By now there have been plenty of tea-reading diaries parsing Elizabeth Warren's increasingly mild denials that she will run for president in 2016. In my view, Warren has no choice but to run and her speech yesterday to the AFL-CIO shows why: Warren abhors the corporatism that now infects the Democratic Party. How then can Warren stand by while Hillary Clinton is nominated and resumes a death-march for the Democratic Party that stomps the American middle class into oblivion as it does so?
Here are some excerpts from Warren's speech that indicate she will not stand idly by as this travesty occurs:
Warren Throws Four Punches at the Clintons
Corporate profits and GDP are up. But if you work at Wal-Mart, and you are paid so little that you still need food stamps to put groceries on the table, what does more money in stockholders’ pockets and an uptick in GDP do for you?
The Clintons and Wal-Mart go together like peanut butter and jelly. ZING!
Pretty much the whole Republican Party – and, if we’re going to be honest, too many Democrats – talked about the evils of ‘big government’ and called for deregulation. It sounded good, but it was really about tying the hands of regulators and turning loose big banks and giant international corporations to do whatever they wanted to do.
Hello, Bill Clinton, leader of the Democratic Party's descent into corporatism.
Look at the choices Washington has made, the choices that have left America’s middle class in a deep hole… The choice to sign trade pacts and tax deals that let subsidized manufacturers around the globe sell here in America while good American jobs get shipped overseas.
Hello, NAFTA. Hello again, Bill Clinton. And Barack Obama? Yup, we're looking at you, too.
And the coup de grace:
So who got the increase in income over the last 32 years? One hundred percent of it went to the top 10%. All of the new money earned in this economy over the past generation — all that growth in the GDP — went to the top. All of it.
Now how can someone who feels so passionately stand aside while yet another neoliberal assumes the mantle of the presidency under the banner of the Democratic Party? I don't think Warren can. She must know that if she doesn't throw her hat in the ring she will be relegated to the role of Progressive Hood Ornament for the Democratic corporatists. I think Elizabeth Warren is too intelligent, too tough, and too passionate to allow herself to be marginalized like that.
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