Vanity Fair has a profile of Elizabeth Warren in its November issue that is more about the machinations behind the CFPB nomination brouhaha than it is about her individually or about the landscape here in Massachusetts as she gets her campaign underway. If you haven’t heard much about that particular battle, it is definitely worth reading, because it’s a good exploration of power politics in Washington.
Naked Capitalism’s Yves Smith has publicly opined that the whole Senate campaign is a bit of a payoff from the Obama Administration to keep Warren from turning against them and that it’s a mistake on her part to run — even if she wins, says Smith, she is all but powerless as a freshman Senator.
This Daily Beast article is frank about the difficulties female candidates have had making in-roads into the old-boy network of Democratic elected officials in Massachusetts. There are plenty of women in Massachusetts politics, but because this state has a high profile for candidates with national ambitions, the old guard plays hardball — only four women have ever represented Massachusetts in Congress.
It’s very encouraging to see that she came out of the gate already tied in polls with Scott Brown. Even the primary election isn’t until next September, and though her primary opponents are already considered DOA, that was the same position Martha Coakley was in at the same point. Coakley sailed through the primary and then got blind-sided by Brown. Brown doesn’t have the same stealth element he had last year, but time is definitely on his side.
