Paul Krugman offered his review of Senator Warren’s book, This Fight is Our Fight, in yesterday’s NYT. In his review, Dr. Krugman offers, for him, a strong endorsement of the subject matter, but concludes with equivocation as to whether Senator Warren offers a strong path forward. Still, in his review of her book Krugman is able to provide a brief but good retrospective on the recent evolution and influence of progressive economic positions.
What Krugman does not say outright but makes clear is that what supports the views of Sen. Warren, and by extension the progressive movement, is that time has proven these views correct.
Now prominent Democrats need to figure out how to be effective leaders of the opposition — as the party’s base sees it, the resistance. Warren’s new book is in effect a manifesto offering one vision about how that role should be played.
Krugman labels Warren’s position as “enlightened populism”, and states that her views have gained more prominence in the last 20 years and
mainly because it’s now backed by a lot of evidence (which is why I call Warren’s populism “enlightened”)
One of the frustrations throughout this past generation for many of us has been the continuance and embracing, by Democrats and Republicans, of economic, regulatory and tax policies that have demonstrably failed, over and over again. Krugman summarizes Warren’s approach to explaining why in this way:
Here Warren, both in the Senate and now in this book, has been harsher and more explicit than most Democrats have been in the past, condemning the corruption of our system by big money — and naming names.
Krugman offers his praise for Warren’s book:
So “This Fight Is Our Fight” is a smart, tough-minded book.
And then qualifies his praise:
But is it an effective blueprint for progressive political revival? The evidence suggests that it’s incomplete.
And to back this up Krugman offers this:
But last November West Virginia went almost three-to-one for a very unenlightened populist who made nonsense promises to bring back long-gone coal jobs, and has tried — so far unsuccessfully — to gut Medicaid, which covers more than a quarter of the state’s residents. Why? …. But she doesn’t offer any good answers.
In closing, Krugman writes:
But maybe it’s a matter of time, and what Democrats need right now is a reason to keep fighting. And that’s something Warren’s muscular, unapologetic book definitely offers.
Yes it does.
Warren not only lays out the policies that Democrats can rally around, she lays out how they have proven correct, and that it is the corruption in our system by big money that has infected America’s democracy.
Krugman notes:
Yes, what Warren is preaching sounds very much like the second coming of the New Deal — as she herself acknowledges: “We built it once, and we can build it again.” But: Warren brings an edge to her advocacy that many Democrats have shied away from, at least until recently.
But what Warren’s book makes clear, and Krugman acknowledges, is that the economic, tax, and regulatory policies that contributed to the post-Great Depression creation and expansion of the middle class worked. And similar policies will work again. Conservatives have for decades justified their dismantling of these policies with promises that their trickle down policies and deregulation would produce even greater prosperity for the masses, and they have been proven wrong each and every time.
The class war has been one sided for too long, with the only benefit being history has proven Conservative’s promises to be lies of such great proportion they dwarf even Trump’s.
The facts are on our side. The merits for our country are on our side. It is time to fight back.