Hey all,
Here’s our final edition of the Caucus Power Rankings. As a reminder, here’s where we landed:
- 1: Elizabeth Warren
- 2: Bernie Sanders
- T-3: Andrew Yang
- T-3: Pete Buttigieg
- T-5: Amy Klobuchar
- T-5: Tom Steyer
- 7: Joe Biden
- 8: Michael Bennett
- 9: Deval Patrick
- T-10: Tulsi Gabbard
- T-10: Mike Bloomberg
- 12: John Delaney
Arguments For:
Josh — #1 — Back in 2016, when Bernie Sanders announced he was running for president, I remember thinking, “Oh nice! He’s great. I still hope Warren runs, though.” I have been a Warren fan since her work on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and her appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart in 2012. A girl who grew up in Oklahoma with three brothers who served in the military, Warren dreamed of becoming a teacher. Later on, she discovered law and worked her way through a few law professor jobs until she landed eventually at Harvard Law, teaching law and specializing on bankruptcy law. Throughout that journey, Warren researched what was preventing American families from financial security, an area of research that led to a transformation from identifying as a Republican to becoming a progressive advocate for consumer’s rights.
In the wake of the Great Recession of 2009, Warren relentlessly fought for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a governmental agency watchdog that would punish banks and other for-profit institutions on behalf of consumers who don’t have the time or resources to fight these behemoths themselves. Obama wanted Warren to lead the agency, but in an ironic twist, Republicans fought against her appointment so vociferously that she ended up running for Senate instead and defeated incumbent Republican Scott Brown. So instead of having Warren running an agency, now these Republicans had to deal with her fighting spirit and her relentless focus on helping everyday Americans.
Since her evolution from Republican to Democrat, Warren now stands as one of the most progressive Democrats in elected office, and her 2020 platform says as much. The rallying cry of the Warren campaign is, “I’ve got a plan for that.” As you would expect from a researcher and professor, Warren excels in detailing out exactly how she will improve America. Farhad Manjoo from the NY Times said it well when he wrote a piece titled I want to live in Elizabeth Warren’s America. Among her detailed proposals are plans to break up big tech, address the opioid epidemic, fight maternal mortality, combat climate change (with a $2 trillion price tag), introduce a wealth tax on the wealthiest Americans, introduce universal child care, Medicare-for-All, and many, many more. Go check out her policy page and click around. You have to scroll to see all of her plans, and then on each plan you have to scroll more to actually read them all! She’s thorough, detailed, and ready to enact big, structural change when she gets into office.
Warren’s top priority is to fight corruption in politics and in industry, and I find her argument compelling. Right now, Democrats face uphill battles to win the Presidency (due to the Electoral College disproportionately valuing rural states), the Senate (because of geography of Democratic/Republican support, the House (because of geography and gerrymandering), and the Supreme Court (because the Senate and Presidency must both be held by the same party to appoint a new justice), and these challenges are exacerbated by the revolving door of congressmen and lobbyists as well as a number of ways that sustain this unhealthy stasis in Washington. Read the highlights of her plan here — if Democrats want to make progress on making elections fairer and if we want to re-balance our political system, then we need to address the systemic corruption in Washington first. As for fighting corruption in the economy, Warren lays out a robust plan to make capitalism work better. Please read through it. If we truly want to make an economy that works for all instead of the shareholder capitalism we see today, we should fight for her ideas of ensuring worker representation on corporate boards and to prevent CEOs from profiting off of stock buy-back programs that inflate their pay. Warren’s critique of America is that we need to fix the corruption we see in government and in industry first, and then we will have a chance to tackle more issues as well once the deck is stacked more fairly for the average American.
I also believe that Warren stands the best chance of uniting the Democratic Party. I’ll be interested to see how the raw totals of the first votes and final alignment on caucus night go, because I believe Warren is a lot of peoples’ second choice. My progressive friends are almost all Warren or Bernie supporters, and no other candidate (other than Yang) offers a chance at progressive unity behind a candidate, while she is also friendly enough to the mainstream Democrats that she could get the Biden/Hillary wing of the party to support her as well. We see this potential to unite the party in the endorsements from the NY Times and the Des Moines Register. As I wrote in the Bernie piece yesterday, we need all Democrats to get in line behind our nominee so that we can all focus on defeating Trump, who is sitting there waiting for a nominee to bully while sitting on an insane war chest of campaign fundraising. Warren gives us the best chance to unite and take him down. And with that Democratic unity comes those coattails that will help us win the Senate and keep the House. Then, with those anti-corruption plans in place after her first two years in office, the deck will be stacked more fairly to help Democrats retain their seats in line with their actual vote totals, instead of having to win the popular vote by 6 points nationwide to win the House.
Further, I believe Warren is the best equipped to take on Trump. Having her roots in Oklahoma and having her brothers serve in the military, she can speak to the middle of America with more authenticity than Trump, and with her campaign’s focus on income inequality and having billionaires pay their fair share, she can turn the election into a billionaire who has profited off of and has contributed to the corruption we deal with today versus literally anyone else. Framing the election as are you on the side of the billionaire or on the side of everyone else will be an effective message that can win back those Obama-Trump voters and can drum up the turnout we need to sweep the election.
Sam — #1
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has long been seen as one of the greatest champions of progressive causes at the federal level. While her ascent to the US Senate has provided her with experience professionally, administratively, and politically, Senator Warren’s background provides the human element that so many look for in a great candidate.
Born in the working class in Oklahoma, Senator Warren grew up in a family with three older brothers who all served in the military. During her youth, Warren’s father had a heart attack and had to quit his job as a salesman due to the permanent disability it left him with. While he was able to get a new job as a janitor, Warren notes how the economic struggles for her family left an indelible mark on her. Her dream to become a teacher took a couple detours when she first got married and had to drop out of college to raise her children. After going back to school and then earning a law degree, Warren became one of the leading law professors in her field, eventually earning a position at Harvard teaching bankruptcy law. Her research gave her deeply personal experience “in the weeds” of economic struggle, with the plurality of cases resulting from the cost of healthcare.
In 2008, as the Great Recession deepened, Warren was appointed to a US Senate panel to provide oversight for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. Through her professional experience and time in the Senate oversight panel, Warren proposed the creation of a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The bureau, which was signed into law in 2010, was tasked with learning lessons from the Recession to protect consumers in the financial sector in a host of fields, ranging from banks and securities firms to payday lenders, mortgage servicing operators, and providing foreclosure relief. While Warren would have been the perfect choice to head the CFPB (after all she created the bureau), Republicans believed she would be over zealous made it clear Warren would not receive approval from the Senate. Warren would thwart the GOP’s attempted to prevent her molding of policy by beating incumbent Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown in 2012 and becoming the leading progressive in the Senate.
Senator Warren’s campaign reflects her progressive policy commitments. From the beginning, Warren has refused to accept corporate donations, relying entirely on grassroots support from small donors. However, its Warren’s policy proposals that have become the cornerstone or her campaign. With one of her favorite slogans “I’ve got a plan for that,” Warren appears to be the most extensively prepared candidate in the field. Her website’s section on plans are broken into the larger policy proposals, including tackling corruption, strengthening democracy, creating Medicare-for-All, rebuilding the middle class, and supporting a Green New Deal. Within each of these groups you will notice 10-20 subsection plans, providing a thorough breakdown of each subsection element and how it addresses the larger problem. Warren will rebuild the middle class by implementing her famous 2-cent wealth tax. Her explanation for this wealth tax is brilliant and simple, noting that for every dollar someone makes over $50 million, they’re simply asked to pitch in 2 cents. I hardly think they’ll suffer.
Warren has the best ability to unify the party, bringing together the establishment from her time in the Obama administration and the Senate with progressives and activists that drive the progressive agenda and grassroots campaign infrastructure. Warren’s focus on working and middle class struggles from her upbringing and own experience in the heartland give her authenticity that Trump will never have. Her fervent belief of having the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes again to give those in the middle class the opportunity get to live the American dream: get an education, advance in their profession, and receive the economic gains that have eluded the middle class since the 1970s. Lastly, her emphasis of rooting out corruption stands in stark contrast to Trump’s promises to drain the swamp that have ironically lead to the most corrupt administration in modern history.
Arguments Against:
Josh — Looking at polling, Warren took a big hit in the fall of 2019 after she faced questions on how to pay for Medicare-for-All. She responded by producing a costing scheme that doesn’t raise taxes on the middle class by one penny, but the damage had been done by Mayor Pete and Warren hasn’t regained momentum since then. She excelled in the summer last year as she was releasing plan after plan, but there are only so many plans to release, and as the electability question played a larger role on voters’ minds this winter, she seemed to take a hit as people lazily compare her to Hillary and worry that nominating a woman will again result in a Trump win. But Warren is not Hillary — she’s far more progressive and isn’t currently under investigation. Besides, Hillary won the popular vote and should have won in 2016, so there’s no reason why Warren can’t perform as well if not better than Clinton.
Warren also gets critiqued for sounding a condescending school teacher with her speaking style, which to me sounds like flagrant sexism that should have no place in this primary. We never heard this critique about former professor Obama.
I know I have refuted arguments against Warren so far, but I do have areas that I am concerned about. While she says she’s open to a universal basic income, I would love to see her include it in her plan to transform America’s economy. And I do worry that she and her staff take the bait too often on attacks, like the leak of the Bernie/Warren tape last month after the Bernie campaign supposedly told volunteers to say that Warren only appeals to white, educated voters. She also bit too hard on the Trump Pocahontas bullshit (sorry Mom, couldn’t think of a better word) by producing the DNA test and playing his game. She needs to stay above those attacks and reorient everything back to income inequality, corruption, and her vision for America.
Sam — First off, I want to restate what Josh noted regarding the Warren “condescending school teacher” critique. This is flagrant sexism that doesn’t have a home in this primary, the progressive movement, the Democratic party, and in American politics and society.
Warren’s biggest struggle has come from her implementation plan for her version of Medicare-for-All. Frankly, I’m not sure how this is a fair critique considering her plan is more flushed out that Bernie’s version and is projected to cost less. Additionally, the media has had a fixation on the price tag of the Medicare-for-All plans while completely ignoring the cost savings for Americans. Will you pay more in taxes? For Warren’s plan, some will but lower and middle class earners won’t. But everyone will no longer pay health insurance premiums, copays, or deductibles. Whether its fair or not, Warren’s polling numbers have taken a hit beginning in Fall 2019 after unveiling her healthcare plan.
Now, staking out the progressive policy of Medicare-For-All can be viewed as a argument against Warren and Bernie. I can understand preferring a government-provided public option that competes with all the private healthcare insurance options out there. But the argument for supporting Medicare-for-All, even if you’re fine with a public option that doesn’t utilize one government plan for all, is that it gives Democrats a better starting position to negotiate from when developing healthcare policy. While I go back and forth between Medicare-for-All and a public option and which would be better, the argument against the cost of Medicare-for-All is legitimate, and will take a lot of political capital and time that cannot be regained.
I would also agree with Josh’s critique that Warren’s campaign has taken the bait twice. Taking a DNA test to address Trump’s “Pocahontas” racism was not the right answer. Her campaign would have been better off rising above it and throwing down more plans to address income inequality and stuck to the issues. Additionally, the recent feud with the Bernie has created additional division amongst the progressive activist wing. I think that Bernie missed the opportunity to take responsibility for any comments that may have been perceived as saying a woman can’t beat Trump, even if he never intended to say that. We all make mistakes and sometimes our communications can be misconstrued. I think both campaigns seemed to think there was opportunity in doubling down. The best way forward is for Warren’s team to refocus their efforts on the purpose of the campaign: addressing income inequality, fighting corruption, passing a Green New Deal, and implementing every plan in the Warren tool belt.
Final Thoughts
So that’s it. 12 posts in 12 days to break down the candidates in the Democratic primary. I hope you all have found these helpful, and I encourage you to reach out to us if you have any specific questions on the candidates. To my Iowa friends in particular, I cannot stress how important it is to caucus today. Witnessing the 2008 caucus was one of the most formative nights of my life, and being a part of the 2016 caucus was a thrill. When you go to the caucus today, remember to be Iowa nice and to be friendly with everyone else there who is supporting another candidate. We need to support each other and come together after this primary. That’s why Sam and I chose to format these posts with arguments for and against each candidate; we tried to be objective and helpful, and hopefully these posts have helped you make up your mind and we hope you support your favorite candidate tonight. This is the chance to vote for your favorite candidate, and it doesn’t have to be who you think is most electable. A person is only electable if they 1) win the primary and 2) win the general, so by definition all of these candidates or all but one will be unelectable. If you vote for who you like the most, and if others do the same and agree with you, then your favorite candidate may be electable. Happy caucus night, Iowa.
Purple State Progressive 