krebscycle

Thomas Frank’s interview with Elizabeth Warren includes Warren attempting to balance praise for the President with a completely false critique that is a staple of the Professional Disappointed Left.

[Warren] When I think about the president, for me, it’s about both halves. If Barack Obama had not been president of the United States we would not have a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Period. […] At the same time, he picked his economic team and when the going got tough, his economic team picked Wall Street.

You might say, “always.” Just about every time they had to compromise, they compromised in the direction of Wall Street.

That’s right. They protected Wall Street. Not families who were losing their homes. Not people who lost their jobs. Not young people who were struggling to get an education. And it happened over and over and over. So I see both of those things and they both matter.

When the Obama administration rescued the auto industry and the UAW, Wall Street absolutely insisted that bondholders who had irresponsibly financed the worthless managements of both GM and Chrysler must get 100% back. That did not happen.  The shareholders were wiped out. The bondholders suffered, as they should have, massive losses. The Obama Administration used the savings to wipe out the debts of GM and Chrysler and to save the UAW pension/health fund. None of this is secret and the right wing has bitched about it non-stop since the moment it happened. The “left”, however, doesn’t give a damn about a million jobs, the security of GM and Chrysler retirees and the unions.  This example is not the only one of Obama’s economic team battling on behalf of working people, but it is the most revealing – about the Progressives and “the left” and what they think is important. The “left” in the United States is a creepy group of narcissists who think everything is about them, their pet issues, and their feelings. Elizabeth Warren lost a lot of credibility in my eyes, when she bought into their story.