The Senate race in Massachusetts looks like it will be one of the hardest fought, and most closely watched races of the 2012 election. Republican Scott Brown stunned Democrats when he won Edward Kennedy’s old seat in 2010, which Dems stupidly assumed they owned. But now, Elizabeth Warren is leading Brown in polls by seven points, gaining ten points from just two months ago when she was trailing.
Warren’t gains come despite a barrage of attack ads from Karl Rove’s group Crossroads. An early ad from them attacked Warren for supporting the Occupy Wall Street protests, and ironically a new ad claims that she was responsible for bailing out the banks.
Warren responded on her Facebook page “I expected Wall St. to throw everything they had at me in this race; I helped found the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to curb their abuses, after all. But I never did imagine they’d fund an ad attacking me as being their own ally.”
Democrats need to regain this seat in order to keep control of the Senate, which of course means that Republicans need to keep it in order to take over control of both houses of Congress. You can bet that there will be lots of money poured into this contest.
But the attack ads are actually damaging both candidates more than helping them. The real reason Warren is gaining in this race is that she is doing something that most Democrats are afraid to do — she is unapologetically and unabashedly a progressive and a populist, a champion for the middle class. Watch this short video from September, which went viral on the innertubes:
One Comment
I love Elizabeth Warren – I can’t vote for her, but we need more people like her. I only hope thyat she doesn’t get corrupted too much by being a Senator.