Liberal bloggers at DailyKos are seeking to draft a Democratic challenger to Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) with a new campaign to propel financial guru and former Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren into the 2012 primary.
Warren currently serves as special adviser to the recently created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and won 2009 Bostonian of the Year, two accolades that blogger Chris Bowers thinks will make her a viable candidate to help Democrats take back the Bay State Senate seat. Scott Brown, who won the seat of the late Edward Kennedy in a special election in 2010, was a strong critic of Warren during her CFPB appointment.
But Scott Brown is popular. So, in order to win in Massachusetts, we're going to need an energetic candidate who knows how to pick and win fights. We're gonna need someone who can deliver a populist economic message that connects with the millions of voters facing economic hardship--a message which is distinct from both Wall Street and the Tea Party. And we are going to need someone who has a record of success to back up that rhetoric, so voters know it isn't just talk.
Elizabeth Warren meets all of these criteria like almost no one else can. As the head of the Congressional Oversight Panel on TARP, she led to fight to expose corruption in the Wall Street bailout. As an outside advocate, and now Assistant to the President, she basically created the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) on her own. She is an extremely experienced speaker, erudite enough to have been considered for the Supreme Court, a best-selling author on personal finance, and packs a populist punch in defense of the middle-class.
Daily Kos also finds promise in a local opinion poll, contracted by Kossacks in Massachusetts, which reportedly found that 89 percent were in favor of a Warren candidacy.