Warren Lost 2020 in 2015
This will be my last Warren post because I think she is out.
In 2015, you really couldn’t tell Warren and Sanders apart. Sure, she was a recovering mid/late life Republican. She had written some dicey things about school choice. A few of her pro-middle class policy proposals were anti-poor. However, her evolution to progressive politics was believable. Sanders had asked her to run for President, she said “No.” She didn’t want to take on the Clinton machine, so he ran.
Then she did not endorse Sanders. Either you think this is a big deal or you don’t. Not only did she not endorse Sanders. She made a bunch of excuses, and what’s worse, people started making excuses on her behalf about why it’s okay that she did not endorse Sanders. For me, the latter part is terrifying.
Sanders was in the field eating all of the risk and unpopularity for the sake of a better America, a vision that they both gave lip-service to sharing, and Warren wasn’t going to risk her bargaining position with the HRC clique to endorse him. And she was teaching an entire generation that THAT’S what politics is, and anyone who expected Warren to stand up for what she said were her principles was a misogynist
Either Sanders and Warren agree on policy, in which case Warren was more scared of the Clinton-wing backlash for backing Sanders than she believes in policy, which is a terrifying quality in a progressive ally.
Or Sanders and Warren don’t agree in policy, in which case, that’s fine, but they aren’t interchangeable “progressives”.
Elite feminism means White women don’t have to stand for anything because often mediocre White men win without standing for anything, and women are equal to White men. That’s a regressive feminism.
Take healthcare: The people who care about universal healthcare don’t trust her. The establishment healthcare lobby doesn’t trust her. The only special interest who trusts her is the “Professional-White-Women-Have-The-Right-To-Succeed-Without-Being-Trustworthy” lobby. Granted, that’s a big lobby, but it’s not a plurality.
Rashida Tlaib, Ihan Omar, and AOC have long, impressive careers ahead of them because they understand that you can’t build a movement on gender chauvinism; you have to build it with integrity and a commitment to democratizing power. They are the future of the America Left, and that’s a beautiful thing.