Elizabeth Warren.
He's not going to name her as head of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- "a watchdog agency she invented and is most qualified to lead."
http://act.boldprogressives.org/...
You see, for one thing, it would be tossing a bone to the "professional left."
You see, for another, it would be in direct opposition to the wishes and dictates of Wall Street.
Of course, as the game goes, he's playing out a very clever feint, he's dangling Warren in front of the "professional left," keeping them and me in the dark about his true intentions, but in the end it's going to be another capitulation to Republicans and Wall Street and Warren will be tossed away.
The "professional left" are yelling, "Pass the ball over here! We can make points!" and he's going going to falter and let the Republicans grab the ball again and the Republicans will easily score some more points.
Robert Gibbs. Really, I had no idea who Robert Gibbs is and was, apart from being an innocuous fellow named as President Obama's press secretary. I had no idea of his history until he opened his mouth about the treachery of the "professional left" and some of his interesting past from the years 2003 and 2004 were revealed:
On November 7, 2003, a strange new group no one had ever heard of called "Americans for Jobs & Healthcare" was quietly formed and soon thereafter began running a million dollar operation including political ads against then-frontrunner Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean. The commercials ripped Dean over his positions or past record on gun rights, trade and Medicare growth. But the most inflammatory ad used the visual image of Osama bin Laden as a way to raise questions about Dean's foreign policy credibility. While the spots ran, Americans for Jobs through its then-spokesman, Robert Gibbs, a former Kerry campaign employee refused to disclose its donors.
http://www.commondreams.org/...
I still seethe over the political mauling of Howard Dean in Iowa in the Democratic presidential campaign of 2004. I was, I still am, a dedicated Deaniac. I felt that a very hinky thing had occurred and I uncomfortably felt that there was a lot of stuff going on that I couldn't see.
Dean was certainly being attacked on the right -- I was aware that Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, another Democratic presidential contender, had played a major role in his political mauling from Democrats -- there were hints of John Kerry's role in the crime but the so-called "liberal" press was so obsessed with the Dean scream that everything else melted away.
But everything came together when I finally read the following from 2003:
A new Democratic group that is running advertisements against Howard Dean and has not yet disclosed its sources of financing has introduced by far the toughest commercial of the primary election season.
.... The advertisement is the latest salvo in what amounts to a "stop Dean" campaign sponsored by the new Democratic group, Americans for Jobs, Health Care and Progressive Values.
The group's president, Edward F. Feighan, a former Ohio congressman, donated $2,000 to the campaign of Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, records show, and its treasurer, David Jones, has worked as a fund-raiser for Mr. Gephardt. Its spokesman, Robert Gibbs, recently resigned as the press secretary for Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, another presidential candidate.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
CLICK!
Everything fell into place. I was absolutely confounded that Obama had named Robert Gibbs as his press secretary. He had to know Gibbs' history. He had to know that he was making a very serious political statement in naming Gibbs to his staff. Not to mention the naming of another Howard Dean enemy, Rahm Emanuel, to another post in his immediate staff.
Obama, to be sure, has done a lot of good things, item, Lily Ledbetter, Sonia Sotomayor, State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), health insurance reform, financial industry reform sort of, Department of Justice scrutinization of payments by leading pharmaceuticals, Justice Department investigation of the financial sector, et al, but I am still angered by Obama's tacit consent to banning discussion of the single payer option in providing health care, deals that were cut in secret...
It smacks strongly of a shell game and I'm not sure that it works to the benefit of the American people.
Obama's cabinet and advisers are heavily salted with Bush people, with Wall Street people, with corportist people. He and his people rudely turn a deaf ear to "professional lefties" while they actively court Republicans -- to their detriment. They don't care about their Democratic base and I'm pretty damned sure that Elizabeth Warren will not make the cut because that would be pandering to the people who voted for Obama, who contributed money to Obama's campaign, who worked their butts off to elect Obama, and I don't know why the hell Obama is doing such a stupid thing.
I would be deliriously happy if I'm proved wrong and Obama actually names Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but I don't think it's going to happen.
And, furthermore, I never felt that Howard Dean was that much of a leftie. He, to me, was just a pretty doggoned fiscally savvy fellow who could balance budgets and provide health care at the same time.