Obama is jealous of Elizabeth Warren

When President Obama lashed out at Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., recently, it was about more than just a trade deal. His comments revealed that he is increasingly jealous.

Obama has long envisioned himself as a transformational liberal leader. But as he enters the twilight of his presidency, he’s being forced to grapple with the fact that his party has begun to move on, and liberals are increasingly looking to Warren as their champion.

Back during his 2008 campaign for the Democratic nomination, Obama famously said, “I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that, you know, Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.” He saw himself as the liberal answer to Reagan — a charismatic leader who could not only win elections, but move the country ideologically. He wanted to get Americans to embrace a larger role for government as an antidote to the skepticism in big government that Reagan helped foster.

“There are some who question the scale of our ambitions, who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans,” Obama said in his first inaugural address. He countered that “the ground has shifted” and that “the question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works…”

Flash forward six years, and Obama’s influence is waning by the day. Trade is one of the few chances for him to pass major legislation through the Republican Congress, but he has encountered stiff resistance from a resurgent populist Left. Warren, the leader of this faction in the Senate, has made Obama’s life difficult, and progressive activists are increasingly looking to her, rather than the president, to be their advocate.

“The truth of the matter is that Elizabeth is, you know, a politician like everybody else,” Obama said in an interview with Yahoo News. “And you know, she’s got a voice that she wants to get out there.”

It was quite a moment for a president who built his political career — and his rock star status — on the notion that he could transcend politics and overcome the cynicism of Washington by spreading hope. His time in the White House, bitter battles with Congress and international policy struggles have made him look like just another politician, and people are seeking somebody else for inspiration. They are now placing their hopes on Warren as they once did on him. And so Obama couldn’t control his urge to cut her down to size, to say, hey, she’s just another politician like me.

“For the last couple of years, progressives have been thinking beyond Obama and the Democratic Party as a whole seems to be there right now,” said Adam Green, founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has been rallying around Warren’s populist message.

Green explained that “there has never been any illusion that [Obama] was a movement progressive.” Liberals, he said, were already frustrated with Obama back in 2009 for appointing Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff as well as a team of economic advisors with close ties to Wall Street.

He said this team convinced Obama to cut deals with industry in putting together the healthcare bill, abandoning liberal hopes for a government run insurance plan (or “public option”). At the same time, he said, big banks were protected from a stronger response in the wake of the financial crisis. But back then, liberals knew that if anything were to get done, it would have to go through the White House. Now, he said, Obama won’t be able to accomplish much, and so “the big game is what will the contours of the 2016 campaign look like and will the issue debate be in January 2017.”

Green said Warren has shown savvy in picking the right battles and maintaining credibility among activists and within Washington. “Elizabeth Warren is in many ways being the kind of leader that many people were hoping for when they supported Barack Obama for president,” he said.

As to Obama’s recent comments about Warren, Green suggested, “I don’t think he’s lashing out out of jealousy. I think there are different world views on what is possible in a fairly broken political system.”

But it’s also easy to see things from the White House perspective. Even though Obama wasn’t able to enact as ambitious an agenda as progressives would have liked, he did make progress on their priorities. He signed an $800 billion stimulus package. He signed a national healthcare plan — a goal that had eluded liberals for decades. He implemented tougher environmental rules, ended “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and took unilateral action on immigration.

Despite all of these liberal achievements, it’s a freshman senator who now has the hearts of progressives. No wonder it’s getting under Obama’s skin.

Related Content