This morning, I received a solicitation from an organization called "Bold Progressives." They are raising money for Elizabeth Warren. She is obviously being groomed to run for president. Here is my response.
Dear fellow Bold Progressives,
I am so disgusted with politics and I feel so deceived by both parties that I could run into the street screaming!
I fully expect to be deceived by the Republicans. In my experience, they are like the snake riding across the river on the back of the turtle. They always bite when they arrive at their destination because that is their nature.
In the rural home where I grew up, the words "damn" and "Republican" were spoken as one word and for good reason. As powerless, share-crop farmers, it seemed like the GOP was always biting us.
Ironically, we must now fear the bite of fellow Democrats, even the ones we elect as president. Sadly, President Obama is a totally different person than candidate Obama. Every day seems to bring a shocking new revelation that leaves me confused and sometimes at a loss for words. It is becoming almost impossible to defend this administration to my republican friends who say "I told you so..."
More and more Americans are convinced that there must be a small group of powerful people in charge who take all new Presidents to some retreat and say, "Mr. President, forget everything you want to do for the people. Here is the way its going to be or else... because you work for us now."
Would a President Warren be strong enough to say "HELL NO" if it happens to her? Is she strong enough to side with the common people and against the inertia of entrenched power? If so, she is our only hope in 2016, because I'm convinced that Hillary is just another Bush and Obama 2.0.
My question for Senator Warren is simple and direct. Can you become my president without abandoning your principles? If history is any teacher, I fear the answer is no, but I sincerely hope I am wrong!
So, with that hope in tow, I will be on board if Senator Warren runs for president in 2016, but there is a downside. Her election would mean the loss of a strong and progressive voice in the United States Senate at a time when America needs more real progressive voices to support a progressive president. Since Paul Wellstone was killed, and now that Tom Harkin is retiring, Bernie Sanders and a few others can't handle it alone.
There is so much work to be done by progressives and it obviously won't get done during this administration.
If we intend to lift millions out of poverty and return the middle class to greatness, we must elect a President in 2016 who is a genuine bold progressive, and not a rubber stamp for Wall Street, the big banks, and the military-industrial complex.
The words of President Woodrow Woodrow spoken 100 years ago are all too true today...
"Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."---- Woodrow Wilson, The 28th President of the United States