MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Watching Elizabeth Warren speak on behalf of the working people of America on television is like reaching an oasis after a waterless wandering through a vast desert. Such was the case when she spoke with MSNBC's Alex Wagner about the GOP sinking an unemployment benefit extension in the Senate.

As the Political Carnival website described her TV denunciation of such a cruel action, "Elizabeth Warren kicks ass...again." (You can view the video of the interview by clicking the link above.)

Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist-independent, has been a Jeremiah of rationality and social justice for years: first in the Congress and now in the Senate. He had been a lone senatorial voice who thoroughly debunked the false right wing narrative of plutocrats pulling the economy up for everyone, pulverizing the notion of a trickle down theory.

His famous actual talking filibuster in the Senate was so substantive in decimating the corporate and oligarchal talking points of the Republicans in Congress -- and many Democrats -- that it became a book that put in the public record the shameful realities of the US economy subsidizing the wealthy and leaving the rest of the nation behind.

Sanders has for many years been a regular on the Friday Thom Hartmann radio program -- our colleague and good friend who is featured daily on Truthout -- where Thom has conducted an on-air breakfast with Bernie each week. Once Sanders was elected to the Senate in 2006, he also started appearing more on television as an impassioned spokesperson for the non DC ruling elite.

Yet, as much as Sanders' brilliant dissection of the economic injustices and greed of the US financial system resonates with progressives and advocates of a new economic order, Warren speaks directly to the working class.

She looks earnestly and directly into the camera and with conviction upholds the values and needs of the majority. She is speaking not just to the interviewer, but to the television viewer, perhaps someone long attuned to hearing language that is over his or her head. Warren could be your young looking grandmother (which she is), the doctor you trust or the wise family friend.

As she said on MSNBC of the Republican blocking those who are unemployed and without financial support from receiving longer transitional support:

“This is the moment when we really have to start fighting back and showing the Republicans it’s not going to work just to continue obstruct, obstruct, obstruct...."

“[Addressing Republicans in Congress, Warren rhetorically asked,} You’re willing to do this over politics? You’re really willing to cut these people off, to leave them with no money to put food on the table, to put a roof over their heads, to take care of their children?”

Simultaneously to the MSNBC interview (which contains many more eminently quotable rebukes of those who would ignore the needs of fellow citizens of the United States), Political Carnival reposted an e-mail Warren sent out, in which she plainly and indignantly stated:

I'm appalled that so many Senators cannot admit the simple reality: we are still in the middle of a jobs crisis. People have been looking for work for months or even years. Many are starting to give up entirely. Young people are beginning to think that there isn't a future out there for them. Long-term unemployment isn't just about money; it's also about losing hope.

These people – our friends, our families, our neighbors – they weren't the ones who broke our economy. So many people worked hard, played by the rules, and did everything we told them to – and now struggle to find work. They need our help.

We help because we care about people, but we also help because it is good for the economy. The numbers show money put into unemployment goes right back into the economy to help stimulate more demand and more business activity. According to a new Congressional report, in just one week after unemployment benefits expired, our state economies lost $400 million. Extending unemployment makes good business sense.

BuzzFlash at Truthout has pointed out many a time that many economists, the president, and others -- such as Robert Reich -- advocate that pumping dollars into the consumer economy through the working class creates jobs much faster than corporations who are sitting on their cash profits. This is true of Food Stamps and it is true of unemployment benefits. A person who needs unemployment checks is going to be spending the money almost immediately and putting those dollars right back into the economy which, ironically, creates jobs.

But the takeaway from this commentary is that Warren intuitively understands how to take progressive ideas and turn them into populist ideas. She can speak to the working class in concise easily understandable language that is devastating to the carefully tested focus group propaganda of the wealthy ruling elite.

Warren, with her slight lean forward into the camera, is talking right into the living rooms of America. She is talking about bottom line and common sense economic issues that affect the average American in plain language.

Elizabeth Warren may have been a law professor at Harvard (specializing in the plight of the middle class), but she grew up in a financially stressed Oklahoma working class family. She gets the issue of economic inequality viscerally.

She challenges the Republicans and those who are plutocratic Dems by going right for the gut of the working class, stirring up the emotions that are usually the exclusive territory of carefully coded words meant to keep those who have been mugged by the rich from voting in their best interests.

Warren is fearless to boot. She'll take on the powers that be, strategically, but nonetheless rank doesn't intimidate her.

Let's hope that she's the beginning of a new class of elected representatives, one that can pierce through the defense mechanisms of the working and middle class whites who have drunk the trickle down swill and believed the blame "the other" narrative of the Koch Brothers and their fellow prestidigiators for redistributing wealth upwards at an accelerating pace.

Elizabeth Warren needs some other populist communicators (who understand how to use the camera to enter the living room) to fill out a team, and tomorrow isn't soon enough.

Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.



(Photo: US Government)

