Elizabeth Warren's Inadvertent Best Friends: Wall Street and Republicans

The Massachusetts Senate race was close right up until the end, with three major polls showing Elizabeth Warren pulling ahead and two newspaper polls showing close to a tie. Now that Warren has defeated Republican Senator Scott Brown, who was once seen as an easy bet for reelection, it’s likely to trigger one of the strongest cases of political regret in recent memory.

Congressional Republicans, Wall Street bankers, and business lobbyists now face the possibility that by driving Warren out of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which she helped establish, and which they agitated to keep her from heading, they created a far bigger and more threatening animal: a hugely ambitious senator with national star power, command of financial affairs, and the stature to influence President Obama.