As Democrats’ successes in Senate elections outstrip their expectations, Elizabeth Warren’s victory in Massachusetts has provided a real highlight for liberal commentators on MSNBC — especially host Rachel Maddow.
Warren, she said, “can probably hold onto this seat for life.”
“She’s a technocrat on the issue on the issue of consumer debt and family economics,” Maddow explained. “So we’ll wait to see how her ideology plays out in Washington. But in terms of her skill set, I mean, talking about American families, in the way that we have all coped with debt and student loan debt, and the decisions we make about where to work and how to work and when to work, based on what our economic reality is as middle-class families, she is the pioneer in that field of scholarship.”
Lawrence O’Donnell, host of “The Last Word,” likened Warren to the last Harvard professor in the Senate — his old boss.
“What’s unique about her as Senate freshman is she will go into the body knowing more about some very important subjects than any other senator,” O’Donnell said. “And we haven’t seen that since the last Harvard professor who went into the Senate, Sen. [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan who knew more about many subjects than any other senators.”
“She will be respected instantly. I think she has a chance of being one of the real stars of the body very, very quickly and obviously one of the really big stars of the Democratic Party.”
But Maddow claimed that if all goes well for Warren, she will be in the Senate as long as she wants.
“If she is a good senator, she can probably hold on to this seat for life, which is something that was never going to be true about Scott Brown,” Maddow said. “So I think she will plan a different governing path than Scott Brown could, whatever you thought about them as an individual politicians.”