Bankruptcy law professor Elizabeth Warren on that Barack Obama speech I wrote about earlier:

I can think of many reasons that bankruptcy is a terrible subject for someone running for president. It is very technical (hard to wedge into a sound bite). It is depressing (no one wants to think about going bankrupt). It will annoy big-money interests (financial services gave big money to pass the current bankruptcy laws).

Savvy handlers would advise against it. So why would Obama make bankruptcy relief a visible part of his platform?

…Obama has history. He voted against the bankruptcy bill. He voted in favor of the amendments that would have eased the effects of the amendments. But his real history is deeper. He was a community organizer who saw first-hand the effects of aggressive lending. He was a state legislator who felt the impact of federal pre-emption on his ability to protect the citizens he represented.

That makes sense. When Obama was in the Illinois state senate, he represented a district on the South Side of Chicago, a diverse region with a long working-class history. Individual bankruptcy is an alien concept to the economic elite who populate K Street and the corridors of Congress, but it’s a very real issue for the kinds of people Obama has represented throughout his political career. It’s been a while since we’ve had a figure on the national scene who was as well equipped to address debt and bankruptcy issues as Obama is.