Matt Chapman is a Democratic activist in Waukee. -promoted by Laura Belin
A few years after the great recession kicked in, I was listening to the latest Ry Cooder album while mowing my lawn and came across the song “No Banker Left Behind.” It spoke perfectly to the mood of the time, and I remember shutting the mower off and going inside to listen to it a couple more times.
The Dodd-Frank financial reform bill had passed a year earlier, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created (an idea Elizabeth Warren came up with). At that time, Professor Warren was asked to help set up the bureau, made a temporary chair, and given some liaison responsibilities. But she was never given the role of director.
Luckily for us, efforts to recruit Warren to run for the Senate instead paid off. Now she is campaigning to be our first woman president.
What I love about Senator Warren is no one can talk over her head. She is one of the sharpest financial minds of our day and knows what it means to come from humble beginnings. When she says we need to build from the bottom up, she is sincere. And she can counter the arguments of the powerful who want to keep the status quo.
At a time when not just income inequality, but also opportunity inequality are at all-time lows, we need a champion who gets things done. Someone fearless with the chops to back it up.
Imagine what a president could do if they cared about the folks who don’t play golf at Mar-a-Lago. A president who had visited manufactured housing parks and didn’t forget the way we have been exploited by private equity firms, the same firms that fund the current occupant of the oval office.
A president who believes in paid family leave, infrastructure, and education from pre-K to college. A president who would address homelessness and affordable housing. One who believes in science and knows that time has run out to address global warming. (I refuse to play the semantic game that led us to climate change.)
And how about a woman in the Oval Office to stand up against those that would like to take away the right of choice?
We are at a pivotal time in our country. We have lost our leadership roles in the world, and the social strife at home is ratcheted to eleven. As Steve Earle wrote, “The fox is in the henhouse, and the cows are in the corn.”
I believe the candidate with the tools to not just get us back on track, but to bring us all into the 21st century is Elizabeth Warren.
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Photo of Matt Chapman with Elizabeth Warren provided by the author and published with permission.