’t refinance, and they couldn’t sell their homes.

Attorney General Kamala Harris demanded real accountability from the lenders. She wasn’t intimidated by the big banks. When the negotiations in the National Mortgage Settlement weren’t tough enough on the banks, Kamala took a bold move. She said that her job was to protect the people of California, not help the big banks, so she pulled out of the group negotiations and later secured $20 billion in relief for struggling California homeowners. And to help prevent another crisis from happening again, she fought for a new California Homeowner Bill of Rights-- one of the most comprehensive sets of foreclosure reform laws in the country.

I worked with Kamala, and I saw up close and personal that she is tough, she is principled, and she fights hard.

We need more leaders in Washington who are willing to fight for a level playing field for working families. Kamala came to Massachusetts to help our campaign in 2012, and I’m doing what I can to make sure Kamala Harris makes it to the United States Senate in 2016.

That's not something you can ignore. But what if Xavier Becerra, Dave Jones, Jackie Speier or Hilda Solis runs? Each of them is more progressive and would probably make a better senator that Harris. I wish Warren would have waited, although I'm sure she had her reasons-- possibly to scare off billionaire mystery-meat candidate Tom Steyer. maybe so that Harris would feel significant enough love from the progressive wing of the party that she wouldn't immediately jump into a business-oriented Cory Booker position. No one, including Warren, is perfect. And only a fool, which is isn't, ever thinks they are.

Yesterday, Time, which is also well-aware Warren isn't running or president, made the case about why all the razzle-dazzle about recruiting her has been successful... even if it isn't resulting in her running. Time assistant managing editor Rana Foroohar asserts Warren is "yanking Hillary Clinton to the left." Warren, she points out has "tapped into an existential crisis on the left: namely, liberals’ belated anxiety over the capture of the Democratic Party by high finance, which began two decades ago."

Democrats, like Republicans, bear blame for the financial crisis of 2008. Jimmy Carter deregulated interest rates in 1980, a move that pacified consumers and financiers grappling with stagflation but also helped set the stage for the home-mortgage implosion. In 1999, as President Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Rubin signed off on the Glass-Steagall banking-regulation death certificate, a move that many, Warren included, believe was a key factor in worsening the crisis. Loose accounting standards supported by many Democrats during the Clinton years also encouraged the growth of stock options as the main form of corporate compensation, a trend that French academic Thomas Piketty, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and many other economists believe exacerbated the staggering gap between rich and poor in the U.S. today. I asked Warren whether she blamed such policies for our current wage stagnation, which has persisted despite robust economic growth. “I’d lay it right at the feet of trickle-down economics, yes,” she says. “We’ve tried that experiment for 35 years, and it hasn’t worked.”

Speculation has been rife that Warren might consider a presidential run of her own, taking on front runner Hillary Clinton just to make sure the same trickle-down team doesn’t end up in office again. When I ask her flatly if she’d run if she thought a Rubin or Summers would be making economic policy for the next four years, she paused. “I tell you … I’m going to do everything I can. I’m going to fight as hard as I have to. This has to change.”

Change won’t come easily. Resetting the economic table is not just about breaking up big banks or raising the minimum wage. Real change would mean grappling with a deep, multidecade shift from a society in which the state, the private sector and the individual all shared responsibility for economic risks to one in which individuals are now increasingly left on their own to pay for the trappings of a middle-class life-- health care, education and retirement-- while corporations capture a record share of the country’s prosperity without necessarily reinvesting in the common good. Complaining about too-big-to-fail banks, sleazy lobbyists and the 1% is easier than crafting an entirely new, inclusive growth policy.

Warren is likely to conjure more change by being a progressive foil to Clinton than by running herself. Her sway has old economists scrambling to learn new tricks. The Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to the Clintons, is releasing a new report on wages and the plight of the middle classes on Jan. 15. Its chief author: none other than Summers. Meanwhile, Clinton recently took an ideas meeting with Stiglitz, once considered too far left to touch. In politics, stars may rise, but the moon is constant.

In her most recent book, A Fighting Chance Warren recounts an incident with then First Lady Hillary Clinton that I think had a tremendous impact on her at the time. Long before she decided to run for office, Warren, a Harvard professor at the time, never stopped fighting for a fair bankruptcy bill... but the banksters never have up either. Their financial self-interest wasn't dependent on fleeting partisan coalitions, elections, not even on deaths. They never give up, just like the GOP never gives up trying to destroy Social Security, Medicare, public education, the right for working people to organize and bargain collectively, the environment, and, ultimately, democracy itself-- all on behalf of the self-entitled multimillionaires and billionaires who claim their wealth gives them the right to run the country, in a kind of symbiotic partnership with the corrupt politicians they buy (on both sides of the aisle). Here's how Warren puts it in her book in terms of Hillary:

The banking industry bought everything; they even bought their own facts. The industry commissioned three different studies, each of which was touted as "independent." Each explained the urgent need to change the law-- exactly the way the banking industry wanted it changed. One particularly damaging result of these bogus studies was a claim that bankruptcy cost every hardworking, bill-paying American family a $550 "hidden tax." The number was entirely made up, fabricated out of thin air, but the press reported it as "fact" for years.

This one hit me hard. I'd spent nearly twenty years sweating over every detail in a string of serious academic studies, agonizing over sample sizes and statistical significance to make certain that whatever I reported was exactly right. Now the banks just wrote a check, commissioned a friendly study, and purchased their own facts. They had their own press people distribute the facts and lobbyists hand the facts to congressional staffers. From the halls of Congress to the front pages of newspapers all over the country, these new "facts" became reality.

This strategy-- and the cynicism behind it-- made me furious. It also scared me. If the facts about bankruptcy could be purchased, then who knew what they could claim next?

...[T]he president [Bill Clinton] was under enormous pressure from the banks to sign the bill, but in the last days of his presidency, urged on by his wife, President Clinton stood strong with struggling families. With no public fanfare, he vetoed the industry's bill.

...The banks lost in 2000, but they didn't quit-- they just spent more money on lobbying and campaign contributions. Soon the banking industry was outspending everybody else-- tobacco, pharmaceuticals, even Big Oil. Credit card companies lined up to boost George W. Bush's presidential campaign.

In 2001, the bill looked sure to pass Congress again, and now George W. Bush was in the White House, promising to sign it into law. The recent election kept the House in Republican control, and every single Republican was ready to support the bill. The Senate was evenly split between the two parties, but one of the bill's lead sponsors was Democratic powerhouse Joe Biden, and right behind him were plenty of Democrats offering to help... The baking industry had lost for a second time, but it came back once again, bringing even more money and more lobbyists. It was like fighting some kind of mythical creature-- cut off one head and two grow back.

Many New York Democrats Plan To Hold Their Noses When They Vote For Cuomo In November-- Or Will They?

On Sunday, Steve Kornacki took a little look at the expanding rift between New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and much of the Democratic base. It's worth looking at the video above. Salon's Joan Walsh did a particularly excellent job straightening out Beltway political entrepreneur Ann Lewis, who actually defended Cuomo by quoting Ronald Reagan. I'm not going to get into speculating about what the Working Families Party may or may not do, beyond saying that with the union leadership telling them they;re on their own, they probably won't do much. Still, good segment from Kornacki.

What would make this interesting would be if, for whatever reason, Hillary decides not to run. Were that to happen-- which I don't expect-- there are a whole bunch of centrists, Cuomo being the worst of them, but also Joe Biden, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, and-- a little more right of center--Virginia Senator Mark Warner, who have signaled they are eager to run. And then there's progressive icon Elizabeth Warren, who says she doesn't want to run, but who's new book, A Fighting Chance sounds like she'd be completely prepared to make a rip-roaring' declaration speech. Her supporters really want her to run. Unlike the other candidates, her supporters are real people.

This is the book's prologue:

I’m Elizabeth Warren. I’m a wife, a mother, and a grandmother. For nearly all my life, I would have said I’m a teacher, but I guess I really can’t say that anymore. Now I’d have to introduce myself as a United States senator, though I still feel a small jolt of surprise whenever I say that.

This is my story, and it’s a story born of gratitude.

My daddy was a maintenance man and my mother worked the phones at Sears. More than anything, my parents wanted to give my three older brothers and me a future. And all four of us have lived good lives. My oldest brother, Don Reed, served twenty years in the military, with 288 combat missions in Vietnam to his credit. In good years, my brother John had a union job operating a crane, and in leaner years he took whatever construction work he could get. My brother David had a special spark; he started his own business, and when that didn’t work out, he started another business, because he couldn’t imagine a world where he wasn’t living by his wits every day. I went to college and became a teacher, first for special-needs kids and then for law students; only much later did I get involved in politics. My brothers and I all married and had children, and my parents plastered their walls, their refrigerator, and their tabletops with pictures of their much-loved grandchildren.

I will be grateful to my mother and daddy until the day I die. They worked hard-- really hard-- to help my brothers and me along. But we also succeeded, at least in part, because we were lucky enough to grow up in an America that invested in kids like us and helped build a future where we could flourish.

Here’s the hard truth: America isn’t building that kind of future any longer.

Today the game is rigged-- rigged to work for those who have money and power. Big corporations hire armies of lobbyists to get billion-dollar loopholes into the tax system and persuade their friends in Congress to support laws that keep the playing field tilted in their favor. Meanwhile, hardworking families are told that they’ll just have to live with smaller dreams for their children.

Over the past generation, America’s determination to give every kid access to affordable college or technical training has faded. The basic infrastructure that helps us build thriving businesses and jobs-- the roads, bridges, and power grids-- has crumbled. The scientific and medical research that has sparked miraculous cures and inventions from the Internet to nanotechnology is starved for funding, and the research pipeline is shrinking. The optimism that defines us as a people has been beaten and bruised.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

I am determined-- fiercely determined-- to do everything I can to help us once again be the America that creates opportunities for anyone who works hard and plays by the rules. An America of accountability and fair play. An America that builds a future for not just some of our children but for all of our children. An America where everyone gets what I got: a fighting chance.

My story seems pretty unlikely, even to me. I never expected to run for office-- but then again, I never expected to do a lot of things in my life. I never expected to climb a mountain. I never expected to meet the president of the United States. I never expected to be a blonde. But here I am.

The story starts in Oklahoma, where I grew up, and it tumbles through a life built around husbands and babies and setting the kitchen on fire. I made my way to a commuter college, a teaching job, a public law school, and, eventually, a professorship. As I started weaving in academic research, I became more and more worried about what was happening to America’s families, and the story shifted to Washington, where I picked my first public fight. In 1995, I agreed to take on what I thought would be some part-time public service for a couple of years, and I quickly got caught up in a battle over our nation’s bankruptcy law. I know that sounds a little obscure, but underneath it was a clash about whether our government exists to serve giant banks or struggling families.

The battle lasted much longer than I’d expected-- a full ten years, in fact. My own life threaded through, of course, with graduations and funerals and grandchildren of my own. When that battle ended, I picked up another, and then another and another-- a total of five big fights in all. They ranged from fighting for a fresh start for families who had suffered a job loss or a serious illness, to trying to force the government to be transparent about what was really going on with the bank bailout, to tangling with the big banks over dishonest mortgages. But the way I see it, even as they took me this way and that, all five battles were about a single, deeper threat: America’s middle class is under attack. Worse, it’s not under attack by some unstoppable force of nature. It’s in trouble because the game is deliberately rigged.

This book tells a very public story about fraud and bailouts and elections. It also tells a very personal story about mothers and daughters, day care and dogs, aging parents and cranky toddlers. It’s not meant to be a definitive account of any historical event-- it’s just what I saw and what I lived. It’s also a story about losing, learning, and getting stronger along the way. It’s a story about what’s worth fighting for, and how sometimes, even when we fight against very powerful opponents, we can win.

I never expected to go to Washington. Heck, for the most part I never even wanted to go. But I’m here to fight for something that I believe is worth absolutely everything: to give each one of our kids a fighting chance to build a future full of promise and discovery.

She was on This Week with George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, explaining why she left the Republican Party. Her explanation (below) will probably make a lot of sense, not just to Democrats and independents, but to more than a few Republicans as well… though probably not to Andrew Cuomo.

Elizabeth Warren Goes On Bill Moyers Show To Tell The Truth

Every time I see some clueless DIY pundit say something about the "Elizabeth Warren-Bill De Blasio wing of the Democratic Party," it's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Bill De Blasio? He has a record, which is why Blue America never endorsed him and why DWT never had any editorial comment on him beyond him being better than the even worse character that EMILY's List ran, Christine Quinn. A Wall Street Democrat, he took on the highly dubious persona of "the liberal," an undiscerning media bought it, was endorsed by The Nation, George Soros, Howard Dean, Jerry Nadler, Al Sharpton, Harry Belafonte, Sarah Jessica Parker and Alec Baldwin, and the imagination of the voting public was caught. As one wag put it on twitter this morning, "Bill De Blasio is aesthetically liberal-ish, but this pretense of him being a progressive leader was always silly… De Blasio is just a Wall Street Democrat who wants to give a bit more to the poor. His wife was a Citigroup exec." It's why we saw him stand with conservative corporate Democrat Wendy Greuel in L.A. against the progressive candidates and why we see him standing with grotesque fake Democrats like Andrew Cuomo, Kathy Hochul and Jeffrey Klein in New York now. If there's a "left wing" of the Democratic Party, the only role Bill De Blasio would have, would be undermining it. Putting him in the same sentence as Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Alan Grayson is, at best, counterproductive.

This week Liz Warren was Bill Moyers' guest on his TV show and the whole show is embedded below. Up top, however, is the "web extra" that didn't make it onto the show. Moyers, playing off her must-read new book, A Fighting Chance, asked her about a now infamous dinner she had with notorious Wall Street whore Larry Summers.

I'm not yet in the Senate-- I'm not even thinking about running for public office. It's why I can cause so much trouble, right? I’m out there, causing trouble. And Larry was working in the White House as economic advisor. And so we had a long conversation about a lot of issues, argued about a lot of things, agreed on some things.

And finally, Larry said to me that there are two kinds of people in Washington. There are-- and you're going to have to make a choice here about what you want to be. You can be an outsider and criticize all you want, but nobody's going to listen to you. Or you can be an insider, and we'll listen. But the first rule is, insiders don't criticize other insiders.

You know, Larry's statement just amazed me. The idea that you can be an outsider, say everything you want, but we're not going to listen to you. Or you can be an insider. But insiders never criticize insiders. And it's why I'll never be an insider. It's-- I just can't.

Later on Moyers followed up by asking her about frustration with the hidebound process in Washington. "You were so effective as an outsider," he said, "as an activist, I have to wonder if you aren't frustrated by the pace at which nothing happens in Washington."

You know, frustrated-- that is a word that would barely contain how I feel about this. But yet, we have to remember-- when we talk about Washington, what's happening about trying to get things done. I think that this is about two pieces in terms of how we make change. One is that we make change by planting our flag on what we believe in. I think that is the most effective way to do it. We say, "We are the folks who are going to stand up for minimum wage." And that was every single Democrat. And you look around and say, "How 'bout you, Republicans? Where are you?"

And you draw this difference. You know, one of the easiest ways on the bankruptcy bill and other places, was so long as you can keep all of that blurry, then everyone can keep writing the rules for the rich and the powerful. So I think the most affirmative part of it is we've got to lay out what we stand for, and then we've got to be willing to fight for it. But the second part is we're going to have to tackle straight on money in politics. We've got to do it. Our democracy depends on this.

And then Moyers gets to where a real progressive like Warren-- or Grayson or Sanders-- differs from the New York fakers like De Blasio, Schumer, Gillibrand, Cuomo… throw Hillary in there if you want to… he sure does.

BILL MOYERS: There's a new study coming out by two noted political scientists who say that-- they've studied 1,700 or so bills over the last several years and they conclude that when it comes to public policy decisions, that the affluent, the wealthy, the organized interests have far more influence. In fact…

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: It's true.

BILL MOYERS: …ordinary people, have almost no impact on public policy decisions in Washington.

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: Well, the point right now is that we've got to make some changes. And we got to be focused on what the difference is. I don’t know if you saw it but there’s a study that DEMOS put together.

BILL MOYERS: I did see it.

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: Did you see this.

BILL MOYERS: A think tank, yes.

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: Where they talk about what it is that most Americans want, but what it is that very well-to-do Americans want. And very well-to-do Americans have a very different view of the minimum age. They’re not enthusiastic about raising the minimum wage. Of course it’s very removed from their lives.

BILL MOYERS: 70 percent of Americans say they favor raising the minimum wage.

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: Ralph Nader points out at a really good piece this morning that $7.25 is what minimum age is paying. That's poverty-level wages, while members of Congress are making, 40-hour work week, $83 an hour, plus benefits, health benefits, retirement pensions. This disconnect between what members of Congress, how they live, and how these ordinary people are living, how do you overcome that? Why is it? Why is that disconnect there?

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: So, you know, for me the whole question around minimum wage is very personal. I grew up in a family that had a lot of financial ups and downs. When I was 12 my mom was a stay-at-home mom, my dad was selling carpet, all three of my older brother off in the military. And my daddy had a heart attack. And you know, it was a period of time, no money coming in, the bills pile up. We lost the family station wagon.

We came about that close to losing our home. And I start the book “A Fighting Chance” with the day I walked into my mother's bedroom. And she was pulling on her black dress, the one that was her best dress, hung in the closet for funerals, special occasions, not just church, but extra special. And she pulls this dress on, and she's crying, she blows her nose, puts on her lipstick, pulls on her high heels, and walks to the Sears and gets a minimum-wage job.

And that minimum-wage job saved us. It saved our house, it saved our little family of three. Because in the 1960s, a full-time, minimum-wage job would keep a family afloat. Today, a full-time minimum-wage job won't keep a mama and a baby out of poverty. And that's-- goes back to the question of who is Washington working for?

You know, the American people are ready for a raise in the minimum wage. But the Republicans have voted, "No, no, no," on this. For me, this now gets down to the question of how we get people involved so there's real accountability. It's time for everybody across this country to ask of their senators, to ask of their congressman or congresswoman: whose side are you on? Are you there for the folks who are out there trying to work for a living? Or are you just there for the millionaires and billionaires?

BILL MOYERS: So me play something you said recently to the Netroots Conference, a grassroots advocate. You're talking there about the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enacted by Congress against enormous Wall Street and corporate pressure. Here it is.

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN AT NETROOTS NATION CONFERENCE: We won because you and a zillion other people across this country got in the fight. We won because you got out there, you broke news, you wrote opinion pieces, you organized petitions, you built coalitions, you kept that idea alive. You called out sleazy lobbyists and cowardly politicians. You said, "We, we the people will have this agency." And you are the ones who won. You won this fight.

BILL MOYERS: And they won because you won because you led that fight. You won that fight.

But look at the recent story in the Washington Examiner. Quote, "Revolving Door at Regulator CFBP Enables Former Bureaucrats to Cash In at Taxpayers' Expense,” in other words, employees of the agency you helped create to protect consumers for which you were justly taking, giving credit to the activists behind you are going to work now representing the very industry that they were regulating. That's the old revolving door. It happens in every department of government. How can you overcome that?

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: So the revolving door, I mean, Eric Cantor just showed us how fast the revolving door can spin just in the last few days. This is really, this has got to be stopped in Washington. We have got to have rules that say you can't leave your job regulating an industry, you can't leave your job writing the rules for an industry and then turn right around and go to work for the industry.

You know, it's, it has become-- this is the part that is distributing. It's not just that they're doing. It's that everyone expects them to do it. It's now the culture of doing it which has the impact of infecting the whole process. We have got...

BILL MOYERS: Changing the culture.

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: …to put a stop to this. Change the culture. This has got to be stopped.

BILL MOYERS: How?

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: It has got to be stopped. It's rules.

BILL MOYERS: Democrats and Republicans alike do it as you know.

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: But the Senate and the House of Representatives write these rules. And right now the rules in effect say, "Have at it, boys."

BILL MOYERS: That's what you mean when you say the insiders write the rules to benefit themselves.

SENATOR ELIZABETH WARREN: That's right. That's exactly right. Although, we cannot leave the subject of that little Consumer Financial Protection Bureau without talking about another aspect of it. That is it's making enormous change. It is doing such a fabulous job.

Do you know that it has now recovered-- it's only been up in operation, what, for just a little over two years. It has already returned more than $4 billion to American families who got cheated by credit companies and mortgage companies. It has set up a consumer complaint hotline where people can go online, file a complaint, it gets forwarded to the company.

And they're getting results. Not in every case. But they're starting to get results. Tens of thousands of people are logging on and having their voices heard. It's working. And here's how I know for sure it's working. The Republicans in Congress are determined to try to muzzle it.

They're determined to try to pull the teeth out of the watchdog. They want to make sure that they pull this agency down. Mitch McConnell in that, one of the secret recordings that has come out in recent days, Mitch McConnell said one of the first things he would do if the Republicans take over the Senate is they would cut back on Dodd-Frank, all those financial reforms. That's our little Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. So we've got this fight lined up again. Whose side are you on? The consumer agency who's out there fighting for people just so they won't get cheated on credit cards and mortgages and payday loans or the big financial companies that want to be able to make a profit off those folks and their Republican friends in Congress who are willing to help them?

Moyers should invite Bill De Blasio onto his show so people can see the difference between a faker and a real progressive. Watch the whole show, particularly how she deals with Moyers' incisive questions about the unfitness of Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee. It's pretty amazing.

Will The Democrats Really Nominate An Anti-Choice Candidate For President? Biden's Been Wrong About EVERYTHING Since The 1970s

In 2008, just as Biden was about the launch another of his 5 or 6 aborted presidential runs, the Texas Monthly asked him-- on video tape (above)-- where he stands on abortion. First words out of his mouth: "It's going to be very difficult [for him as a slimy politician]. I do not view abortion as a choice and a right... I think we should be focussing on how to limit the number of abortions." That's always been his position and that is still his position. "I'm a bit of an odd man out in my party. I do not vote for funding for abortion. I voted against partial birth abortion."

He's such a fucking turd. If my vote was the deciding vote between him and Trump, the worst "president" in history, I'd let the decision remain a tie. Nothing would ever get me to vote for Biden, not in a primary, not in a general. I've hated his guts since the 1970s when I first realized what a racist pile of vomit he was. I was so disappointed Friday when I read that whoever picked which presidential contenders would speak on night one and which would speak on night two had decided to protect Biden from Elizabeth Warren. I guess she'll have too wait and shred him at a future debate.

In 2005, bankruptcy was on the rise and had been for years.

Lawmakers were pondering why, exactly, that was happening-- and what, if anything, they should do about it-- when two future presidential rivals squared off over a bankruptcy overhaul bill that would restrict who could write off their personal debts.

In one corner, Joe Biden-- one of the staunchest Democratic advocates for the bill and a senator from Delaware, home to several large credit card companies. He was also a member of the Judiciary Committee, which was debating the bill.

In the other corner, Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law professor who had fought against this type of bankruptcy overhaul for years and who was on a panel convened for a hearing over the bill.

Their conversation started off with a testy (but weedy) exchange about bankruptcy courts. And it escalated from there, with plenty of interruptions and the occasional barb-- Biden at one point cast Warren's arguments as "mildly demagogic." It ended with a tense dispute over what, exactly, the dispute ought to be.

WARREN: [Credit card companies] have squeezed enough out of these families in interest and fees and payments that never pay down principle.

BIDEN: Maybe should talk about usury rates. That maybe, that's what we should be talking about, not bankruptcy.

WARREN: Senator, I'll be the first. Invite me.

BIDEN: Now, I know you will, but let's call a spade a spade. Your problem with the credit-card companies is usury rates, from your position. It's not about the bankruptcy bill.

WARREN: But Senator, if you're not going to fix that problem, you can't take away the last shred of protection for these families.

BIDEN: OK, I get it. [pause] You're very good, Professor.

It was heated debate with a polite, even charming end-- complete with laughter throughout the hearing room, but the stakes are higher now, with both Warren and Biden potentially poised to share a debate stage.

And while debate over a 14-year-old bankruptcy bill might otherwise be largely forgotten by now, the 2020 presidential election has made the disagreements between Biden and Warren relevant again-- and shows how their exchange over that 2005 bill show up in their current presidential campaign strategies.

With Democrats in the minority in the Senate in 2005, Biden argues he was trying to make a Republican bill better. Warren thought, even then, that it was fundamentally flawed and bad for consumers.

A major question at the heart of the 2005 bankruptcy bill was why bankruptcies were on the rise.

One side-- including Warren and many Democrats-- said it was because people were financially strapped because of major obligations like medical debt, and that credit card companies were exacerbating the problem.

Others-- largely Republicans, but also some Democrats, like Biden-- said that it was a combination of irresponsible spending and a system that made it too easy to apply for bankruptcy, leading to abuse. That abuse, these lawmakers argued, leads to higher costs for other people seeking credit.

The 2005 bill restricted who could discharge their debts via Chapter 7 bankruptcy and also made the process more difficult. It included a means test, in the form of comparing a person's income with their state's median income. The goal, proponents argued, was to make sure that people who could still pay their debts weren't able to unfairly escape their debts, while also ensuring that people who couldn't pay were able to get relief.

The bill also said that a person had to go through credit counseling before obtaining bankruptcy.

Opponents, however, cast bankruptcy as an important financial protection that the legal system provides to people in difficult circumstances. They thought that the bill would make it unduly hard to file, enriching credit card companies in the process. And indeed, as they argued, credit card companies themselves had lobbied for it.

Warren and her fellow opponents also argued that bankruptcy was a women's issue, as single and divorced women were disproportionately represented among bankruptcy filers. Passing this type of reform would therefore disproportionately hurt women and children, they said (an argument that Warren pointedly made in a 2002 Harvard Women's Law Review essay that focuses heavily on Biden).

This was not new legislation. Similar bills had been proposed in Congress several times-- it even reached the Oval Office in the final days of Bill Clinton's presidency, but he declined to sign it.

Biden and Warren had been on opposite sides during that period, as well-- Biden voted for that 2000 bill, and Warren had counseled Hillary Clinton that it would be bad for consumers.

And that was the lay of the land when they met on Capitol Hill.

"This is one of those situations where the current story is not misleading. They were both very key players in this," said David Skeel, professor at the University of Pennsylvania law school and the author of a history of bankruptcy.

"Elizabeth Warren was the most important critic of the legislation, and she spent years fighting it. That's what really first got her into the into the public eye," he said. "And Joe Biden was critically important to passing the legislation because credit card companies are very important to Delaware. And that's where he was coming from."

In the end, the bill passed. And as for the effects, they're complicated. One outcome: The bill included a provision that made obligations like child support and alimony a top priority for debtors to pay off-- which addressed one concern of the bill's opponents.

And another, overarching result: Bankruptcies fell sharply afterward. And that's linked to one other effect of the bill, according to Skeel.

"The biggest effect is that it is now more expensive to file for bankruptcy than it used to be," Skeel said, "because of the the so-called means test that was put into the 2005 amendments that requires that debtors fill out forms to determine whether they would be capable of repaying some of what they owe."

But, crucially, it's not totally clear that that shows a reduction in bankruptcy abuse, he added.

Research on the bill also doesn't hand either side a total win. On the one hand, the reform was associated with lower interest rates on credit cards, as Vox's Matthew Yglesias pointed out in an article on the Warren-Biden debate.

But, Yglesias argued, studies also suggested that the law meant less access to credit and lower credit scores for some borrowers, not to mention a potentially slower bounce back from the Great Recession.

Potential 2020 voters have already had a preview of Warren's attacks on Biden. In 2016, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) attacked Hillary Clinton's vote for a similar 2001 bankruptcy bill-- a vote she took after Warren convinced her it was a bad bill. Sanders used Warren's criticisms as part of his attacks.

Warren talked about her disappointment in a 2004 interview with journalist Bill Moyers:

WARREN: She voted in favor of it.

MOYERS: Why?

WARREN: As Sen. Clinton, the pressures are very different. It's a well-financed industry. You know, a lot of people don't realize that the industry that gave the most money to Washington over the past few years was not the oil industry. It was not pharmaceuticals. It was consumer credit products. Credit card companies have been giving money, and they have influence.

MOYERS: And Mrs. Clinton was one of them as senator.

WARREN: She has taken money from the groups, and more to the point, she worries about them as a constituency.

For her part, Clinton argued that she was able to support the bill because it, at that point, included better protections for women seeking child support and alimony.

That whole dynamic surrounding the law is repeating itself in this election.

"If you talk to many independent voters, they worry that both parties are funded by the same corporate interests," said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has endorsed Warren ahead of 2020. "Elizabeth Warren has been part of the solution trying to re-brand the Democratic Party as being of the people. The credit card fight was just one chapter of that ongoing struggle."

While Warren uses the fight as evidence of her willingness to fight corporations on behalf of everyday Americans, Biden and his supporters frame the bankruptcy bill as evidence of his practicality-- and they also emphasize protections in the bill like those prioritizing child support.

"Sen. Biden, knowing essentially that the bill was likely to make it through a Republican-led Congress to a Republican-controlled White House, really worked hard to make sure that bill protected middle-class families," said Terrell McSweeny, who worked as a Biden staffer just after the bill's passage.

And that plays into a larger narrative from the Biden campaign.

"Folks, I'm going to say something outrageous," he has said. "I know how to make government work. Not because I've talked or tweeted about it, but because I've done it. I've worked across the aisle to reach consensus, to help make government work in the past."

Democratic voters are concerned with far different topics than the bankruptcy bill, like climate change and a health care overhaul.

But then, if both candidates remain key contenders for the nomination-- and if they share a debate stage-- there's a good chance the topic will come up again, as a symbol of the differences between the two candidates.

And while bankruptcy expert Skeel acknowledges that he's not a political strategist, he does have one political prediction based on the Biden-Warren bankruptcy fight.

"It strikes me that one potential implication," he said, "is it's highly unlikely you will see a Democratic ticket with both of them on it."

Yes, Elizabeth Warren Is Well Aware That Hillary Is Better Than Trumpf, Cruz And Rubio

Tuesday evening Rachel Maddow had Bernie Sanders on her show. The video is embedded above. It's worth watching if you're trying to decide if he's the candidate you want to see go up against whichever garbage the GOP nominates for president. As you've probably seen, recent head-to-head match-ups show Bernie doing significantly better than Hillary against Trumpf, Cruz, Rubio, Jeb and any of the other plausible Republikanische contenders.

A PPP survey of New Hampshire registered voters this morning showed that although both Bernie and Hillary lead all the candidates from the Republican's pathetic deep bench, Bernie does significantly better than Hillary does. He is, easily, the more electable candidate. Hillary is ahead of Rubio by one point (44/43) and ahead of Fiorina by just one point (45/44) and ahead of both Jeb (43/41) and Dr. Ben (45/42) by two points each. Obviously she does best over the dual fascist threats posed by Herr Trumpf (47/41) and Cruz (47/39). But Bernie bests all of them by wider margins, demonstrating his proven ability to win over independents and mainstream conservatives who just will not vote for Hillary, not even to save the country from the fascist threat posed by Trumpf and Cruz.

• Bernie 45% to Rubio 41%
• Bernie 46% to Dr. Ben 41%
• Bernie 48% to Fiorina 40%
• Bernie 47% to Jeb 38%
• Bernie 49% to Trumpf 40%
• Bernie 48% to Cruz 38%

It's worth mentioning that Bernie is the only candidate, from either party, with a positive favorability rating among the overall New Hampshire electorate-- 46/40. Trump has the highest unfavorables of any candidate (59%) but Cruz and Jeb also have terrible favorable/unfavorable ratios-- Jeb 28/55 and Cruz 30/49. Hillary is sorely lacking in this department as well-- 38/55.

But that isn't the beginning and the end of why progressives should be seriously considering Bernie instead of the far, far, far more establishment Hillary. Are you impressed that virtually every Democratic Member of Congress has endorsed Hillary, while just two-- Progressive Caucus co-chairs Raul Grijalva and Keith Ellison-- endorsed Bernie? One of The Hillary endorsers, Matt Cartwright, a solid progressive from eastern Pennsylvania, recently explained why these politicians-to-politician endorsements don't mean much, and might even hurt more than they help:

What matters is your message, and making sure you have the means to get it out there. Those kinds of endorsements worked 40 or 50 or 100 years ago; I think we are at a point now where a candidate's collecting endorsements of other politicians at best is a waste of time, and at worst is actually counterproductive. It's definitely a waste of time, because nowadays in high-profile races information on candidates is so readily and directly available that voters don't depend on party bosses and ward-heelers to tell them who to vote for. It can even be counterproductive, because the politicians bestowing their endorsements may in fact be individually or collectively despised. In my own experience with a hotly contested primary contest, I was a complete political neophyte in my first election; my opponent was a 20-year incumbent congressman. You could count my endorsements from elected officials and local party committees on one hand; my opponent's list of endorsements was gargantuan. I just focused on raising enough money to get my message out. Since I was able to do that, I did get my message out. Since the voters liked my message more than the other guy's, nobody paid any attention to all those other politicians' endorsements, and I won... by a lot.

First of all, if you want to help Bernie gets his message out, here's where you can do it. One prominent Democratic senator who stands out for not having endorsed Hillary, at least not yet, is Elizabeth Warren. Her endorsement would probably mean a lot more than those of a pack of party hacks who most people have never heard of or actively despise, from grotesquely corrupt and Wall Street-owned party boss Chuck Schumer to rot-gut conservatives who regularly vote with the GOP, like Joe Donnelly, Joe Manchin, Claire McCaskill and Heidi Heitkamp, the last of whom has voted with the Republicans and her allies at the NRA every time the Democrats have tried to pass a bill to keep assault weapons out of the hands of terrorists.

Yesterday,writing at the Daily Beast, Eleanor Clift explained why Warren is keeping Hillary at arm's length. First of, she reminds us, that "before she became a senator Warren was quite critical of Clinton’s relationship with the financial industry. She also points out that Hillary will need her more if the Republicans actually go ahead and nominate the populist-on-the-right, Trumpf, to help bring clarity to how more mainstream populism differs from the fascist (per)version. What Clift doesn't mention is that the Clinton Machine has been so disgustingly aggressive in rounding up endorsements that they have turned off countless Democrats and that some of just given in and endorsed her to get rid of them.

The two women sat down together one-on-one last December, and Clinton subsequently met with economic experts that Warren recommended. Aides in both camps said they didn’t know of any additional contacts, and there is wariness on both sides of saying or doing something that might produce negative stories about their relationship.

That’s probably because they don’t appear to have much of one, and a natural suspicion of one for the other manifests itself in their aides and supporters. A longtime Clinton backer who met with Warren recently on a foreign policy matter found her perfectly pleasant but not that well-informed, prompting him to brand her “a one-trick pony (consumer interests).”

But remember, Warren has endorsed plenty of crap candidates in the past, even worse than Hillary-- awful conservative Democrats like Michelle Nunn (GA), Alison Grimes (KY), Mary Landrieu (LA) and Natalie Tenant (WV) who were better than the Republican alternatives but... not much else.

In her most recent book, A Fighting Chance Warren recounts an incident with then First Lady Hillary Clinton that I think had a tremendous impact on her at the time. Long before she decided to run for office, Warren, a Harvard professor at the time, never stopped fighting for a fair bankruptcy bill... but the banksters never have up either. Their financial self-interest wasn't dependent on fleeting partisan coalitions, elections, not even on deaths. They never give up, just like the GOP never gives up trying to destroy Social Security, Medicare, public education, the right for working people to organize and bargain collectively, the environment, and, ultimately, democracy itself-- all on behalf of the self-entitled multimillionaires and billionaires who claim their wealth gives them the right to run the country, in a kind of symbiotic partnership with the corrupt politicians they buy (on both sides of the aisle). Here's how Warren puts it in her book in terms of Hillary:

The banking industry bought everything; they even bought their own facts. The industry commissioned three different studies, each of which was touted as "independent." Each explained the urgent need to change the law-- exactly the way the banking industry wanted it changed. One particularly damaging result of these bogus studies was a claim that bankruptcy cost every hardworking, bill-paying American family a $550 "hidden tax." The number was entirely made up, fabricated out of thin air, but the press reported it as "fact" for years.

This one hit me hard. I'd spent nearly twenty years sweating over every detail in a string of serious academic studies, agonizing over sample sizes and statistical significance to make certain that whatever I reported was exactly right. Now the banks just wrote a check, commissioned a friendly study, and purchased their own facts. They had their own press people distribute the facts and lobbyists hand the facts to congressional staffers. From the halls of Congress to the front pages of newspapers all over the country, these new "facts" became reality.

This strategy-- and the cynicism behind it-- made me furious. It also scared me. If the facts about bankruptcy could be purchased, then who knew what they could claim next?

...[T]he president [Bill Clinton] was under enormous pressure from the banks to sign the bill, but in the last days of his presidency, urged on by his wife, President Clinton stood strong with struggling families. With no public fanfare, he vetoed the industry's bill.

...The banks lost in 2000, but they didn't quit-- they just spent more money on lobbying and campaign contributions. Soon the banking industry was outspending everybody else-- tobacco, pharmaceuticals, even Big Oil. Credit card companies lined up to boost George W. Bush's presidential campaign.

In 2001, the bill looked sure to pass Congress again, and now George W. Bush was in the White House, promising to sign it into law. The recent election kept the House in Republican control, and every single Republican was ready to support the bill. The Senate was evenly split between the two parties, but one of the bill's lead sponsors was Democratic powerhouse Joe Biden, and right behind him were plenty of Democrats offering to help... The baking industry had lost for a second time, but it came back once again, bringing even more money and more lobbyists. It was like fighting some kind of mythical creature-- cut off one head and two grow back.

Sooner or later, I have little doubt that Warren will-- for a combination of reasons-- endorse Hillary... unless, Bernie beats her in New Hampshire and Iowa. Again, you can help him do that here. It's a good investment in the country's future.