POLITICO published this article about the backroom dealings that resulted in Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a staunch supporter of protecting consumers from Wall Street grid being appointed to a leadership position in the U.S. Senate as the Strategic Policy Adviser of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC), which is run by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Wall Street’s favorite Democratic Senator.
Having read the article it sounds like soon-to-be Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) threw Schumer, who, despite being the #3 Democrat in the U.S. Senate, has long been viewed as Reid’s inevitable successor, under the bus by putting Warren into a leadership position:
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer has long been viewed as the heir apparent to Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, with such strong support among moderates that a group of them privately urged him to mount a coup for party leader after the midterm election meltdown.
Schumer didn’t take on Reid — he’s too loyal — but he is being forced to face a new power center inside the caucus, populists such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
When Reid was in talks with Warren about a job in Senate leadership earlier this month, Schumer suggested tapping moderate Sen. Mark Warner, too, to balance out her progressive politics — or perhaps making her a “liaison to liberal groups,” a narrower job than what Reid had proposed, according to sources familiar with the private talks.
Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said no to both of Schumer’s suggestions, later taking the job as a policy adviser to Schumer’s messaging operation.
Warren’s rise in Senate leadership – and her popularity among grassroots liberals – represents an unexpected presence in Schumer’s leadership orbit, where he has spent years cultivating a reputation as one of the masterminds of Democratic messaging.
As one Senate Democratic source put it: “The turf [Schumer] thought he knew may have shifted beneath his feet.”
Schumer and his fellow Wall Street Democrats can deny this all they want, but Reid, who is not a hero to progressives by any stretch of the imagination, may have very well ended any chance of Schumer becoming the leader of the Democrats in the United States Senate. It’s pretty clear to me that Schumer got rolled big time by Reid, and Schumer has been trying to cover his ass ever since, first by trying to get Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), a fellow corporate hack, appointed to the DPCC, and then by trying to dismiss Warren and referring to her as a “liberal liaison” to the corporate media.
Elizabeth Warren is not going to be some liaison selling Chuck Schumer’s snake oil to progressive groups. She’s a bona fide progressive who could very well end up being Senate Democratic Leader someday, and, needless to say, Schumer and his fellow old boys and girls network members don’t like that one damn bit.
The Progressive Midwesterner 