Elizabet Warren for Senate #3: First debate

Elizabeth Warren participated in her first campaign debate Tuesday night (although she's been in the hot seat plenty of times in hostile, Republican-led committee hearings). This was between the seven Democrats vying for the nomination to run against Scott Brown.

Warren did not challenge her fellow Democrats but clearly aimed at Brown. It sounds like she handled it extremely well. Here are some notable quotes.

"Forbes magazine named Scott Brown Wall Street’s favorite senator. I was thinking that’s probably not an award I’m going to get."

"America's middle class has been hammered, squeezed and chipped at for a generation now, and it can't take it much longer. . . . This is my life's work. I've done research on it, I've written about it, I've advocated for these families. . . . I went to Washington to try to work on the bank bailout and bring some transparency and accountability to it."

"The people on Wall Street broke this country, and they did it one lousy mortgage at a time. It happened more than three years ago, and there has been no real accountability, and there has been no real effort to fix it. That’s why I want to run for the United States Senate."

To a question about the military and our current wars, she said that:

. . . all wars should be paid for "in present time. It means either all of us go to war, or none of us go to war."

Meaning that those of us who send others off to fight should at least all sacrifice to pay for it. No more Bush-style "credit card" wars.

OK. Senate in 2012. White House in 2016.

Ralph