Harvard law professor may keep America safe for intellectuals and free thinkers

Elizabeth Warren campaigned today at the Orleans Farmer's Market

Dotty Smith, John Bangert & Elizabeth Warren

Photographs by Walter Brooks Cape Cod Today

A concerned candidate for the U.S. Senate, Elizabeth Warren, listens to the woes of one of the 99% at the Farmer's Market on Old Colony Way in Orleans today. Walter Brooks photos.

Elizabeth Warren warmly greeted by the 99% on a cold November morning

By Walter Brooks

A smiling State Senator Dan Wolf introduces US Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren to his constituents in Orleans on Saturday morning.

The election isn't for one year and one day on November 6, 2012, and the Massachusetts Democratic Party Primary isn't  until next September 18, but former Harvard Law professor and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau creator Elizabeth Warren is wasting no time introducing herself to the grass roots, and even the vegetable roots, at the Orleans Farmer's Market in Orleans.

This reporter began his first daily newspaper jobin 1951, the very height of the infamous and repressive "McCarthy Era" in American politics. The atmosphere brewing in politics today is starting to remind me of those frightening times of intolerance and anti-intellectualism in our country as "Occupy" protest pop up from coast to coast and even here on bucolic Cape Cod where there were several this week again, see the one in Falmouth here on Monday and in Hyannis here on Wednesday when the daily daily was 'occupied' and their reporters didn't have the professionalism to walk out the front door and cover it or even report that it happened.

State Senator Wolf and candidate Warren say they will fight to return America to the civility and sense of the intervening years, and the crowd of "1 per-centers" welcoming them today seemed to believe it.

Even the Boston Globe has described Elizabeth Warren as "the plainspoken voice of people getting crushed by so many predatory lenders and under regulated banks", and TIME magazine has called her a "New Sheriff of Wall Street" and has twice included her among America's 100 most influential people.

   Longtime Democratic activist and Harwich Selectman Ed McManus makes a statement.