“What was then the center was now the left.
What was far right is now the center.
What was then on the left no longer exists.”
- Cass Sunstein, 2004
There is a particular meme being echoed by certain Über-rich folks, cable news talking heads and a few ex-politcos about U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s slide in the polls since her high watermark this past September, October and November. They rhetorically ask, How could this happen? What precipitated this erosion of support?
A simple answer: The media went to war against her. They made it happen.
Since heady days of late 2019 when Senator Warren achieved frontrunner status she immediately was miscast as a radical, as an enemy of wealth, scurrilously attacked by whining billionaires who excel at practicing buccaneer forms of capitalism and – with a heaping dose of misogyny – described as having “a likability issue.” Of course, none of which is true.
But this should be of no surprise to anyone who understands how American politics has changed over the last fifty years. Ideas once considered fringe have become too easily accepted as mainstream while ideas that once buttressed a period of American prosperity from the Second World War through the 1970s are oddly seen as radical. The Massachusetts Senator’s economic policies – especially where the taxation of the top marginal rate is concerned – are not only right in line with those of iconic Democratic presidents FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ, but are also on par with those of Republican presidents such as Eisenhower and Ford.
None of those presidents qualify as usurpers of capitalism; all of them were then considered to be well within the mainstream. So today should Senator Warren.
Consider the nature of the attacks being leveled against the Bay State senator. Those coming particularly from neo-liberal centrist Democrats and anti-Trump conservatives often reach apoplectic proportions. Nowhere is this more evident than from the hosts and recurring guests from various MSNBC programs such as Morning Joe. Putting aside Joe Scarborough’s conservative-minded attacks, Mika Brzezinski’s accompanying audible exasperations, Donny Deutsch’s highly inaccurate protestations, the attacks by both former U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO.) and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens are the most historically inept.
McCaskill’s objections often focus on Senator Warren’s support for Medicare-For-All and support for a Green New Deal. Never a mind that strong case can be made that FDR would have supported a Green New Deal or that he also included universal health care coverage in his original Social Security legislation, but there is an incredibly unavoidable degree of irony in McCaskill’s particular case: The lineage of the U.S. Senate seat she once held goes back to Harry S. Truman, the man, who as president, valiantly, but unsuccessfully tried to pass legislation that would have provided universal health care for all.
Harry Truman brings us also to Bret Stephens’ historical amnesia. In a July 2019 op-ed piece for The New York Times, the columnist bemoaned progressive Democrats such as Elizabeth Warren embracing democratic socialism (a self-description she herself never embraced), complaining, “The center is Harry Truman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, not Eugene Debs and Michael Harrington. Democrats who want to win should know this.”
Well Bret, let’s discuss Truman, Moynihan and Michael Harrington. As discussed above, Truman’s proposed health plan was the template for Medicare-For-All. Secondly, Medicare-For-All was also embraced and supported by Senator Moynihan, who, upon seeing the Clinton administration’s proposed health care plan commented he could reform health care system simply by deleting the three words “65 and older” from the original 1960s legislation that created Medicare. As for Michael Harrington, much of LBJ’s Great Society was influenced by this democratic socialist’s writings. But LBJ’s genius was to borrow from socialism’s better ideas and apply them not to weaken a capitalist society, but to make it sturdier. So much for the op-ed columnist’s understanding of “the center.”
Sexism?
But what is most odd about these criticisms of Senator Warren, someone who openly puts her faith in an accountable form of capitalism, has come under attack from both centrists and conservatives about her economic policies far more so than Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.
What makes these attacks more perplexing is that Senator Sanders is more ambiguous in defining his idea of socialism than Senator Warren who is precise in defining her belief in capitalism. What limits would the Vermont senator-as-president want to apply to property ownership and profits? These are questions the same talking heads that have been attacking Senator Warren don’t ask as ferociously of Senator Sanders – at least for now.
It not difficult to wonder – especially in light of Donny Deutsch’s “likability” nonsense – - whether there is a certain amount of sexism involved here. That suspicion has more credibility in light of Michelle Goldberg’s observation that Senator Warren “didn’t get enough speaking time” during this past Friday night’s debate.
It does indeed seem odd that the Vermont senator comes under less attack for his personality than the personable Senator Warren. And while Senator Warren has come under blistering scrutiny about her way of paying for a Medicare-For-All plan, Senator Sanders, the legislator who wrote the bill, receives nowhere near the volume of slings and arrows that have been continuously aimed at his colleague from Massachusetts. What makes this more puzzling is that Senator Warren has demonstrated far more specificity in both her funding approach as well as her willingness to be more flexible than Senator Sanders in trying to implement this health care plan.
Nor do we hear the silly sexist comments that come out of Donny Deutsch’s mouth about likability aimed at Bernie – especially in light of Senator Warren’s propensity for taking endless up-close selfies with her supporters. Whether it is subconscious or not, it is not difficult to wonder the role sexism is playing in these attacks.
What Warren Must Do
But returning to the absurd charge that Democrats like Senator Warren “are going too far left”, it is time for her to refocus voters on the real danger to American capitalism: Today’s GOP is being rocket-fueled by a laissez-faire libertarianism that driving the country too far right.
Capitalism is now being abused and denigrated by the right. Instead of using the engines of commerce to enhance the general prosperity, a faction of very powerful individuals is subverting them to either deny or take away the very means of self-sufficiency and economic independence from the average American. In other words, these malefactors are bent on increasing their own economic freedom by diminishing the economic freedom of everyone else.
That is not a healthy, self-sustaining form of capitalism. FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and both Jack and Bobby Kennedy understood that fact. More importantly, Senator Warren fully understands that in spades. But that isn’t enough. She must remind the voters of that fact. This is not just a way to answer her critics but also an honest way to broaden her base of support. By justifiably claiming the mantle of American presidential heroes such as FDR and Truman she would be able to peel away potential voters from rivals Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar while remaining faithful to her core progressive base.
At the same time, Senator Warren must unapologetically remind the pundit class of where the center once was and again should be. And by her declared belief in a better, more just form of capitalism she is far better suited to make that argument than Senator Sanders.
Too many Democrats have walked away from the lessons bequeath to us by FDR and other New Deal liberals And too many of today’s “centrists” have almost become ashamed of being associated with the policies that helped create a great American middle class – Keynesian inspired policies. And far too many Democrats have been dreamily lulled into submission by fairy tales of an unregulated free market as being the greatest safeguard of freedom and individual liberty. On economics, the Democratic Party neo-liberal leadership has also gone too far right – not too far left. In that sense, centrist-minded Democrats such as Claire McCaskill and others have betrayed FDR, Truman, LBJ and Senator Robert Wagner, Sr.
This betrayal has had a double-edged effect. Besides allowing disproven laissez-faire nonsense being more widely accepted as fact it has also left an opening on liberalism’s further left flank allowing democratic socialists to co-opt many of liberalism’s great achievements inaccurately claiming them as their own.
Senator Warren, on the hand, embraces the legacy of liberal Democrats such FDR and Truman – more so than the other candidates seeking the Democratic nomination. Senator Warren in attempting to return the United States to its lost sense equilibrium is being as being attacked as if she were the second coming of Gus Hall. She is being cast as some sort of revolutionary bent upon unending capitalism. But her critics are wrong. Their war against her is also a war against necessary reform, not reckless revolution -- and one that is based upon misinformation as well as historical amnesia.
Beyond that, however, if she wants to win the nomination Senator Warren must distinguish herself from her friend Senator Sanders. It need not be done viciously at all. Indeed, it must be done through dialogue and not via ad hominem attacks. All the same, there are important distinctions that need to be made.
In late 2019, Senator Sanders was asked the difference between him and his rival for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Elizabeth Warren, he simply replied, “Elizabeth, I think, as you know, has said that she is a capitalist through her bones. I'm not.” – but left it at that with little detail explaining what he actually believes.
Senator Sanders’ democratic socialist identification can also adversely impact down-ballot races in blue as well as red and purple states. Many of his supporters would reply that labels no longer matter. That is a lethally wrong conclusion. It is also terribly naive. Today’s GOP has become quite adept at branding. To that end, they know exactly how transform confusion and blurred lines into defining progressives and their causes in order to suit their ends. It would be foolish to believe otherwise
As good friend of mine observed, Senator Sanders is strong on moralizing but vague on actual policy proposals. Centrist Democrats have actually given him this opening by walking away from FDR-Truman liberalism. Yet Senator Sanders does deserve credit for reviving New Deal liberalism and bringing it back into the American political discussion. But with that said, it is now Senator Warren’s task to use her candidacy to bring that discussion home. FDR was not a socialist; he was a self-described liberal – just like Senator Warren. That is why Elizabeth Warren, not Senator Sanders, is the truer heir to the legacies of FDR, Truman and the Kennedy brothers.
As Poltico editor-at-large aptly wrote of Roosevelt and the crux of his legendary 1936 “Rendezvous With Destiny” speech attacking the economic royalists of his day, “The president’s message was clear: His efforts to protect the ordinary American businessman and worker were solidly grounded in the core principles of “the American system of initiative and profit.” No revolutionary was he.”[i]
Senator Warren, on the other hand, is absolutely clear that she is not a socialist but a liberal who seeks to reform, not destroy capitalism – and by extension, to save it. But she must articulate that truism continuously, doubling down on that response whenever the punditry attacks her as “too far left.”
Senator Warren is fighting to change that mindset of the generally distorted understanding of what now constitutes the political center, as well as left or right. She is trying to do so by returning the mainstream to where it was fifty years ago – where it belongs. Those who see her as some enemy of capitalism should refrain from their hysterics and realize that she is not trying to destroy capitalism but actually save it.
[i] Canellos, Peter, “What FDR Understood About Socialism and Today’s Democrats Don’t”, Politico, Posted, August 16, 2019; Link