Yesterday, I attended a house party for Elizabeth Warren in downtown Detroit. Although the invitation e-mail clearly said “house party,” I was under the mistaken impression that the event would take place in a big hall.
Indeed the event took place in the vicinity of many buildings owned by Dan Gilbert (which doesn’t narrow it down). I got to the address late, at 2:25 p.m., and there were three doors that looked like they could be the right door.
On the sidewalk there was a young lady reviewing the invitation. She tried one call box, I tried another. Then these two guys showed up and they figured out we were also there for the Warren event.
They called, and a minute later this apartment resident showed up to let us in. The house party was actually in someone’s apartment. I brought my camera, intending to take lots of pictures, but decided it would have been a violation of privacy to take and post pictures of the host’s apartment.
All together, we were about twenty people. There were introductions as we snacked on tortilla chips, crackers, pita, etc. Some of us also had a little wine or a beer.
The majority of the guests were certain in their support of Elizabeth Warren for president, but also said they would support the Democratic nominee even if that’s not Warren.
All of us agreed that Trump is awful and should not get a second term. But the extent of Trump’s awfulness is still not fully known. For example, some at the party were genuinely surprised to hear about the time Trump tried to cut off medical care for his baby grandnephew.
The issue of Elizabeth Warren’s DNA test came up. We agreed Trump should have paid up on his bet, given that he’s supposedly a billionaire. We are not the least bit perturbed about Warren’s family’s oral history being slightly inaccurate.
We also discussed the idea that Warren was once a “diehard conservative,” and a registered Republican, according to Alex Thompson reporting for Politico.
The meaning of the word “conservative” has drifted over the decades. It used to be about actually conserving something, like maybe the status quo, or maybe the budget. Now it’s about right-wing fascism and the destruction of democracy.
Likewise the Republican Party used to have integrity, and actual policy ideas besides dangerous deregulation and cutting taxes for the very wealthy. So I think that Warren came to realize that the Republican Party was losing its way and did not line up with her moral compass.
At about 2:55 p.m., we watched a private pre-recorded video in which Warren thanked the house party hosts for opening their homes to strangers, and talked about her platform in broad strokes: making the American economy work for everyone, not just the very rich.
I speculate that almost everyone who hates Elizabeth Warren has been helped by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has recovered about $12 billion for American consumers, according to Fortune in 2017.
That bureau was thought up by a group of consumer advocates, including then Harvard Prof. Elizabeth Warren. Republicans of course claim that the CFPB is government overreach, but then so is any regulation the fat cats of Wall Street don’t like.
For the next hour or so, we discussed various aspects of policy and how the Democrats compare and contrast. This one guy was saying that the way to get big corporations to actually reinvest is to increase the marginal tax rate, because tax cuts for big corporations just wind up going to stock buybacks.
We also talked a little bit about the “a woman, just not that woman” syndrome, in which the “not that woman” is whichever woman is currently running.
Of the other Democrats running, we all seemed to be in agreement that Pete Buttigieg is impressive and that he’d be a good running mate. We like Beto O’Rourke but maybe he’s not quite ready yet.
At about 4:15 p.m., we joined a phone conference call. Warren was calling from a packed house party in New Hampshire. She said she was standing on a box and even so the people in the back could not see her.
So the house party in Detroit was small. But combined with all the house parties across the nation, this could be a very good start for Elizabeth Warren.