Understandably, the people who had been in the industry wanted to fight the changes by using every protection they were given, which was not many. One of the tactics that was discussed was to withhold all services to members who declared bankruptcy, and to try to force them into paying everything or surrendering collateral. They would stand on this principle based on a contractual term in most security agreements at the time called cross-collateral agreements.
To many, this term meant that all money owed was secured if any of the money owed was secured. However, I knew that a cross-collateral agreement meant, at best, that any value the collateral had that exceeded the balance was arguably secured. I also knew that in many cases, the collateral value did not even match the loan amount, and, in those cases, the consumer could redeem the collateral for its value. It required the amount to be paid in cash, but it also meant that if the consumer turned in the collateral with less value than the loan amount, the loan amount would not be recovered through liquidation.
The reason I knew this was because I read avidly about the bankruptcy laws. I considered the opinions of attorneys, executives at major corporations, and also a college law professor whose strong opinions on bankruptcy were from the perspective of a consumer advocate. Of course, that was Elizabeth Warren.
What I applied from what she wrote was that if we dealt with the reality of what we were facing as a creditor, we could work with debtors' lawyers to put ourselves in a better position by also putting consumers in better positions. We could turn the negative of "fighting" with the debtors' attorneys into "negotiating" deals when one is to be made. In other cases, we negotiated whatever rights the debtor has such that the loss is the least, which, again, was the best situation for both the credit union and the member.
I did not know who she would become, but I knew who she was. She saved my clients and employers millions of dollars over the years by inspiring a program through which we simply took the best deal possible. We found attorneys approaching us to see if our clients would be interested in making better loans by working with those who filed bankruptcy over disputes with predatory creditors. We not only saved money on losses, but, when we were able to help, we ended up with members whose loyalty could not be pried away.
Elizabeth Warren was well known. While still only an author and professor, she met with First Lady Hillary Clinton to discuss bankruptcy and the negative effects the bill proposed at that time would have on consumers. Hillary then talked to Bill who vetoed the bill. That, to me, was singly the best thing Clinton did as president. As a Senator, Hillary would vote in favor of the same bill during the Bush administration. Warren has told the story about how Hillary's vote as a Senator perplexed her.
Warren was Obama's choice to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) when it was created in 2010. I recall there being some hesitancy on her part, but Obama wanted her to head it up because he, too, was impressed with her consumer advocacy. Warren had never been politically appointed before this, and she did not seek out the nomination. He asked her to build it because she literally wrote the book on consumer advocacy.
When I say that Elizabeth Warren is the Congressperson who best understands the regulatory issues regarding the banking, securities, and insurance industries in the Senate, I am not overstating that a bit. Only Katie Porter in the House, a freshman Democrat, is in the same league with Warren. My suggestion to consumers is to always listen when Elizabeth Warren speaks. She has done more for you than you know, and more for all of us than we could ever possibly repay to her.
If you get your hackles up over that statement, you are either a top corporate executive, or you have your political blinders on.
Her ascent into politics was also not something that was on her career map while she was setting up the CFPB. Obama was not only making strides with the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress was discussing the Affordable Care Act. The Senate passed its version and then Ted Kennedy died. It passed with the 60 vote minimum, and Kennedy's replacement after a special election was Republican Scott Brown. Without the minimum votes needed to pass the version that would be presented after House negotiations and compromises, the House passed the original Senate version.
Warren was able to wrestle the seat away from Brown in the next election, but Democratic losses elsewhere kept them from the 60 votes they needed to fix things. It was heroic of her to make that run, but it did not fix what she was hoping to fix.
That left her in the position of being a politician for the first time in her life despite being in her 60s. No one really knew what her political inclinations would be, but she quickly put that to rest with her continued advocacy for consumers. She was regarded as a progressive member of the Senate because she continued to battle with the big corporations rather than to court them for donations. It appeared that she was clearly of the progressive mind.
However, just before the convention in 2016, Elizabeth Warren endorsed Hillary Clinton, which meant that was how she intended to cast her vote as a superdelegate. It caused me to take a look for why, but it meant she would never be considered again by many of the young supporters of Bernie Sanders who didn't know her background in consumer advocacy.
The loss of her credibility with young progressive voters was the subject of the first post I wrote about her (link below for I like Elizabeth Warren, but . . .). I would vote for her, but I don't think she will be forgiven for 2016, especially since she would have to beat Sanders to do it. The point of it was that I think nominating her would be a mistake because, like the establishment candidates, she will likely not draw the votes needed from progressives to win the general election.
Despite that, she was still my third choice for president. I personally like her, but I don't think she can win. The most common response to this is a claim that she could if people would vote for her, but, then, that can be said about anybody.
However, after I wrote that post, there were some behaviors that I questioned. The most notable one was her approaching Bernie after a debate saying she thinks he just called her a liar. The basis for the allegation was him denying her claim that he said a woman could not be elected president. She said he said it; he said he didn't. Her claim that he said it, then, is her calling him a liar. It became a difficult conundrum to try to reconcile because she was saying he was lying about not saying it.
My second post about Elizabeth Warren was an appeal to either provide the evidence that flies in the face of videos of Bernie that go back into the 1980s, and that Tulsi Gabbard said was nothing like her meeting with Bernie when she told him that she was running, or to drop out of the race (link below for Elizabeth Warren: Provide Evidence or Drop Out). In that post, I gave my opinion that she had fallen for the identity politics of "it's time for a woman." I think there may also have been some discussion on her part that him backing her might be a better plan, but he didn't agree.
Whatever was discussed behind closed doors remained behind closed doors, except for that one hot mic comment she made after the debate.
I expect many people would want to debate whether or not anything she has done has been for greed or for lust for power, but I don't see it. I actually see her efforts more likely done for the purpose of healing the party. She is seen as progressive by establishment people, but she is seen as establishment by many progressive people. She has not endorsed either candidate, though she has publicly said that she did not think the problems can be solved by an insider about Biden.
She also has not endorsed Sanders, which she would have done by now if she were truly the progressive candidate. People labeled her as that without too much regard for her history of being rather apolitical in her politics. She fights for the common person and takes on the corporations like a progressive member, and she endorsed Hillary Clinton before the convention like the establishment superdelegates did. She did not change who she was in the way she went after the corporations after 2016, so the thought that she sold out seems to have some irreparable leaks that keep it from holding water.
The explanation that seems the most logical to me is that she is trying to hold the two factions together. She certainly seems to take on the friends of the establishment, so it isn't about money in politics, like a progressive member. However, I raised an eyebrow when she, Elizabeth Warren - the fighter for everything good - did not reject corporate donations. That is reminiscent of Barack Obama's similar stance of being generally against money in politics, but not so much so that he would deprive himself of it. I have not seen any evidence that Warren is using her position in politics for personal gain, such as making big bucks giving speeches behind closed doors.
She is not an evil person. To the contrary, Elizabeth Warren is one of the warmest, smartest, and most compassionate people of any of the candidates. To have it all make sense, the most likely conclusion that I can come up with is that she wanted to be the candidate who appealed to both sides. She wanted to heal what she saw as a growing division within the party. She took it on herself to criticize Pete Buttigieg for his fund raising parties, and she ripped Michael Bloomberg as loudly as anyone on the debate stage with him.
She is not behaving as either an establishment or progressive member of the party, as others claim she is. She is not behaving as the staunch consumer advocate that she has always been known for. She is not behaving as the college law professor that she was, nor as the provocative author of books explaining what is really going on. She is behaving as a mother might, trying to keep her children from taking an argument to a fight. She is behaving as a cheerleader who is trying to rally both sides to meet somewhere in the middle might. She is telling her children to not fight, and trying to rally them to compromise.
She put forth plans that would be adequately funded, but seemed like bad compromises. For example, the funding of her health care plan would include a "per-head" tax on employers. Despite the adequate funding, paying for health care with that plan leaves the majority of the burden on the middle class, and disproportionately burdens small business owners. It also does nothing to motivate companies to hire people. However, in what seems like a total contradiction of someone who wants to leave the burden for health care on the middle class, her wealth tax proposal alienated the people that putting the funding of health care on businesses might appeal to. Though I don't presume to know why she made these contradictory proposals, it seems that someone might propose these in order to put forth plans that are intended to please both sides, but actually don't please either.
I have known about Elizabeth Warren and her good works for about forty years. She has had some missteps along the way, but the mistakes she made that could be exploited were not made with malice or contempt. The most notably exploited mistake has been her claim of native ancestry. I wrote of my own desire to be regarded as native American rather than to claim one of several countries in Europe from which my ancestors came, but that "native American" was not a choice on the census. It offered me "American Indian," but the only ancestor I have that supposedly was an American Indian was my grandmother's grandmother. Though I decided to not check the box on the census because I am not American Indian, Elizabeth Warren opted to say she was "American Indian" when asked her nationality by a prominent employer. She basically has the same family lore claim that I have.
It was a mistake to claim to be American Indian regardless of her reasoning, but it seems much more forgivable if her motive was to represent the people she knew from growing up in Oklahoma than if she did it to get jobs. What is in the heart of a person does make a difference, and any allegation that she did this and then got that has a serious problem with cause and effect.
Without contending that it happened exactly as one of these choices, one of these two statements will be closer to the truth than the other:
- Harvard pleasantly discovered that the person they hired in the Law Department because she was an American Indian was also the author of books and a highly regarded consumer advocate.
- Harvard pleasantly discovered that Elizabeth Warren, who they hired for her qualifications, was also American Indian. They thought, "Wow, this is too good to be true." Their thought was correct.
Which do you think is most likely?
I can understand that her intentions were not evil, and so there is some innocence in what was unquestionably a mistake. However, I also know that mistake will be exploited, and there is no way that mistake can help her. It can only hurt her. I know in my heart that Elizabeth Warren was given her prestigious jobs because of her amazing contributions to consumer protection, but I knew about her before I knew of the false ancestral claim. I get it, and, knowing her as I did, I could not imagine her doing it for malevolent reasons.
The problem with me saying I would vote for her if she were the nominee, and interpreting that to mean other progressive voters also would, is that I don't think other progressive voters will vote for her. I especially think that she will lose a lot of Bernie's support because she supported Clinton before the convention in 2016. I don't control their votes, but I saw nothing across social media that indicated that Bernie's supporters had forgiven her. I saw plenty that indicated they still considered her a traitor to the cause.
If they were correct, though, a traitor would have joined the other side. She didn't do that, either. That's not how healers work, and, if she saw herself as the healer, she would not take one side or the other without examining her motives. It seems that is what she is doing.
She also must deal with the reality that she went from being the frontrunner to finishing third in her own state before ending her campaign. The establishment went for Biden, the progressives went for Sanders, and the people who want the party to heal through compromise went for Warren. It was not a fall from grace. Healing the party through compromise simply is not an option in the revolution. The rich liberals don't want it; they voted for Biden over the person who salvaged Ted Kennedy's seat for the party. The young progressives don't want it; they voted for Sanders because she didn't support him in 2016.
As well-intentioned as the people are who support Warren for her desire to pull the two factions together, it is not to be. With her being my third choice, and Tulsi being my first and trailing, I would have settled for Warren being the last person standing against Sanders. I, personally, would vote for the winner of that contest, but I suspect a lot of Bernie's young supporters remember her more for her superdelegate vote than for her writing as a consumer advocate.
However, I won't forget how influential her advocacy for consumers was in helping me design bankruptcy strategies that worked beautifully for credit unions and members. It was the consumer advocates to whom I most related when I pushed for my clients to understand that losing the least amount possible in every case would result in the least possible loss, and that was best done by pulling the two factions together and healing the divide.
She puzzled me a bit when it came to her politics, but never because I thought she sold out. She puzzled me because she was too progressive to be considered establishment, and too compromising with establishment objectives to be considered progressive. Her supporters, too, must confront whether they love her for her consumer advocacy, which would tend toward her progressive leaning, or do they love her because she ultimately chooses to keep the party together as it is, which would lend to her perception as an establishment member. There are even people who love her because she doesn't really take one side or the other, but is just there separating two things like a fence. The fence isn't there any longer, and that area is more likely to be a battlefield than a love festival.
If it were a mistake by Elizabeth Warren to believe that there was some middle ground on which the faction that is trying to keep out the ones who are running its people against theirs would smoke a peace pipe, it was not because her heart wasn't in the right place.
There may be a time for healers after the revolution is won, but both sides are looking for combatants, not healers. My high regard for Elizabeth Warren is not because she is perfect; she isn't. I will always have high regard for Elizabeth Warren because the imperfections I see in her are because she is a healer and not a combatant, and those who heal others are beautiful people.
