Pres. Obama wasn’t the only Democrat on fire yesterday. Elizabeth Warren was in Columbus, Ohio campaigning with Ted Strickland. If you only have time for a snippet of the speech, you can find one at The New Civil Rights Movement. But the full speech is really worth the 25 minutes.
Looks like Sen. Warren wants to get into the explainer in chief competition. She spent a fair amount of time giving the crowd a history lesson. Sen. Warren talked about what America looked like before the great depression; boom and bust. The great depression ushered in a wave a reforms and 50 years of shared prosperity. Then comes Ronald Reagan and the return of trickle down economics.
Sen. Warren reported a couple of statistics that impressed the crowd. Between the 1930s and 1980, 70 percent of income growth went to the bottom 90 percent of the income distribution. Between 1980 and today only one percent of the gains went to the bottom 90 percent.
She also detailed the investments we made in ourselves mid century: education, infrastructure, science. She had a funny line: “We didn’t know what the future would look like but we were pretty sure it was going to need electricity.”
The sophistication of the speech took me by surprise. I was not expecting Sen. Warren to provide so much detail setting the current election in historical context. Sen. Warren, like Pres. Obama last night, characterizes this election as a fundamental decision point in our history.
Then of course, she laced into Donald Trump. Sen. Warren has extended her What type of man … riff and linked him to the KKK. And one other thing of beauty: She hung TPP around Rob Portman’s neck.
And, of course, Sen. Warren was urging us on even though we are down in Ohio, referencing her standing in September of her own Senate race. Its a fun speech. It will cheer you up.