As you know, I’m a huge fan of Warren’s too, but yeah, drafting her to challenge Obama in the primary or make a 3rd party run would be monumentally stupid. I think she has way too much sense to participate in such a run anyway, because she knows if the GOP gets its mitts back on congress, they’d appoint someone like Phil Gramm to the oversight committee she currently chairs.

However, I would be overjoyed if Obama would boot Geithner and make Warren Treasury Secretary.

Not as dumb an idea as this guy for president.

LOL.  I forgot all about that post.

@JasonM

The problem for the rightwing is that anyone they want to nominate who has name recognition is wellknown for general craziness.  The only remaining choices are really old white guys who’ve played politics for decades.

We won’t know if Warren is viable until she gets that all-important PUMA endorsement. Oh wait, she worked for Oblowme, so it won’t happen.

Taibbi’s been doing the crystal-ball-gazing thing for a while now, and I wish he’d knock it the fuck off. Obama hasn’t been in office a year. He’s made some steps in the right direction. What makes Taibbi think Warren would have enough juice to get the nomination, let alone get anything more progressive done if she happened to get elected?

And of course more FDR worship. If Obama promised to set up internment camps for financial-industry chiefs, would that make Taibbi feel better? (Oh, who am I kidding? That would make us all feel better.)

And Taibbi, please take off the baseball cap. Not a good look.

I absolutely agree that the Dems in congress and the administration haven’t done enough to get the ball rolling on job creation, but again—what can anyone do in a year? And his sniffy “we all know how that’s going to turn out” on the public option? Well, I don’t know that yet. Howard Dean still thinks it’s quite possible, for one. Just passing legislation that wouldn’t allow insurance companies to use rescission or deny coverage for pre-existing conditions would be beneficial to a lot of working families.

The Senate race idea sounds intriguing, though it also seems like she’s starting at a disadvantage. In general, if you want better policy at this point, you have to (at risk of getting all Kos) elect better Dems.

And sorry to comment three in a row, but I think Taibbi is politically naive. Not for the “third party stealing votes from Dems” thing, which I kinda think is bullshit. Did Nader hurt Gore? Yes, sure, maybe. Did Gore run a crap campaign? God, yes—starting with putting Joe “Thank you Dick Cheney May I Have Another” Lieberman on the ticket. He still deserved to win, esp. over Dubya, but I do have some sliver of sympathy for people who thought Gore was not inspiring.

But what Taibbi doesn’t seem to get is that there is a certain fairly large group of Americans who like to vote for people who seem to know what they’re doing—even if they don’t agree with them 100 percent on policy. It’s why the “flip flopper” label stuck to Kerry with his for the war, against it thing. It’s why it was so easy to paint Carter as vacillating and weak. And yes, those labels are attached to Dems much more than the GOP.

So you know, I’m not worried about Obama losing a nomination to Warren. I am mildly concerned that the circular-firing-squad mentality that Dems fall into much more easily than the GOP conveys to some voters in the middle that “this guy can’t get his own party in line” (which is kinda true, but is also the fault of Harry Fucking Reid and the Fucking Blue Dogs like Baucus). Those people in the middle aren’t likely, I don’t think, to be voting for Warren—but they may decide to stay home, or vote for the GOP candidate. Either could have some negative effects.

And as history shows, ditching your candidate’s party, especially mid-term, doesn’t help get more progressive legislation passed. See: Republican Revolution of 1994.

Then again, I suspect Taibbi’s whole blog post was just something to fill space, because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of public interest from Warren on running for the top spot.

We need to get more Bernie Sanders(eseseses) elected in order to pass real campaign reform.

Great points all, O. Now if Warren wanted to run in 2016, I would be the first person to jump on the bandwagon. I loves me some Warren. But I’m afraid my early support would doom her chances. Until Obama came along, I had an almost PUMA-level record of fail when it came to supporting Dems in the primaries (Bradley, Dean, etc.)

I don’t get it, Betty. The schizophrenia makes my head spin like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist,” and I’m afraid I’ll have to start handing out plastic sheets a la “Blue Man Group” so I don’t spray virtual pea soup on anyone.

First some lefties think Obama is “Obambi” when he’s running. “Oh, he’ll never survive the GOP ATTACK MACHINE! (Which I always envision as looking a bit like Mecha-Godzilla, but never mind.)

Then he wins—and wins bigger than any Dem has won since the 1960s, and provides some pretty strong coattails to boot. So then they decide that he’s this all-powerful godlike creature who can pass single-payer healthcare and close Gitmo and regulate the financial markets and institute a new New Deal with a stroke of his pen on January 21st. Then, when he doesn’t do all of that by executive fiat and decides to actually let this whole “checks and balances between the branches” thing out of the triple-thick steel closet in which it was imprisoned, Patty Hearstlike, during the Bush/Cheney years, he’s being wimpy and Obambi again. Or he’s colluding with the big money, even though he’s calling for cuts in executive compensation.

Seriously. I get keeping pressure on from the left. I do. I think Obama has a lot of fence-mending to do still with gay and lesbian citizens, and I’m not happy at the rate he’s moving on closing Gitmo, and Afghanistan looks like a giant pig-fuck waiting to happen. But any guy who can do as much as he HAS done, in the face of near-relentless demonization (far worse even than I remember Clinton facing—no one ever suggested Bubba wasn’t 100 percent ‘Murrican, after all) and the endless handwringing and back-seat-driving from the pundit set is tougher than he’s given credit for.

I think the most annoying thing is that the blogosophere has proved itself as in thrall to the stupidities of the 24-hour news cycle hysteria as its counterparts in the mainstream media. Wasn’t that one of the big things that was supposed to change with the brave new media warriors—they weren’t going to be doing the breathless “Is the President doing enough to stop the threat of blah blah blah? Tune in for our special report, featuring a panel of vaguely connected hangers-on citing bullshit ‘some people say’ constructions as proof!” I mean, after all the crap we’ve given the MSM for its reliance on anonymous sourcing over the years, it’s depressing to realize that the bloggers do the same thing—and don’t even seem to realize why it’s problematic.

Aaarggghhh! Sorry to be grumpy. It’s rainy and overcast here and I have a day with no real deadlines for the first time in weeks, so I’m out of sorts.

Yeah, there’s a bad bolding tag above this. Sorry.

Yeah, there’s a bad bolding tag above this. Sorry.

Fixed.

I agree 100%, O. They remind me of our dear Vincent Price’s character in The Ten Commandments. Or was it Edward G. Robinson? Anyhoo, the one who was always whining about how things were so much better back in Egypt.

Thanks, Mr. K! My insider source in the Rumproast administration tells me that you’re a nice guy.

My insider source in the Rumproast administration tells me that you’re a nice guy.

They must have been drunk on the Kevin-Aid!

Do I have to bill Axelrove separately for the stroking, or is it just going to be folded into my monthly stipend?

Sorry, but I am not a fan of Taibbi and never really have been.  For every piece he writes that’s relatively perceptive he writes another dozen or so that are just rants.  He’s paid to write sensational stuff and he does.

The public option is going to pass.  The momentum is building, it’s starting to snowball, Pelosi has the votes in the House and they will get the 60 votes in the Senate.  Probably not for the public option itself, but enough to prevent a filibuster.  And then it will pass with 51+ on the floor. 

In addition we will see strong regulation of the financial markets come about within the next few months and DADT will be repealed.  And then the Taibbis and all the rest will have to come up with other reasons why Obama’s administration is a horrible failure.  Because you know they will.

Like I told K. via e-mail, this bit from Taibbi in his comments secion…

“The fact that the market has rebounded only pisses me off more. That has nothing to do with how the economy is doing. It means the government has stepped into prop up that market and has not stepped in to help actual people.”

...is just foolish.