Elizabeth Warren Runs for Senate as Democrat, But Exerts Independence Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law school professor and consumer advocate, officially entered the Massachusetts Senate race this week. She’d been testing the waters for weeks and now faces the ultimate test: Can she connect with Massachusetts voters and withstand a long primary to take the Senate seat of Republican Scott Brown?

Warren helped create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau but was passed over to lead it mostly because of Republican opposition. In her announcement video Warren tried to appeal to voters by talking about her humble roots and pledging to stand up for the middle class. “Middle-class families have been chipped at, hacked at, squeezed and hammered for a generation now, and I don’t think Washington gets it,” Warren said. “I grew up on the ragged edge of the middle-class and I know it’s hard out there.” Warren said she had ”fought” her whole life for “working families” and she has “stood up to some pretty powerful interests.” That message, Democrats said, would be the key to success, but as a first time candidate, who angered both Republicans and Democrats as a government watchdog while in Washington, she will undoubtedly have a tough fight against her Democratic rivals and Brown.

Longtime Massachusetts Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh said Warren had a strong message, but as a brand-new, first-time candidate she is still getting her “sea legs.” Marsh, who is not affiliated with the Warren campaign, outlined the message that she believes should be the Warren campaign’s pitch to Massachusetts independent voters. 

“In a year when everyone is mad at Washington and Wall Street, Scott Brown joined the club and Elizabeth Warren has been throwing bombs at it,” Marsh said. “It’s easier to get out there and fight for someone else, fight for a cause, but when you have to go out there and make the case for yourself, it’s a challenge, but that’s always the case.” Marsh added that despite a crowded primary field, Warren should try to dominate her Democratic rivals early and raise funds to run a campaign directly against Brown before the brief six week general election gets under way next September.

Elizabeth Warren & Liberal Narrative Elizabeth Warren speaks with voters as she campaigns after announcing her candidacy for the U.S. Senate in Framingham, Massachusetts, September 14, 2011.

I’ve complained before that Democrats and Obama in particular - have conceded the narrative to Republicans and the Tea Party on jobs, the deficit, stimulus spending, and very nearly on healthcare. The story of politics in this country has shifted dramatically to the right. This is no great surprise. Recessions are good for deficit hawks, employers, and nationalist gestures. 

The left is bound to find itself in some sort of retreat. Nevertheless, few liberal leaders in this country have done a very good job at turning the narrative back around and explaining a clearly progressive vision of society, of the jobs problem, and so forth. Obama’s recent “populist” rhetoric has been a brief departurefrom a centrism that concedes almost entirely the story of What Went Wrong to his political opponents. 

Storytelling in politics is important, as the populists themselves knew back when there was such a thing as a leftwing populist movement in America. The fact that this narrative has been lacking in recent years has been troubling. So when Steve Benen posted this video of Elizabeth Warren debunking claims of ‘class warfare’ I was pleasantly surprised.

Elizabeth Warren Rich His Own An August video of Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren on the campaign trail is heating up on the internet, and some commentators are pointing to the clip - in which Warren makes a case for progressive economic policies - as evidence that the newly minted Democratic candidate could give incumbent Republican Senator Scott Brown a run for his money.

In the video (at left), which was filmed at an event in Andover, Mass., Warren rebuts the GOP-touted notion that raising taxes on the wealthy amounts to "class warfare," contending that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody." Warren rejects the concept that it is possible for Americans to become wealthy in isolation. "You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. 

You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did." She continues: "Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." Warren's entrance into the Massachusetts Senate race marks her first-ever political bid - and while the longtime consumer advocate is beloved by a number of liberals, some wondered if her lack of political experience would prove crippling in the contest. The Washington Monthly's Steven Benen, however, points to the video as an explanation as to "why Warren has a strong base of supporters who adore her." 

"If there are lingering concerns about whether Warren could be an effective speaker on the stump, I think those questions are being answered," Benen writes. "If more Democrats were able to make the case for the underlying social contract as effectively, our discourse would be vastly less mind-numbing."