Keller @ Large: Warren's Welcome And Warning For Trump
BOSTON (CBS) - We know our country will soon have a new leader. But one of the many questions popping up in the wake of this election is -- who is will be the new leader of the Democratic Party?
The two Congressional minority leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, will have major platforms. I suspect you'll be hearing quite a bit from Bernie Sanders too.
But plenty of people think our very own Sen. Elizabeth Warren is now more than ever one of the party's most prominent voices.
So it was very interesting to me that she chose to skip the usual pleasantries in her first speech since election night and, instead, threw down a challenge to President-elect Trump and the D.C. establishment.
Warren praised Trump for criticizing Wall Street and big-money corruption in Washington, trade deals, and the establishment's failure to deal with soaring college and child care costs. It was striking how much the broad Trump political critique matches that of Warren and Sanders. "The deep worry that people feel over an America that does not work for them is not liberal or conservative worry," she said.
But then Warren issued a blunt warning to the incoming president, that if he guts financial-industry regulations, tries to deport millions of illegal immigrants, destroys Obamacare and offers tax breaks that help the rich, she will fight him "every step of the way."
It won't take long for Trump to make clear which parts of his campaign rhetoric were serious and which were not. Warren has now made it clear that any Trump honeymoon is likely to be extremely short.