The Sandbagging of Elizabeth Warren (and 49 State Attorneys General)
I don’t know who is pulling the strings, but any objective look at the so called mortgage settlement negotiations shows that a lot of people are being played for fools. Precisely because Elizabeth Warren is being attacked so forcefully by the Wall Street Journal and other banking industry loyalists, too many of her erstwhile defenders are giving a free pass to the fact that the Administration itself is undermining her, and with her, any attorneys general who sign up for the settlement, assuming it ever sees the light of day.
Recall the Team Obama modus operandi: getting something done, no matter how lame, compromised, or even counterproductive it is, is considered to progress because it presumably can be swaddled in enough propaganda to be made attractive to a presumed to be chump public. Never mind that Obama’s flagging poll ratings and the abysmal mid-term Congressional results, where the Blue Dogs, the Democrats philosophically most aligned with Obama, were mowed down, show that that strategy is becoming less and less effective. Recall in the runup to the mid-terms how many Democratic Congressional candidates were straining to distance themselves from Obama.
The Democratic state attorneys general have even less to gain by playing nice with this Administration. Some are from states that are solidly liberal and/or so hard hit by the mortgage meltdown that being seen to be soft on banks would be political suicide.
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