Elizabeth Warren just gave the most important speech of her campaign: she showed how her economic plans would improve the daily lives of working families and small businesses, and told the story of how economic corruption has hurt those workers and businesses. Warren has built a brand as the woman with a plan, rolling out solid substantive ideas throughout the campaign. But in this speech, she brilliantly put many of those ideas together into a comprehensive agenda for long term economic revitalization. Just as importantly, she linked her plan to take on corruption in Washington directly to her economic agenda, because the heart of the matter is that this corruption is what derails the deep economic reforms our country needs.
This kind of big picture, comprehensive speech was exactly what the doctor ordered. It focused the campaign on the bread and butter issues of jobs, wages, inflation in basic necessities, and helping small and medium-sized businesses grow. It showed that a progressive economic agenda which takes on monopolistic businesses and the top 1% will grow the economy.
The speech laid out three central economic ideas. In Warren’s words:
· First, too many big American corporations have hurt workers and our economy by focusing solely on the short-term interests of their investors.
· Second, in market after market, competition has declined.
· And third, stagnant incomes and rising costs have stretched family budgets past the breaking point.
In the next three sections, she rolled out the ideas in each of those areas she has been talking about not only in this presidential campaign but throughout her career as a Senator and author. All of those plans fit together remarkably well, making the case of just how important restructuring our economy really is to America’s working families and small businesses.
I want to highlight in particular the importance of her ideas in terms of helping to rebuild the small business sector in this country. Small business is not something Democrats focus on enough, and some of the Democrats over the years who have claimed to be “pro-business” have really been pro-big business and Wall Street instead. But the progressive economic agenda - using anti-trust to break up monopolistic corporations, stopping big tech companies from crushing small business, keeping big money insiders from getting sweetheart deals from government, lowering costs on big ticket items like housing and health care, and allowing entrepreneurship to flourish by freeing people who want to start small businesses from the burdens of student debt and health insurance barriers- will help small business far more than the tired old boosterism of the Republican Party. Warren’s discussion of this part of her agenda was music to my ears.
After she laid out her comprehensive approach to the economy, Warren did something else very important: she addressed head on her theory of change. She acknowledged how tough it will be to make the kind of big structural change she stands for. But she didn’t just make a vague promise about magically getting there somehow. She talked about the kind of big, long term, passionate movement that will need to be built to fight through those special interests and “business as usual” politicians who want to block change. She talked about the importance of starting with big ideas, working with that grassroots movement to change things, and taking on the nitty gritty work in the trenches to get things done.
She then connected the difficulty of change to the long term corruption in DC. We will need to take on that corruption at the very same time we take on the big economic changes we want to make, otherwise we will never get things done. And Warren’s plan for taking on corruption is by far the most comprehensive that any candidate has put forward.
This speech will set the tone for the rest of Warren’s campaign. It makes a clear, compelling case for her candidacy. Her argument- that we must restructure the economy to make it work for working people, including small businesspeople- is exactly what Democrats need to do. She closed her case making the political argument that running on these bold progressive economic reforms is the path to victory next November. She is 100% right. This agenda is popular and motivational with both swing voters and base Democrats: voters don’t think it is too radical, they think it is exactly what government should be doing.