Shahien Nasiripour cites sources that the Obama administration never had any intention of nominating Elizabeth Warren for the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection. In 2010, Sen. Bernie Sanders asked President Barack Obama if would nominate Warren.
Last summer, during a White House meeting with first-term Senate Democrats, Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, asked Obama whether he'd nominate Warren for the role.
Obama held up a half-full glass of water and told him: "That's the problem with you progressives. You see this as half-empty."
Obama's tone towards Sanders makes it obvious that the president does not view himself as a progressive. Wall Street got a bailout. Americans are being foreclosed upon through illegal means. The President campaigned on change and gets pissed when people call him out for protecting the dysfunctional financial system.
Rahm Emanuel made it clear that he did not want Warren confirmed.
Last July, the night before a Senate vote on the administration-backed bill to reform financial regulation, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) told reporters that he was still unsure how he’d vote and was concerned about who might be named to run the soon-to-be-created consumer unit.
Hearing the news, Emanuel took the temperature of the administration on Warren's nomination and reported back to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that it was cool, according to Senate sources with knowledge of the call.
“We don’t like her either,” the then-White House chief of staff told the Nevada Democrat.
Ben Nelson's lack of support was unsurprising. Chris Dodd. Part of Dodd's problem was Warren publicly pushed back against Dodd to not soften the financial reform bill. Dodd was obsessed with getting bipartisan support for a financial reform bill that no Republican had any intention of voting for. What is it about Beltway Democrats that are obsessed with bipartisanship?
Treasury Sec. Tim Geithner is pro-corporatist. It wasn't surprising that he didn't support Warren's nomination. Warren also took Geithner to task for not knowing where money for credit default swaps went. AIG sold swaps and then couldn't cover the bets when the market crashed.
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