Last Saturday I picked up my print-copy of The New York Times and found this on the front-page: “Roadblock to a Biden-Warren Ticket : Decades of Policy Disputes.”(5/23/20). I was surprised and angry.
It seemed so declarative; it read more like an opinion headline than a news article. How could they overcome “decades of policy disputes?”
However, the lede of article did open on a different note. Biden and Warren speak together about once a week to try to find “common ground,” and move, “ beyond their policy disputes of the past 20 Years.”
But the title wasn’t the most worst part, the most egregious passage came farther down. The reporters interviewed, “a New York-based hedge fund executive,” and one of the Party’s most generous donors. Marc Lasry said, “putting her on the ticket will alienate anybody in the middle.” How would he know? Sounds more like Wall St. than Main St.
The article also reported, “it is not only their ideological differences: The two have different approaches to government. “ The reporters used the battle to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau(CFPB) as an example. Warren is credited with creating the agency; Obama wanted to appoint her as the first director but the Republicans made it clear that they would not consent.
I can’t believe that 20 years of policy differences is going to make that much of a difference. After three and a half years of Trump, three months of the Covid-19 pandemic that has left over 100,000 Americans dead and 36 million people unemployed, who knows what policies will work in eight months.
The conclusion was more optimistic with a quote from a recent Snapchat interview. Biden said, “I’m looking for someone who has strengths that I don’t have as much...I’m not afraid to go out and find someone who knows more than I know about a subject.”