The Boston Herald broke the story April 27 that Harvard touted Warren’s Indian ancestry, and it’s been downhill since for the Senate hopeful. A genealogist has suggested Warren is 1/32 Native American, although the campaign has not provided documents backing her claim. Warren spoke in one interview of grandparents with “high-cheekbones.”

Joe Trippi, the prominent Democratic consultant, said the response to the initial stories raised questions in the nation’s capital about the campaign’s readiness to deal with a dangerous foe.

“There is a question about why they weren’t prepared,” Trippi said. “This happening in May is a wake-up call. They have to be ready for a much tougher fight than they envisioned.”

Warren should have expected such attacks: Brown’s chief strategist, Eric Fehrnstrom, is famous for confrontational tactics. “It’s great to be out there trying to make a case for working people, but the other side is not going to let you do that — Fehrnstrom doesn’t work that way,” Trippi said. “He’s going to try and make it into a knife fight. You have to be ready to make the process case and fight back.”

There’s a growing concern that Warren’s campaign has been too passive in its clashes with Brown, indeed that they’ve been too one-sided.

Dan Payne, a veteran Democratic consultant based in Boston, said the non-handling of the Native American question is part of a larger problem that has plagued the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“There are a finite number of weeks a candidate has to beat a popular incumbent,” Payne said. “If you spend a week on your Indian heritage and a week on tax returns, you’re not making the case against the incumbent. That’s the problem. The Warren camp has been made the incumbent and Brown has been made the challenger. It’s been a role reversal.”

Democrats don’t like to use the “C” word — Coakley. But Payne said, like Coakley, who didn’t understand she needed to shake hands outside a chilly Fenway Park, Warren doesn’t seem to know what to do with Brown.

For instance, Brown got free media showing he hit a half-court basketball shot – even though he needed several tries. The shot builds on his regular guy image, which neutralizes Warren’s arguments she stands up for the regular guy, Payne said. Yet, you never heard Warren ever smack him down.

“So far, Warren has shown an inability to deal with Brown’s use of symbols,” Payne said.

Warren’s chief strategist is Doug Rubin, who masterminded Gov. Deval Patrick’s two improbable victories – both based on positive campaigning and avoiding negative attacks. Fehrnstrom, meanwhile, gets out of bed thinking how to attack, said Payne.

Even before Warren entered the race, Fehrnstrom anonymously tweeted as Crazy Khazei, lobbing broadsides aimed at her while disguised as a loony version of another Democratic rival, Alan Khazei – until he was unmasked.

“It’s been very mean and it’s only going to get meaner,” said Michael Shea, a Democratic consultant. “They’ve raised $30 million and it’s not going toward positive ads, and it’s only just begun.”

There’s no doubt the Senate race is going to be nasty. It’s had a negative tone from Day One, when Brown – in response to a joke Warren made about him paying for college by posing nude – quipped on a radio show he was glad the 52-year-old hadn’t done the same.

The Native American story may appear an isolated one but it’s part of Brown’s strategy to craft a narrative about the first-time candidate, said Peter Ubertaccio, chairman of the department of political scientist at Stonehill College.

“You do that by raising questions about who she said she is and hold up who is in tune with average voters and is more like average voters,” Ubertaccio said.

In a statement, Warren’s campaign said:

Elizabeth has been straightforward and open about her heritage while the people who recruited her have made it clear it was because of her extraordinary skill as a teacher and a groundbreaking scholar. Scott Brown has been peddling nasty insinuations to distract from his million-dollar tax returns and multi-million dollar Wall Street fundraising. We’re getting back to the issues that really matter in this election, like how to level the playing field for middle class families.”

Democrats aren’t giving up on Warren.

Washington has tried to bolster Warren, Payne said. For instance, the president is signaling his support by appearing in an ad with Warren running on television stations statewide.

Trippi noted that while the Republicans drag out the story about her native roots, Warren’s campaign continues to show positive signs – and it’s only May.

“[Brown] scored,” Trippi said. “But she’s raising money, she has a very strong message, and the people know she’s fighting for the working people of Massachusetts.”

But Brown isn’t giving up either.

“Scott Brown takes this very seriously,” the Democratic insider cautioned. “This is control of the United States Senate. This is big stuff.”

The trick in the gimmick became clear this week when Brown announced that he was holding up his end of the pledge, agreeing to pay half the costs of an ad from a group called Coalition of Americans for Political Equality (CAPE PAC) and asking it to pull its Google ads promoting him. The group’s website is now offline. Jeff Loyd, a Tea Party activist from Arizona who chairs the PAC, confirmed that his group spent all of $673.99 in pro-Brown online advertising with Google.

Brown’s ostentatious willingness to be the first to trigger the enforcement mechanism against himself displays a street-smart opportunism that the Warren camp, for all her populist credentials, lacks. Far from shooting himself in the foot, the penalty amounts to $327 out of the $13 million in his campaign coffers. It was money well spent to help burnish his image as a moderate and man of the people, even as he raises more than $2 for Warren’s every $1. (Warren has raised $6 million to date.)

“Sen. Brown is a man of his word,” Brown’s campaign manager, Jim Barnett, trumpeted in a letter to CAPE PAC. “And as a result of your advertising on his behalf, he will honor the agreement by paying out of his campaign account an amount equal to 50 percent of your spending. In short,” the letter continued, “while your advertising on his behalf is clearly intended to be helpful, it is actually costing his campaign valuable resources.”

The brainchild of Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren, the darling of the left—yet prompted by Senator Scott Brown, the Tea Party centerfold who took Ted Kennedy’s seat—the key enforcement mechanism is remarkably simple in its conception: the candidate favored in a third-party ad on TV, radio or online must make a contribution worth half of the ad’s costs to the opposing candidate’s charity of choice within three days of broadcast.

The negative air war that was predicted two years ago as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling could very well be thwarted in this one key race. It’s the little engine that could, nationally, but if the Massachusetts experiment in self-punishment proves enforceable here, it could catch on elsewhere, sort of like the Pledge of Allegiance against dirty politics, a yardstick that blunts the worst consequences of the high court’s decision.

Or it may prove to be a campaign game changer only in a blue state like Massachusetts where an incumbent Republican is covering his left flank with a clean-money pledge. In red states where there’s a Democratic incumbent, say, the People’s Pledge is much less likely to take root.

Warren, the less-well-known newcomer who needs to do more flesh-pressing to win over undecided voters, may benefit more from the pact than Brown, who took the late great lion of the Senate’s seat in a stunning upset runoff election in 2010. It was Brown’s camp that came up with the idea, and Warren, personally, who gave it teeth, essential enforcement mechanisms being a forte that would seem to separate this woman from the boys on Capitol Hill, should she take back Brown’s Senate seat for the Democrats.

The People’s Pledge is most likely to rise or fall with her political fortunes, which is to say its potential is every bit as promising as the smart money’s long-shot favorite to be our first female president. A regular on the Daily Show With Jon Stewart, where she re-appeared last night as her apple-cheeked, all-American self, looking professorial, but without the affected demeanor, Warren comes across as the down-to-earth daughter of, as she told Stuart, “a guy who sold fencing.” Warren went on to give a little history lesson about the 1940s, when she was born, when the government went to bat for the middle class, the same government  that today goes to bat almost exclusively for the 35,000 lobbyists that swarm the halls of power

The deal, signed by both candidates, will be watched  by none more closely than the shadowy, big-money SuperPacs that have hijacked the 2012 election season. Above all else that means Karl Rove and the Koch brothers who back his billionaire front group, the American Crossroads GPS think tank, which has already sunk more than $1 million into the Brown-Warren contest.

Rove may be pleased to know that not one Boston radio or television outlet has agreed to comply—it’s business after all and, as Ronald Reagan said, the politics of America is business—though they will feel nearly irresistible pressure to do so over the next few days as both campaigns mail a co-letter asking media outlets to forgo what amounts to a nice chunk of change for the local market.

The liberal League of Conservation Voters, which just bought a $2 million ad buy against Brown, said it would honor the deal Still there was a muted response in the  blogosphere, a place normally divided over the wisdom of grotesque sums being spent on vulgar attack ads. The truce was noted widely if dispassionately. Daily Kos merely observed that the campaigns had swapped letters about the sums being spent already. The site noted that Brown had called on Warren to condemn the ads, and the Warren had responded last Friday with her idea to stand together beyond mere words. Brown accepted, the Daily Kos noted generously, even though the U.S. Chamber of Commerce had said it would become “significantly involved” in defeating his opponent.

Similarly, Talking Points Memo ran with a straight-up “we intend to comply” story quoting a Massachusetts Democratic Party official.
The muted response may be a consequence of the hardened skepticism about plugging the flow of SuperPac money. Sending letters to TV stations and advocacy groups asking them to curb the ads amounts to “an interesting and commendable effort,” said Paul Ryan, a lawyer for the Campaign Legal Center, which works on behalf of tighter campaign funding laws.  “But I’m not entirely convinced it will be effective.”

Ryan said that issue ads, traditionally used to dodge limits on direct candidate advocacy, may blur the lines, complicating compliance.
Though no other group has come out against the pledge, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee have not yet said if they’ll try to call off the dogs in their own parties.

All that can be said for sure is that populist politics appears ready to trump the billion-dollar campaign industry in at least one race in the cradle of liberty. But if the People’s Pledge really takes off in Massachusetts, putting your money where your SuperPac mouth is may be the only way to avoid wearing the dirty-money badge of shame. Best case scenario: In the era of Citizens United, the People’s Pledge could yet become an unavoidable rite of American politics.

As we all know, the Obama administration hasn’t prosecuted anyone of significance on Wall Street for their role in the financial crisis. It’s too hard, you see. So instead we have a consolation prize in the form of Cordray, a kind of suer-in-chief standing in the wings, ready to slam writs into the clammy hands of bankers and financial service types, with press releases at the ready, and P.R. people on standby. The CFPB is the new agency set up by Dodd-Frank for tackling the kind of nitty-gritty consumer issues that have been pretty much abandoned by the federal bureaucracy, such as unfair mortgages, debt collection, credit cards, payday lenders and other potential sources of pernicious practices.

Cordray was nominated to this position, itself a watered-down affair subordinated to the Federal Reserve, because Republicans effectively vetoed the founder of the agency, Elizabeth Warren. But as with most conciliatory gestures Obama has made to the Republican right, the response amounted to, shove it. Cordray’s nomination is in trouble, and he has become the current cause of the moment for Democrats in Congress. Obama is pushing hard for his man, we are assured.

The Kansas speech made that reasonably clear. But somehow it doesn’t make me feel any better about Obama’s approach to the Street, no matter how it might discomfit the likes of hedge fund magnate Leon Cooperman, who thinks Obama’s “tone” should be sweeter. To me, the Cordray nomination is emblematic of precisely what’s wrong with the Obama approach to regulating the financial services industry. It’s not a question of tone, which is perfectly fine, but substance.

There’s no question that Cordray is well qualified for his present post as the CFPB’s enforcement director. With a few years of seasoning he could probably step into the top job without any problem. He is a competent suer of people who ought to be sued, meaning pretty much every major bank and American International Group, when he was attorney general of Ohio. He won some really nice settlements. Here, take a look at his record. (He was kind enough to put all his lawsuits on a sheet of paper while he was still Ohio’s A.G.) Billions of dollars! Why, if this was 1960, that would be a lot of money.

But a hard-driving line attorney is not what’s needed in a job like this. You see, there is a symbolism to Obama’s fight with Republicans over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a difference not of tactics or politics but a deeply philosophical struggle that goes to the root of how this nation should be governed. At issue is not the future of the CFPB, but whether we should regulate finance at all, or simply let the banks, debt collectors, etc., do what they want and let “the market” step in to correct unfair practices. That, after all, is the aim of libertarian-leaning types like Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and über-libertarian Ron Paul, who increasingly set the tone for their party.

What made Elizabeth Warren a fine choice for the job were the very qualities that got her tossed under the bus by Obama. She actually became a better choice as the opposition to her mounted and she stood her ground. She was a “polarizing” figure when she appeared before Congress. Perhaps the ultimate accolade came from the phony populist Paul, who called her a “socialist.” She wouldn’t take any bull from the Wall Street shills arrayed before her like overstuffed turkeys in Capitol Hill hearing rooms. Somehow, that very positive quality became a bad thing. So a few days after her last appearance on the Hill in July, Obama picked Cordray instead of Warren, who stood loyally by as he nominated her deputy for the job she should have gotten.

Take a look at the picture of this very nice and able man, read the generally glowing press coverage of this folksy, youngish, John Edwards-ish legal warrior, and ask yourself: Does this man have enough enemies to take on a job like this? Has anyone called him a “socialist” lately? Honestly, if we must have a symbol — a sacrificial lamb, perhaps, given the serious chances of defeat — if we are to have a Scopes in our generation’s Monkey Trial, can’t we have someone more worthy? More of a lightning rod? Instead, we read that Cordray squired his cute twin daughters around the Capitol. What’s needed is a trench knife, and he brings along the kiddies. As if he was on trial or something, which I guess he is.

In place of iconic, we got folksy. True, as Ohio A.G. he competently sued banks and even took on the rating agencies — though he lost that battle. But think of the other choices Obama could have made, potential appointees even less acceptable to the Republicans than the twin-squiring, glad-handing Ohio suer. Think of a steamroller like Eliot Spitzer, whose personal peccadilloes concealed the fact that he was easily the best adversary to face Wall Street since Pecora. Can you see Cordray blackmailing Wall Street execs, forcing them to change their ways? No way. True, you wouldn’t see him consorting with prostitutes, either, but he’s up for a job that requires a street fighter, and a dirty one, not a clean-living family man.

Cordray could be a competent deputy to a maniacal genius like Rudy Giuliani, another fine choice if he were a few years younger and hadn’t morphed into a RWNJ. How we forget that before he became the overhyped “nation’s mayor” and presidential candidate, Giuliani was a kick-butt prosecutor who would stop at nothing to nail his target.

Neither Spitzer nor Giuliani were choirboys. They were mean, rotten SOBs. In other words, they were just what you’d want to take on rapacious credit-card overchargers and their ilk, because there was a streak of badness in these law enforcers. (Forget what you read about Eliot Ness — I’ll bet he was a wife-beater with an opium habit.) These momsas share with Elizabeth Warren the kind of bulldog tenacity that literally terrified everybody with whom they came into contact when they were in their respective positions.

I’m sorry, but Richard Cordray isn’t anything like that. He ought to be Fighting Rick Cordray, the Foul-Mouthed Scourge of the Plains, but he isn’t. Sure, Spitzer and probably even Giuliani wouldn’t stand a hornet’s chance in hell of getting confirmed. But it would have been a war cry, a “Currahee!” to rally the troops. After all, our man from Ohio stands an awfully good chance of not getting confirmed, twins notwithstanding. His primary virtue, aside from being the warm body Obama offered up to Congress, is that he is a cut above the lemons Obama has picked for economic and regulatory posts since 2009.

Cordray is not an appalling choice like Timothy Geithner, who was far too close to major bankers while he was New York Federal Reserve chief, and brought that same institutional fealty to the Treasury Department. He’s not anywhere near as horrid as Geithner’s former boss Larry Summers, who along with Bob Rubin was an architect of bank deregulation during the Clinton administration. He’s not a bad joke like Mary Schapiro, who was the overpaid CEO of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority before being appointed to head the bureaucratic albatross known as the Securities and Exchange Commission.

I’m still pulling for Cordray, misgivings notwithstanding. He’s lame, but he’s all we’ve got. I hope that the process of getting past the congressional meat grinder is an ennobling experience for him. Maybe it will put some steel down his spine if he gets the job. Maybe he’ll leave the twins with the sitter next time and try some choke holds.

Meanwhile, I have three words for President Obama: think recess appointment. Then he can really call himself a populist.

Thanks to Scott Olsen, the Iraq vet and victim of brutal police overreaction at Occupy Oakland, for showing the many forms that fighting for one’s country can take. We’re especially thankful that he’s recovering from the coma induced by a tear gas canister fired directly at his head, and is well enough to give public statements.

Thanks to retired Police Capt. Ray Lewis, who participated in Occupy Wall Street in full uniform, and was arrested for his participation. As stories of police brutality spread, Lewis reminds us that most cops are fellow members of the 99 percent, working hard to stay afloat in an increasingly class-segregated nation. Most of them aren’t happy being seen as serving the interests of the oligarchy, and where there’s abuse, it’s generally the result of poor training and misguided priorities from the top, not the rank-and-file.

Thanks to Diane Ravitch, and other school reform critics like Dana Goldstein, for adding desperately needed perspective and balance to the school reform debate, a debate in which one side receives what could charitably be referred to as the lion’s share of favorable press coverage and philanthropic support. Their needling forces school reform advocates and foes alike to examine their assumptions and strengthen their arguments, and they sometimes end up causing even dilettante education policy gurus like Steven Brill to see that the seductive claims made by technocrat reformers tend to be overstated. Better, smarter policy debates are enough of a rarity that we should all be thankful for anyone who can manage to produce them.

Thanks to Wael Ghonim for putting aside his very good job with Google to put his life on the line for freedom and liberty for his people in Egypt. Lots of tech entrepreneurs and engineers talk of changing the world; few of them spend weeks in custody as political prisoners for their efforts. Wael Ghonim was instrumental in organizing the popular revolt that toppled a dictatorial regime,

Thanks to Nick Davies, who, along with Guardian investigative correspondent Amelia Hill and others at the Guardian, has been relentlessly exposing News Corps’s criminal news-gathering practices in the U.K. Reporting on the misdeeds of the powerful — and News Corp is hugely powerful, especially in Great Britain — is the best reporting there is, and the investigations and arrests that have resulted from Davies and Hill’s reporting will change the culture of the international media industry for the better. We’ll be especially thankful if News Corp shareholders force the giant conglomerate into more responsible corporate management.

Thanks to Elizabeth Warren for perfectly articulating the liberal ideal of the social contract. One good senator may be limited in how much she can achieve, but if she wins and inspires more like her to follow — and imitate her unapologetic rhetoric of fairness — we’ll have even more to be thankful for.

Thanks to Sree Sreenivasan, dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, for making a mockery of dishonest bully James O’Keefe. O’Keefe’s only power comes from other media outlets taking him seriously. In one hilarious video, Sreenivasan showed why O’Keefe’s a joke.