WASHINGTON - July 18 - AP reports: “Reigniting a partisan fight over banking regulations, President Barack Obama intends to nominate former Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray to lead a consumer protection bureau that was a central feature of a law overhauling the rules that govern the financial sector.

“Obama plans to announce the nomination formally on Monday, the White House said Sunday. Republicans immediately threatened to block Cordray’s Senate confirmation. In choosing Cordray, Obama bypassed Elizabeth Warren, a favorite of consumer groups…

“But consumer advocate and one-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader called bypassing Warren ‘an act of political cowardliness by President Obama.’

“‘Elizabeth Warren apparently is just too good, too smart, too able to arouse the just concerns of millions of American families over the need to put the law-and-order wood to the corporate criminals, defrauders and reckless speculators,’ Nader said.”

RALPH NADER, via John Richard, info at csrl.org, http://www.essential.org
Nader called Warren the most “qualified, most motivated and most articulate candidate for the directorship of the Consumer Financial Regulatory Bureau. … President Obama should realize that his regular back-of-the-hand attitude to his liberal and progressive supporters — who sent him to the White House — can have consequences. He believes they have nowhere to go. But they do. They can stay home in 2012, as so many did in 2010 to the detriment of the Democrats and many Congressional races.”

Nader wrote a letter backing Warren a year ago.