Here’s an interesting, if a bit arcane, data point out of the just-concluded 2024 election. In deep-blue Massachusetts, Kamala Harris actually outperformed someone – that being Massachusetts’ far-left Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren. While Kamala Harris brought in 2,072,849 votes in the Bay State, Senator Warren only racked up 1,582,110 – a difference of almost half a million votes.
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Why? There are few, if any, changes in the maps between the two campaigns. There was no third-party candidate to pull votes away from Sen. Warren – indeed, that disadvantage was only in the presidential contest, with Green candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver racking up 25,431 and 17,377 votes, respectively. A left-favored ballot initiative, to raise the minimum wage for tipped employees, passed handily. So, why the difference?
One is forced to wonder if Elizabeth Warren’s brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and its associated controversies are costing the only 1/1064th Native American member of the Senate some support.
Last summer, we saw the CFPB’s director grilled by Congress over their fee structures:
See Related: Rogue Agency: GOP Lawmakers Scrutinize the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
So we have a rogue agency — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — which is not really protecting consumers or taxpayers. It is charging fees for Freedom of Information Act requests that are, by the Bureau’s own definition, junk fees. The only conceivable reason for this is to discourage Freedom of Information Act requests. The Bureau is also operating, arguably, in violation of the statute that directs from whence comes its funding.
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Then, later in the summer, the CFPB was discovered to have taken some actions that looked suspiciously like a protection racket:
See Related: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Hits Ohio Bank With… Protection Racket?
This smacks of a protection racket, indeed; “Nice little banking system you have there, Fifth Third — be a shame if anything… happened to it.” And this, folks, is always the problem with over-regulation and government overreach — to continue their agency’s mission and to protect their phony-baloney jobs, the regulators are incentivized to find problems, even where none exist. In this case, these perverse incentives prompted the CFPB to invent victims that didn’t exist, to bring charges alleging harm where there was no evidence, and to cost an Ohio firm a lot of money that they never should have had to shell out.
This leads us to ask about the CFPB — are they the victim or the crime?
Is it any of these things? Is it just Senator Warren’s involvement in the creation of this arguably unconstitutional and largely ungoverned intrusion into the financial sector that cost her nearly half-a- million votes in deep, deep blue Massachusetts? The votes appear to have just gone missing; Donald Trump got more votes in Massachusetts (1,236,929) than Sen. Warren’s Republican opponent, John Deaton (1,069,538).
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What’s going on? Is it the CFPB and its serial scandals? Or is Warren, in a year where it seems the left is undergoing a lot of electoral repudiation, just a tad too far left even for Massachusetts?
Here’s the thing: Elizabeth Warren isn’t going anywhere. Her win was still decisive, with nearly 60 percent of the vote. She can probably sit in that chair in the Senate until she shuffles off to wherever 1/1064th Native Americans go when they leave the mortal coil.
But why the discrepancy? It’s curious. It’s hard to explain. And it might be a sign that there is a leftist bridge too far for some voters, even in Indigo Massachusetts.
