Dear Ms. Warren: congratulations for jumping into the U.S. Senate race in your state. And good luck and be well--you will find that being a "candidate" offers challenges quite different from having to answer to discourteous, uninformed Republicans. Respectfully, I'd like to ask your position on a number of issues.
Quick context. There is no doubt any Democrat would be superior to the incumbent. That's a no-brainer.
People like me--and there are probably many more who fall into this category--can't vote for you since we live in other states. What you obviously need from us is financial support and, of course, spreading the good word to voters, or organizational leaders, we might know in Massachusetts.
To state the obvious, out-of-staters are interested in your race, partly, because the seat now held by a Republican could make the difference in the balance of power in the Senate after the 2012 elections. It's a winnable seat in an environment where Democrats are likely to lose other seats currently in Democratic hands.
But, I ask the following questions in the context of a Democratic PRIMARY in your race. There are two other declared candidates in the race--neither of whom I am supporting at this point. But, let's agree that they, too, would be preferable to the incumbent. I suspect that all the candidates will agree on many issues.
Before I, and perhaps others, back you and add our names to list-building organizations, I think it would be helpful to know what kind of Democrat we'd be electing. The economic, foreign policy and environmental crisis are so acute that we need people who will be, if I may say, Paul Wellstone Democrats.
Wellstone, among many things, was the only Democrat running for re-election in 2002 who had the courage to vote against the authorization for the Iraq War. And the Democratic Party would be a far better party--policy-wise and electorally successful, in my opinion--if the Senate, and the House, was filled with a lot more Wellstones and a lot fewer...well, I'll just leave it at that. As sort of an internal criteria I adopted after Wellstone's tragic death, my modest campaign contributions only go to candidates who are in the Wellstone model.
There are many questions to ask. Others will do so. And this is not a "how dare you not have answered these questions so far"! You have just entered the race and I assume you will elaborate on your positions.
Here are just 10 questions that I think your candidacy should address, and they are asked with respect and certainly a viewpoint, some of which I express. I try not to ask the softball ones where I suspect I know the answer (e.g., you are likely 100 percent for marriage equality, 100 percent for a woman's right to choose and opposed to the odious Citizens United decision):
1. What is your position about the war in Afghanistan? Do you support the president's on-going war policy? Or do you oppose the war and would you vote for an immediate cut-off of all funds for offensive action and only for funds for immediate, safe withdrawal of all U.S. military personnel?
2. In your opening statement on your website, and your video, you repeatedly refer to the "middle class". Why do you decline to use the term THE POOR? Particularly since 1 in 6 Americans now lives below the federal poverty line "...the highest percentage since 1993 and the largest number in at least five decades."[emphasis added]
While I understand that political operatives and pollsters tell us that no one cares about The Poor and that repeating the term "middle class" is a smart political move because people think of themselves as "middle class", what the Democratic Party needs are leaders with some moral convictions to perhaps move the country, and voters, to a place where we shape our country to act to attack poverty, not ignore it.
When one in four children live in poverty, we cannot let pollsters and campaign operatives dictate a willful ignorance of such a moral blight.
3. You say, "Good public schools, good public universities, and good technical training can give us a workforce better than any in the world." Respectfully, in my opinion, the Democratic Party needs to stop repeating this statement for two reasons. First, it continues to advance the erroneous idea that our economic crisis is because we are not educated enough. Respectfully, the crisis has very little to do with education--the vast majority of jobs in the future, according to government statistics, do not require a college education. The crisis we face has a lot more to do with the 30-year assault on wages. Being smarter won't stop that.
Second, it enhances the idea that we either have the best workers in the world OR SHOULD HAVE the best workers in the world. Again, respectfully, that idea of "winning" some competition is not the answer to the wage crisis.
So, the question is: can you explain how being more educated will be useful to counter the broad class warfare underway that has undermined wages?
4. How would you vote on the pending so-called "free trade" agreements with South Korea, Panama and Colombia? Speaking as one union member, your statement on trade concerns me. You write: "If we are going to sell our products to the rest of the world, we need to strengthen trade laws and ensure their enforcement. We need to make sure that those we compete with also respect workers’ rights and environmental rules."
But, respectfully, we cannot "strengthen" trade laws that are fundamentally a bad idea because they are principally about lowering wages. You can't "respect" workers rights when those rights are like a flea deposited on the elephant of deals that are a raft of protections for capital and investment. They are flawed at their core.
And, if you oppose the agreements, would you vote NO even if the president tried to advance those agreements with the worker retraining attached?
Viewpoint: retraining is a bait-and-switch strategy--concede that we are kissing the jobs we have now "goodbye" in return for a promised job somewhere down the road. The problem is pretty simple: the current jobs are typically decent paying, often-unionized jobs with benefits. The jobs down the road? If they ever materialize, they will be substantially lower-paying, with likely minimal if any benefits, and almost certainly non-union.
Your view?
5. What is your view of the Super Commission aka the Catfood Commission II? Or, more specifically, do you think we have a debt or deficit "crisis"--or do you agree that it is not a "crisis" and has been erroneously embraced by the Democratic Party at the expense of a public campaign for a massive jobs bill?
6. Related to #5, would you take a truly progressive position and oppose ALL domestic cuts in favor of attacking corporate welfare first? One estimate of the amount of corporate welfare we could cut is TWO TRILLION DOLLARS.
7. You state: "Instead of giving tax breaks to the already-rich and already-powerful, to the corporations and CEOs who have already made it, it’s time America recognized the working people and small businesses who are still trying to build a future." Bravo.
But--what exactly is your proposal for taxes on the wealthy? Do you only support a return to the Clinton era's relatively small tax rates of the wealthy? Or do you favor far higher taxes on the wealthy, for example, starting at 50 percent for those earning at least one million dollars a year?
What is the number??? (A small hint: what the president is proposing is too weak).
8. Would you support a significant financial transactions tax? This not just about raising money. We need to cut Wall Street down to size and return the financial services sector to a place where it does not have such a huge role in our economy. A financial transactions tax would aid that effort--and slow down the maniacal trading that produces nothing of worth to millions of hard-working Americans.
9. Would you support an INCREASE in Social Security benefits? Such a position would be entirely warranted--given the loss of savings experienced by millions of retired people because of the criminal behavior and irresponsibility of the people on Wall Street. And, most important, you would be a voice correcting the entirely false rhetoric--heard from the mouths of too many Democrats--that Social Security is in "crisis" that it has to be "fixed" and/or benefits need to be reduced because of a phony argument that Social Security is underfunded. It isn't--and we need a Democrat who will demand from other Democrats that they...well, start talking like DEMOCRATS.
10. Finally, would you demand that the president, and other Democrats, back off pressure being levied against people like New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman who are trying to hold banks accountable for the mess they created.
And, a related question: would you press for a more serious, sweeping criminal investigation (partly using the evidence amassed via hearings conducted by Carl Levin, who publicly stated, "Our investigation found a financial snake pit rife with greed, conflicts of interest, and wrongdoing"). In the wake of your fine work setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, you, of all people, are perfectly positioned to call for criminal indictments and jail terms for Wall Street executives who broke the law.
Speaking as a New Yorker, I feel sorry for you in one respect: you are being forced by the dynamics of the campaign to express some new-found interest in, or, worse, loyalty to, the Red Sox. Don't cave in. Stand strong.
And don't forget to hug Otis--As Harry S. Truman said, "If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog".