WASHINGTON — Fresh off her victory over Massachusetts Republican Sen. Scott Brown, Massachusetts Democratic Sen.-elect Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday night thrilled a far-left audience with recollections of the successful Senate race and her fight to create a consumer protection agency.
In a speech to the progressive-activist training outfit Midwest Academy and its liberal allies, Warren spoke about the importance of organizing to achieving her visions.
“Organizing is critical,” she stressed.
Warren recalled the assistance she received from Damon Silvers, associate general counsel for the AFL -CIO, and Mike Lux, co-founder and president of Progressive Strategies — both received “Midwest Academy Awards” Tuesday night — to overcome the naysayers and help form the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
“Whatever it is that happens going forward, when somebody says to you, ‘You can’t get anything done in Washington, I don’t know why you try, it’s not possible, you can’t get things done’ — well, why don’t you just stop and look back at them and say, ‘new consumer agency,’” she said.
Warren did not touch on the looming fiscal cliff, but she did discuss lessons from her “hard-fought Senate campaign.”
“Think about this: I was up against a popular incumbent, who had $10 million in the bank and a nifty pickup truck. That is a pretty formidable combination,” she said.
Warren said she learned three things during the election she won on Nov. 6.
“The first is you really can run a campaign on issues, you don’t have to run it on personal attacks. You treat people like they are smart and they get it. You can talk about values and they get it. I really believe that I saw it in Massachusetts.”
“The second is it is important to explain the vision,” she continued. “We have to talk about how working families are getting slammed. How Washington is rigged to work for the big guys. How we can’t be a country of ‘I’ve got mine, the rest of you are on your own,’ that the way we build the future is by investing in that future.” (RELATED AUDIO — Adam Corolla: Warren’s suggestion that system is rigged sends a ‘weird and fucked up’ message)
“In the last four days [of the Senate election], volunteers in Massachusetts knocked on 600,000 doors. And on Election Day, we had more than 20,000 people who showed up just to volunteer, just to be there to drive people to the polls, to be there to be poll watchers, people to make it happen on election day,” she said, noting turnout in Massachusetts was 73.3 percent.
“The foundations are solid, the tools are there; we just need to pick them up and change the world,” Warren concluded.
After Warren spoke, the program went on to honor various individuals and groups in the progressive movement, including Jotaka Eaddy, who helped end the juvenile death penalty, and former NAACP chairman Julian Bond.