Wellstone introduced me to Warren

[Ichingcarpenter]

From Paul Wellstone to Elizabeth Warren


John Nichols


Paul Wellstone was a movement progressive. From the farm crisis days when he was organizing rural Americans to fight back against corporate agribusiness to the last days of his final campaign, Wellstone worked to forge a left that was muscular enough to win elections, to govern and to bend the arc of history toward justice.

But the senator from Minnesota was not afraid to stand alone, if that was what principle demanded. Just days before his death on October 25, 2002, he was the only US senator facing a seriously competitive reelection race to vote against authorizing George W. Bush and Dick Cheney to launch an invasion of Iraq.

Ten years after America lost the great progressive populist in a plane crash that claimed his remarkable wife, Sheila, their daughter, Marcia, two pilots, a driver and two campaign staffers, it is Wellstone’s courageous anti-war vote that is best recalled. And rightly so. Paul called me when he announced that he would oppose the Bush-Cheney administration’s rush to war. He was upbeat, proud and confident. He knew he had taken what Washington insiders believed to be a political risk, but he was betting on the common decency and the common sense of Minnesotans. And the polls circulating at the time of his death confirmed Wellstone’s political instincts were every bit as sound in 2002 as they had been in 1990—when he bet that a quirky, low-budget campaign run from the back of a green school bus and relying on a television ad that mimicked Michael Moore’s anti-corporate documentary Roger and Me could unseat a millionaire Republican senator.

That was Paul’s genius. He understood that, sometimes, perhaps most times, Americans respect a stand on principle. And he recognized that time often turns the isolated concern of the true believer into popular sentiment. Paul disliked the suggestion that he was a “maverick.” He might break with presidents of his own party, with Democratic leaders in the Senate, but he did not do so for headlines. He did so because he felt it was morally and practically necessary for what he called “the democratic wing of the Democratic Party” to be heard.

This was particularly the case when it came to defending the interests of the working poor. Paul did not anger easily. But he truly, totally, despised the notion that budgets could, or should, be balanced on the backs of the poor and the working class. When the privileged exploited their economic advantages and lobbying connections to write the laws of the land, Wellstone was more than willing to stand alone in opposition.

That was the case in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the Senate................ .......................................................


http://www.thenation.com/blog/170821/paul-wellstone-elizabeth-warren

[L0oniX]

1. K & R "principle demanded"

[KoKo]

2. Thanks! Here's what Wellstone said about Elizabeth Warren:

From the Article for those who might want to read it in this thread:

At his side through the struggle was an initially little-known Harvard Law professor, Elizabeth Warren, who had developed an expertise on bankruptcy issues as an adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. As legal scholar Kristin Brandser Kalsem notes, Warren was “engaged in a pathbreaking campaign to call attention to the fact that those concerned about women and women’s issues should be paying attention to bankruptcy reform and other economic legal issues.”

Wellstone introduced me to Warren in those days, and constantly referenced her academic studies and her activism. He cherished her as an ally in a lonely struggle. Indeed, when he cast those lonely votes, he would joke about his political isolation, saying he could use ten more progressive senators—or, at the least, one Elizabeth Warren.

That was how Paul thought. He could imagine college professors becoming senators. After all, he had made the leap.

Now, a decade after Wellstone’s death, his old partner in the fight for justice for working families, laid-off workers and struggling homeowners is running for the Senate from Massachusetts. It is hard to imagine any political development that would have delighted Paul more. Wellstone loved to campaign, not just for himself but for others. He’d surely be campaigning this fall for old friends Sherrod Brown in Ohio and Bernie Sanders in Vermont this year, as he would be for his frequent ally Tammy Baldwin, who is seeking a Wisconsin Senate seat. And you can bet that the happy warrior of modern American progressivism would be working Massachusetts, from Pittsfield to Provincetown, for Elizabeth Warren. After all, he recognized, long before the rest of us did, that she was needed in the Senate.

[hedda_foil]

3. I got a page not found response. Is there another link?

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. works fine for me after trying it again after

your observation

[hedda_foil]

5. How strange. I'm on a tablet. Guess I'll try on another device.

[djean111]

6. This!!!!!! For those who keep pointing out Hillary's work in the area of women's and children's

rights -

Warren was “engaged in a pathbreaking campaign to call attention to the fact that those concerned about women and women’s issues should be paying attention to bankruptcy reform and other economic legal issues.”

"Rights" should include economic issues. I suppose it should be a comfort that the TPP will adversely affect women, children, men, etc. equally.............

[Ichingcarpenter]

7. destroys also the meme that she was a republican once

and couldn't be trusted

If Wellstone thought so highly of her back then when he stood alone that should evaporates any doubt and any objection

Wellstone was the captain of my brother's wrestling team when I was in jr. high. I met him back then... he was one destined for greatness but was taken out by...............

[djean111]

8. I agree. Plus - that "Republican once" thing seems to be all they have got, but

I would not be surprised for the RW "Pocahontas" thing to be trotted out right here at DU.
Also, areas where she and Hillary or anybody and Hillary agree do not make up for things like the TPP. Ever.

[KoKo]

10. +1....interesting isn't it...

[pennylane100]

9. A little off subject but

I still remember exactly where I was when I learned of Paul Wellstone's death. I remember a chilling feeling that nothing would ever be the same without him. I was driving at the time and I had to pull over to calm myself. I often wonder what the political arena would look like today if he was still with us.

[KoKo]

11. Can definitely understand...

I was an older teenager with JFK and Bobby Kennedy's deaths...so go back, even further, with that "sinking feeling."

Wellstone's death so many years later was the same.

.And....all you could blurt out, after the SHOCK...was WHY?...Why??? So Much Promised and Snuffed Out......gone..

Then, trying to move forward to carry a torch.........for them......and your own beliefs shaped by those you valued as messengers.