With so many progressive candidates running for President in 2020, we risk splitting the progressive vote and ending up with an establishment or mediocre candidate. And while I realize that change comes from the people, the president has a bully pulpit and I want a president who can articulate what has gone wrong in the US and can propose specific ways to fix it. Just look at the impact AOC has had- I had never heard of her before she ran for congress, and she’s definitely changed the political dialog.
I’m supporting Elizabeth Warren for president. And here’s why:
Warren’s personal story is extremely compelling. She was a Republican until she started researching the reasons for family bankruptcy. In the process of doing this research, she realized that the options that saved her family after it encountered some unfortunate (but not atypical) hardships were no longer available to today’s families. She realized that our political system has been gamed by the rich and powerful to extract more and more out of the rest of us. This apparently was quite a shock to her world view, and she now lives and breathes the fight to reverse the damage that has been done by having corporations and wealthy donors write the laws. She understands the economic system and the way it has been gamed very, very well, and has made fixing this her personal mission.
There are numerous issues that are important to progressives, but I think economics are the key to most of these issues. Income inequality leads to a separation of the rich and the poor, and the resulting ability to treat the poor with impunity. We’ve heard endless stories about how so many Trump voters feel their power slipping away. They aren’t wrong to feel that- they just have been convinced to blame minorities and immigrants for their problems rather than those who are actually ripping them off. The ability of the rich to control the political process has many implications, including our inability to take meaningful action on climate change. It also is responsible for the constant efforts on the right to disenfranchisement of minority and Democratic voters and blame them for the economic decline of so many of us.
I expect all the Democratic candidates to hold progressive views on issues such as race relations, LGBT issues, voting rights, police violence and climate change, and for the most part I think they do. I can see how a black or gay person has lived these issues and therefore understand them better than a white woman, but I don’t hear anyone putting together anything more specific proposals or convincing me that they are going to be more effective on these topics that Warren. Every candidate is going to have strengths and weaknesses, and I feel Warren can represent us very well on all of the progressive issues. And I think the economic fight is one that can resonate across the political spectrum. All but the rich have seen their relative economic power decrease over the last 40 years. Warren has a gift of simplifying these issues to make them easily understood, and to get people to pay attention.
Warren is folksy but articulate, intelligent, quick on her feet, and is offering specifics that are universally attractive. Her wealth tax proposal is popular with the majority of voters, and even with the majority of Republicans. She’s going after monopolies, in the tech industry anyway, and it’s about time someone went after monopolies! She’s not taking PAC money, which causes politicians to be beholden to corporate interests rather than the public at large.
I want a candidate who is exceedingly passionate about their fight to rebuild the middle class. With Warren’s passion, a great understanding of the issue, concrete proposals and a track record of success (such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau), she’s shown that she can succeed at making effective change. She’s also been tested in a pretty down-and-dirty senate campaign. And while the press has made a big deal of the Native American heritage thing, she didn’t do anything wrong or receive any benefit from it, and the press and GOP is going to smear anyone who becomes a serious threat to business-as-usual, including whoever is the eventual Democratic nominee. You call people names when you don’t have a better argument against their policy proposals, so that’s what the GOP does, and will do.
Basically, I think Warren can be successful at making real change that will benefit all of us, because making real change is what she is all about. She’s running for president because restoring the middle class is her mission in life, and she understands how the other progressive issues are all interconnected with this issue.