Fold/Spindle/Mutilate 2.1

Ryan Grim ryan@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting

Elizabeth Warren for Senate?

Some are pushing to draft the Harvard professor, consumer advocate and head of the committee overseeing the Wall Street bailout to take the seat vacated by the death of Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy.

Warren, during an interview on Fox Business, was asked several times Thursday if she’d rule out accepting an appointment to the seat. “I have a job,” she repeated.

But the blog post by Ethan Porter that prompted the question encouraged Warren to run for the seat outright rather than accept an appointment. The appointed senator would only serve until the beginning of next year, when an election is held, and Warren would need to give up her chairmanship of the Congressional Oversight Panel.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has announced her bid for the seat and is considered the front-runner. Coakley has battled Wall Street, as well, but let Goldman Sachs wiggle out of a prosecution earlier this year. Goldman paid $10 million to the state and $50 million to hoodwinked homeowners in exchange for Coakley’s dropped prosecution.

Warren has a passionate following: “Warren in 2012!” occasionally pops up in HuffPost comments sections. Dylan Ratigan is a fan, too. “I love her. Love her,” the MSNBC host said Thursday. “Actually tells the truth. Actually wants to try to improve the system.”

Warren’s background in consumer protection work led her to propose a Financial Product Safety Commission that would restrict the type of unsafe financial products that led to the economic collapse of 2008. Since renamed the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, it’s destined for a vote in the House Financial Services Committee this fall and is fiercely opposed by banks.

Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) is an original sponsor of the legislation and credited Warren when introducing it. “I’ve called on Elizabeth Warren’s expertise repeatedly on bankruptcy and consumer protection issues. She is a serious scholar, but she sees issues through the eyes of struggling middle class families and she talks in language that ordinary Americans easily understand,” he said when asked about a Warren bid for the Senate.

“I just hope I still get snarky e-mails from her if she becomes a Senator,” he added.

As bailout watchdog, Warren has been relentless in pressing both the Treasury Department and financial institutions to explain just what it is they’ve done with taxpayer money.

Warren would likely become one of the most outspoken critics of Wall Street in the upper chamber, where financial industry donors have contributed millions to lawmakers. Earlier this year, Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) declared that banks “frankly own the place.”

Durbin’s observation highlights an obstacle Warren would face if she chooses to run — her brand of populism resonates with voters but not so much with big money donors on Wall Street. And Massachusetts is not a cheap place to run a Senate campaign.

Warren declined to comment for this story.

Watch Fox and MSNBC in a rare moment of agreement:

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