Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor running for the Senate in Massachusetts, has raised eyebrows by aligning herself with the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Asked her opinion of the protests in an interview with the Daily Beast, she said:
I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do. I support what they do.
This is a fair claim. As an academic, Warren has for several years been one of the most articulate voices challenging the excesses of Wall Street. Since entering the race for the Senate — seeking to take Ted Kennedy’s old seat back from the Republicans — she has become the hero of the left and been demonised by the right.
Despite attempts by the right to paint her as a lunatic leftie, she is by no means a simple ideologue, and was a registered Republican until she was in her 40s (she is now 62). Elsewhere in the interview, she says:
I was a Republican because I thought that those were the people who best supported markets. I think that is not true anymore. I was a Republican at a time when I felt like there was a problem that the markets were under a lot more strain. It worried me whether or not the government played too activist a role.
Predictably, Republicans are up in arms about Warren’s comments on Occupy Wall Street, and are keen to use it to discredit her. The National Republican Senatorial Committee criticised “Warren’s decision to not only embrace, but take credit for this movement” in light of arrests if protesters in Boston.
Over at the Washington Post, Greg Sargent analyses the battle lines being drawn:
[Republicans] are wagering that the cultural instincts of the working class whites and independents who will decide this race ensure that the excesses of the protesters will make them less inclined to listen to her populist economic message, which is also directed at those voters.…
Warren, by contrast, is making the opposite bet. By unabashedly embracing the protests, she is placing a wager on the true mood of the country right now. She’s gambling that these voters will look past the theatrics of these protests; that they will see that she and the protesters are the ones who actually have their economic interests at heart; and that they will ultimately side with Warren’s and Occupy Wall Street’s general critique of the current system and explanation for what’s gone wrong in this country.
It remains to be seen which side will be triumphant, although recent polling suggests that voters have not been alienated by the protests. Either way, Warren’s presence will ensure that Massachusetts remains the most polarising Senate race in 2012.
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