I love Elizabeth Warren. She’s strong, intelligent, charismatic, compassionate, honest, and progressive. But she is putting out some policies that could cost her (and us) the presidential election. I think one of those is Medicare for All. I’m pretty sure the suburban swing voters the Dems need to win in 2020 include a large segment that will vote against anyone who promises to take away their employee health coverage. Maybe Sanders or Warren could pull the swing voters along with their vision of the future. The policy is valid but the intermediate position of improving Obamacare and adding the public option is much more popular.
Way beyond that, Warren’s new gun control suggestions contain a couple of truly self-defeating elements. Her proposed Federal licensing system is exactly the kind of thing that triggers gun owners. Gets them up in arms, one might say. (Pardon the double entendre, please.) It's exactly the gun owner fantasy of the government taking total control of gun ownership. Warren's reasoning as expressed on her website is surprisingly illogical: "A license is required to drive a car, and Congress should establish a similarly straightforward federal licensing system for the purchase of any type of firearm or ammunition." But a license is required to DRIVE a car not to BUY one. And the driver's licenses are obtained at the state level, not Federal. Warren’s proposed tax increases on guns and ammunition seem to me to be truly punitive toward people with legitimate interest in collecting and using firearms. Her website explicitly states that besides generating income the purpose of the increased taxes would be to discourage people from buying guns and ammunition. As of 2017, 42 percent of American households own guns. That's a lot of people with some interest in buying guns and ammunition. Lose a big chunk of those votes and the election goes with it.
Trump will get ahold of these positions and drive millions of voters into his camp. Warren needs to show more respect for the attitudes of American swing voters to win in 2020.
edited to add paragraphs