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In case you've been hiding under some coats this week, liberals are keyed up on the idea of recruiting Elizabeth Warren to run for president in 2016. Warren showed why in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday, protesting the inclusion of a measure that would loosen restriction on derivative trading in a $1 trillion spending bill Congress is expected to approve this week.

It's worth watching the entire speech -- it's less than eight minutes from beginning to end -- but if you are either super busy or an easily distracted millennial, pay particular attention to the first 49 seconds of this clip.

Here's the key line: "I come to the floor today to ask a fundamental question -- who does Congress work for? Does it work for the millionaires, the billionaires, the giant companies with their armies of lobbyists and lawyers? Or does it work for all of us?"

Warren's anti-Wall Street, populist rhetoric, heavily focused on reducing or eliminating income inequality, sits at the core of the Democratic base's belief system at the moment. In a recent NBC-Wall Street Journal poll, almost six in 10 Democrats (58 percent) agreed with the idea that economic and political systems are stacked against them. As WSJ's Neil King notes, that sense of a rigged system is far from a Democrats-only belief;"51 percent of Republicans; 55 percent of whites; 60 percent of blacks; 53 percent of Hispanics; as well as decent majorities of every age and professional cluster, including blue-collar workers, white-collar workers and retirees," all hold it, according to King.

But, the sense of not only a widening gap between haves and have-nots but also a sort of a built-in institutional unfairness to it runs extremely strong within the Democratic base. That goes double when the very likely nominee for the party in 2016 is neither a) a populist or b) anti-Wall Street.

Speeches like the one Warren gave Wednesday will just fuel chatter about why she should challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton in two years. And she knows it.

Chris Cillizza writes The Fix, a politics blog for the Washington Post. He also covers the White House.

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The Fix: Why Elizabeth Warren is liberals dream 2016 candidate, in 49 seconds

For all the Trudeaumania redux surrounding the federal Liberals since Justin Trudeau took the helm, the party has had some very old-school problems around its nomination process.

Trudeau has been accused of going back on his promise to allow open fights for riding nominations and instead getting in his favoured picks. There have beenhard feelings in some, including the Ottawa-area riding ofOrlans, where former general Andrew Leslie was acclaimed, and in Brantford-Brant, the key southern Ontario battleground where a hurried nomination vote resulted in the only registered candidate being acclaimed.

Bitterness now surrounds the likely coronation of a candidate in the B.C. riding Vancouver South, where the other main contender pulled out of the race ahead of this Fridays nomination, leaving the field clear for another ex-military man whom Trudeau apparently prefers.

[ Related:Andrew Leslies Liberal nomination win draws protest ]

The situation in the riding is complicated by a layer of ethnic politics as Sikh factions within the Liberal party have battled over the nomination.

It seems likely former Lt.-Col. Harjit Singh Sajjan, the first Sikh to command a Canadian Forces regiment, will be acclaimed at this Fridays nomination meeting for the riding, which has swung back and forth between the Liberals and Conservatives for most of the last 100 years.

Sajjan was expected to have vigorous competition for the nomination from Vancouver businessman Barj Dhahan. But he abruptly withdrew late last month despite having signed up thousands of new Liberal members to support his bid.

"This campaign has gone on longer than I initially expected and the Liberal Party has a preferred candidate," Dhahan said in a statement on his web site.

"After much thought, I have decided that I will not seek this nomination, and will instead support the Liberal Party of Canadas efforts in other ways."

Sikh factions said to be involved in Liberal infighting

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Liberal nomination troubles 'inside baseball', unlikely to sway most voters

Thune: No Surprise Democrats Are Rethinking Their Support for ObamaCare
U.S. Senator John Thune (R-South Dakota), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, discusses a prominent Democrat #39;s second thoughts on ObamaCare and highlights the damage the law is...

By: JohnThune

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Thune: No Surprise Democrats Are Rethinking Their Support for ObamaCare - Video

The mood among Democrats on Capitol Hill soured as details of a $1.1-trillion spending bill confronted them Wednesday with the reality of their eroding political leverage.

Elections have consequences, Democratic negotiators said as they spent much of the day defending the deals they cut with Republicans, saying it was the best they could do.

"I say to my colleagues: Stay steady; stay strong," said Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), the chief Democratic negotiator on the huge bill that will fund most government departments through the end of September.

"You know, sometimes you give a little, you take a little," she said.

As is typically the case with must-pass money bills, the current appropriations measure, which is necessary to prevent a government shutdown, not only sets spending levels but also includes a host of substantive provisions tacked on by influential lawmakers.

Democratic leaders said they had stopped dozens of Republican proposals -- to restrict abortions, loosen rules on mountain-top coal mining, enable ivory imports and expand gun rights -- in return for the ones they did agree to.

They said that compromise was tough, but that leaving decisions to next year, when Republicans will have a majority in both houses, would have been worse for Democratic priorities.

Those arguments did not soothe critics of the 1,603-page bill that is making its way toward a House vote on Thursday, with the Senate expected to follow by week's end.

A coalition of liberal lawmakers, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), made a last-minute pitch to change a provision of the bill that would weaken financial regulations.

The measure would loosen rules on certain types of financial swaps by banks -- deals that were at the heart of the 2008 financial meltdown. The rules were adopted under the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and have been a major target for Republicans.

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Democrats sour over government funding bill with Republican priorities

Congressional Democrats objected on Wednesday to controversial financial and political campaign provisions tucked into a $1.1 trillion U.S. spending bill, keeping the risk of a government shutdown alive.

The complaints from House of Representatives Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats clouded the chances for passage of the funding bill as a midnight Thursday deadline drew near.

Republicans were preparing a one-or-two day extension to keep federal agencies open past the deadline, but were unwilling to make any concessions on dozens of provisions added to the bill.

Pelosi said Democrats were "deeply troubled" by Republican measures that would kill planned restrictions on derivatives trading by large, federally insured banks and expand tenfold the amounts that individuals can donate to national political parties.

"These provisions are destructive to middle-class families and to the practice of our democracy. We must get them out of the omnibus package," Pelosi said in a statement.

Democratic support is seen as critical to passage of the spending bill in the House, as Republican aides and lawmakers say it is unlikely their party would be able to muster enough votes for passage on its own.

Many conservative House Republicans oppose the bill, claiming it fails to deny funding for President Barack Obama's controversial executive action on immigration. And Democrats still control the U.S. Senate.

Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, a staunch advocate for tougher regulation of Wall Street, called for Democrats to withhold support from the bill due to the derivatives provision, which would effectively strike down a portion of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law enacted in the wake of a financial crisis fueled partly by complex mortgage derivatives.

But House Republicans were not blinking. A party leadership aide said no changes would be made to the spending measure, which was negotiated by appropriators from both parties. A vote was planned for Thursday.

In 2013, a House vote to repeal the same rule, which requires that banks move derivatives trading to units that do not benefit from federal deposit insurance, attracted 70 Democratic votes.

Originally posted here:
Democrats balk at spending bill as government shutdown looms