The Democratic party’s new intellectual center of gravity
The pundits are declaring Elizabeth Warren irrelevant (after years of announcing she should run for president when she had only just started being a senator and was focused on that), but her ideas matter either way.
But since her initial announcement in December, Warren’s campaign has rolled out a series of detailed policy proposals in quick succession, outlining structural changes to major industries, government functions, and regulatory procedures that would facilitate more equitable representation in the federal government and overhaul the economy in favor of the working class. These policy proposals have made Warren the Democratic party’s new intellectual center of gravity, a formidable influence who is steadily pushing the presidential primary field to the left and forcing all of her primary challengers to define their political positions against hers.
The Democrats desperately need more of that. They’ve been letting themselves be dragged to the right since forever, and they need to knock it off.
Warren outlined a huge overhaul of the childcare system that would revolutionize the quality, cost and curriculum of early childhood education, with subsidies for families and a living wage for caregivers. It’s a proposal that she talks about in the context of her own career when, as a young mother and fledgling legal mind, she almost had to give up a job as a law professor because childcare for her young son was too expensive.
Warren has also proposed a housing plan that would limit huge investors’ abilities to buy up homes, give incentives for localities to adopt renters’ protections, and build new public housing. Crucially, and uniquely, her housing plan would also provide home ownership grants to buyers in minority communities that have historically been “redlined”, a term for the racist federal housing policies that denied federally backed mortgages to black families. The provision, aimed to help black and brown families buy their first homes, is a crucial step toward amending the racial wealth gap, and it has helped sparked a broader conversation within the party about the need to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves – a concept that Warren has also endorsed.
It’s easier to kneecap candidates than it is to kneecap ideas.
Especially when the candidates are women.
‘Oh, no, of course not, I’m not sexist, I just think Hillary is a flawed candidate. I, mean, for example, if Elizabeth Warren ran I’d support her.’
Ehrm hehrm. Exactly.
I think she’d be a great president, but unfortunately she’s not lighting the world on fire at the movement. It’s way too soon to write her off though. A few great debate performances, debates, speeches, etc., can turn things around quickly.
I don’t know that women are particularly prone to getting “kneecapped”. What I more see is they often don’t get traction in the first place. Certainly there are plenty of male candidates that take a big hit for something insignificant (Dukakis in the tank, Kerry windsurfing, Obama clumsily trying to do Warren’s “you didn’t build that” speech, etc.), so from my perspective it’s not particularly a sexist phenomenon.
As for Warren’s “kneecapping”, her Native American ancestry “reveal” was a big mistake. I know many on the left think too much was made of that, but anecdotally people I know who would be apt to support her were cringing as soon as she released the video, and it just got worse from there. Apparently she’s privately apologized to the Cherokee Nation, which has fueled anger due to the apology not being as prominent as the alleged reveal. Her Texas bar application recently came out, and on it she had listed her race as “Native American”. This is going to continue to haunt her. She’d better make all her allies happy and come up with a good response to use whenever this is brought up (which infuriatingly Hillary never did for the email issue) or she might not recover.
Minor correction: She listed her race as “American Indian”.
Skeletor – Hillary got kneecapped. She had traction. She was winning the popularity polls. She won the popular vote. She was a clear favorite until “her e-mails” and “Crooked Hillary”. You can say it isn’t sexist all you like, but when I hear numerous people suggesting they didn’t vote for her because she was ambitious, while voting for other presidential candidates in their life that were equally ambitious, but male…sorry, I’m calling that out.
Skeletor:
1) Did you not hear men frequently saying in 2016 what I posted in my comment? There’s always some excuse not to support a woman, and the excuse is always couched in ‘I don’t have a problem with women in general, I just don’t feel I can support THAT woman for [reason].’
2) https://medium.com/s/story/the-media-gaslighting-of-2020s-most-likable-candidate-4c42baab641e
Skeletor…you do realize we all have access to the same conventional wisdom you do, right? It’s not that we’re not aware of it, it’s that we don’t just nod and accept every word of it.
I’ve never seen the likes of you for putting great effort and attention into repeating Mainstream Talking Points as if they were novel and compelling. I mean ffs do you really think we need to be told more about the whole god damn beaten to death “Native American” thing?
I don’t care who the Dems pick as their candidate in the primaries. As long as it is someone who can beat Trump.
That’s really all that matters in 2020. It’s an existential question for the United States.