Elizabeth Warren, Nevertheless

Here's the third in a series of caricatures of 2020 Presidential candidates.

Warren rose to national prominence as an advocate for consumer protection in the financial markets, the need for which was demonstrated by the crash of 2008, brought on by careless lending practices and over-easy credit. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was created largely due to her advocacy

President Barack Obama nominated her to head the CFPB in 2010; but Republicans — whose idea of consumer protection is to force consumers to agree to a 4,000-word release form forfeiting all expectation of product safety, the right to a fair and public hearing should any harm befall them, and if they don't like it, a gag order for themselves and all future generations — blocked Warren's nomination and have rendered the CFPB toothless under Corrupt President Donald Trump. Nevertheless, she persisted, and in 2012, she unseated GOP Senator Ted Brown to represent Massachusetts in the U.S. Senate.

She may be the third oldest candidate in the Democratic presidential race (after Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders), but she is arguably the feistiest. If living up to her slogan of "Warren's Got a Plan for That" makes her come across as wonkish and schoolmarmy, it keeps her from being compared to Hilary Clinton, whose campaign relied too lightly on a plan for the next four years and too heavily on a sense that it was Her Turn.

But she can be compared to Clinton in the sense that Republicans already loathe her. Sticking up for consumers is anathema to the Chamber of Commerce set, and the very idea that government should be useful is heresy to Tea Partisans. Republican stooges are sure to draw her as a wannabe Injun, based on her having accepted some overstated family lore of Native American ancestry. Warren Derangement Syndrome will plague her campaign, and her administration should she win the presidency.

Well, it's not as if the right-wing media machine would be any less harsh to any other Democratic president, or Mitch McConnell wouldn't devote every millisecond of the next four years to making a one-term president of whatever Democrat takes office. It takes a World War to get our political parties to put aside partisanship even for a moment, and I for one will take partisanship over World War III any day.

But I hope Warren's got a plan for dealing with Republicans in Congress dead set against all of her other plans. Obama thought he could work with them, and he was wrong.