Huffington Magazine Issue 12-13 | Page 53

HUFFINGTON 09.09.12 he’s raised questions about whether or not we can actually go forward, and I’ve had to convince him that I thought we could go ahead and get the bill, but it was right to ask the question,” Dodd told The Huffington Post at the time. “A couple of times on financial reform, when they thought maybe we just ought to go on to something else, when we had so many cloture votes on it, but I and others were able to convince him that no, that we thought we could win the issue and we ought to keep it up.” With White House backing, Senate Democrats kept it up. Every attempt by Republicans or bankfriendly Democrats to rip out or water down Warren’s brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, was met with fierce resistance. “My first choice is a strong consumer agency,” the Harvard law professor told The Huffington Post in March 2010. “My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.” Meanwhile, in Arkansas, online liberal activists teamed with Big Labor to challenge Sen. Blanche Lincoln in a Democratic primary. Lincoln had long been one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, and as chair of the Agriculture Committee, she was charged with writ- THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION shot through with carve-outs and loopholes for the banks. A strange thing began happening in the Senate, however. With consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren and a coalition of progressive and labor groups taking the fight to the public, the bill got stronger in the upper chamber. The White House, for its part, seized on a major Goldman Sachs scandal, as the bank was charged in April by the Securities and Exchange Commission with defrauding investors. Republicans and bank lobbyists found the timing of the announcement suspicious, but it worked to reignite public outrage at Wall Street. Rechristened “Wall Street reform” — much catchier than “finreg” — the bill started steamrolling. Democrats saw a chance for a political win-win: Harry Reid took financial regulatory reform to the floor, knowing it didn’t have 60 votes, but daring Republicans to brave the headlines that would come from defending Wall Street. As cloture vote after cloture vote (the 60-member threshold vote needed to end debate) failed, Reid grew impatient. He wanted to pull the bill off the floor and move on, said Chris Dodd, then chairman of the Banking Committee. “There have been times when