Elizabeth Warren, Sandra Fluke Take Dem Convention by Storm
Elizabeth Warren
Elizabeth Warren, Sandra Fluke bring down the house at Democratic National Convention 2012, with themes of empowering the middle class, corporate greed, and the importance of women having a say in their own health issues
Elizabeth Warren received a thunderous welcome at the Democratic Convention 2012 in Charlotte, N.C., Wednesday night, when she gave the opening speech before former President Bill Clinton. She delivered her familiar populist attack against Wall Street in an effort to further woo the middle class to the side of the Democrats, saying: “People feel like the system is rigged against them. …And here’s the painful part: They’re right.”
Related: 10 Things to Know About Elizabeth Warren
Warren got the most rousing applause when she launched an attack against Mitt Romney, for often saying that corporations are people. “No, Governor Romney, corporations are not people,” she said. “People have hearts, they have kids, they get jobs, they get sick, they cry, they dance. They live, they love, and they die.”
Warren became a household name when she took over as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) after the 2008 financial meltdown. She has been an ardent and vocal critic of corporate America, spreading the message that it’s big businesses’ responsibility to help the rest of society. Now, she’s running for U.S. Senate, hoping to unseat Republican incumbent Scott Brown, the man who won the seat after the death of Sen. Ted Kennedy.
Sandra Fluke
Meanwhile, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke also raised the roof of the convention when she spoke out for women’s health and the right for women to have a say in contraception and health care issues. Fluke made headlines a few months ago when she battled Congress, arguing that health insurance should cover female contraception. For her efforts, she was heavily criticized by conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh, who went so far as to call her a “slut” – a bashing which earned rebukes from even Republicans.
Related: Sandra Fluke, Chelsea Clinton on Women in Politics, Running in Heels
“Your new president could be a man who stands by when a public figure tries to silence a private citizen with hateful slurs,” Fluke said. “Who won’t stand up to the slurs, or to any of the extreme, bigoted voices in his own party.” Obama thinks of his daughters, not his delegates, when deciding how to respond to women’s issues, Fluke added.
A Mitt Romney-controlled America, she said, would result in “an America in which states humiliate women by forcing us to endure invasive ultrasounds we don’t want and our doctors say we don’t need. An America in which access to birth control is controlled by people who will never use it; in which politicians redefine rape so survivors are victimized all over again; in which someone decides which domestic violence victims deserve help, and which don’t.”
Related: Romney Calls Akin’s ‘Legitimate’ Rape Comments ‘Inexcusable’
Conservative commentator Ann Coulter later typed a series of controversial Tweets about Fluke, including: “They’re spicing things up with a live abortion on stage!” and “Democrats: Get government out of our uterus! Sandra Fluke: Government, get in my uterus!” and “Sandra wants taxpayers to pay for her tanning appointments.”
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Category: Lifestyle, Politics, Views on the News
