Wednesday evening, December 7th, Massachusetts's senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren met with Bay Area progressives. Some of us recalled a comparable meeting four years earlier with presidential candidate Barack Obama. At the time Obama was a rising star; now Warren is the rising star. While the two have similarities, there is one crucial difference.
Warren and Obama share the narrative of the triumphant individual, who starts from humble surroundings and works their way to a position of honor and acclaim. Raised by a single mother and her parents, Obama graduated from Harvard Law School and had a successful career as a community activist, lawyer, writer, and US senator. Warren was raised by parents of limited means. Originally trained as a speech pathologist, she worked as a teacher and eventually got a law degree from Rutgers. After a stint as a single mom, Warren remarried, and secured a teaching position at Harvard Law School, where she is now a tenured professor. In 2008 she gained national recognition by heading the congressional oversight panel studying the use of the $70 billion TARP bailout fund.
Warren and Obama value the benevolent community, emphasize the importance of working with our neighbors for the common good. Obama's 2004 Democratic convention speech established his populist credentials: "It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother's keeper. I am my sister's keeper that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family." In September, Warren electrified progressives in a candid video shot at a campaign appearance: "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own -- nobody... you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along."
Obama's December 5th address in Osawatomie, Kansas, contained lines such as: "I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules." On December 7th, Warren echoed the same themes, stating "the economy is broken," the middle class is being "hammered," and confiding that the United State is running out of time unless "core changes" are made.
While Obama and Warren seem to be singing out of the same populist hymnal, there's a significant stylistic difference between them. Obama is cool and cerebral. Warren is feisty and down-to-earth. Obama was a civil rights attorney and lecturer in constitutional law. Warren became an expert in bankruptcy law and the economic pressures jeopardizing the middle class. Both Obama and Warren are very smart, but Warren understands what the US economy means to the 99 percent; Obama has to have Tim Geithner explain it to him.
Writing in the New York Times, Rebecca Traister observed, "Embracing Warren as the next 'one' is, in part, a way of getting over Obama; she provides an optimistic distraction from the fact that under our current president, too little has changed, for reasons having to do both with the limitations of the political system and the limitations of the man." This is too glib; it's an injustice to Obama and Warren.
Obama first came to the attention of progressives because of his opposition to the war in Iraq. He was an alternative to Hillary Clinton, who seemed to be the inevitable Democratic presidential candidate. Obama never claimed to have different economic policies than Clinton -- in a 2008 San Francisco appearance, he joked that he and Hillary had the same cadre of economic advisers. Then Wall Street melted down and America entered a prolonged jobless recession.
As described in Vanity Fair by Suzanna Andrews, in 1979 Warren had an epiphany: "Warren decided to investigate the reasons why Americans were ending up in bankruptcy court. 'I set out to prove they were all a bunch of cheaters.'... What she found, after conducting with two colleagues one of the most rigorous bankruptcy studies ever, shook her deeply. The vast majority of those in bankruptcy courts, she discovered, were from hardworking middle-class families, people who lost jobs or had 'family breakups' or illnesses that wiped out their savings." As a consequence of her work, Warren is uniquely prepared to deal with the US economy.
And she carries the passion of the newly converted. She didn't get to be head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau because she'd pissed off Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. On December 7th, one of Warren's admirers praised her willingness to "call bullshit, bullshit." She's determined to tell the truth, no matter the consequences.
In the run up to the 2012 elections, Barack Obama will define himself as the champion of the middle class -- as compared to the Republican candidate. But the real populist, the one who gives voice to the 99 percent, will be Elizabeth Warren.
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I find that a better representative of the 99 is Ron Paul. Put him in the White House and you'll not only see the bank issues get resolved, but our economy restart itself. He supports civil rights, he's anti-crony, small government, anti-bailout, anti-war, anti-war on drugs...he would do much to right the wrongs that are built into our government today. He couldn't do everything, being limited by what he could push through Congress, but he could do quite a bit. Perhaps equally important, he could prevent many of the bills that cause problems from becoming law, though the veto.
However, Ron Paul not only spoke out against this bubble (even in 2002!), he informed Congress how to prevent it. Congress made the choice not to prevent this collapse. Perhaps, had Paul been the President, he could have twisted their arm more and truly prevented it.
If you're ticked about the collapse of the housing bubble, then by all rights, you SHOULD be appreciating Paul. He saw it coming, he tried to prevent it, and he spoke out for years to anybody who would listen.
What can I say.. there's solutions passing by everyone that they just can't see. Stop dealing with the superficial problems.. which means stop foreclosures so you can stop worrying about foreclosures. The underlying issues will remain if these things aren't resolved from the source.
That sounds like the perfect formula for How to Fail in Politics. But Warren has my blessing. There's a lot that needs to be turned around in American Life. A politician with a passion for the truth isn't a bad place to start...
A fine short article with some nuanced distinctions!
You wrote, "On December 7th, one of Warren's admirers praised her willingness to "call bullshit, bullshit." She's determined to tell the truth, no matter the consequences."
Now, if someone with Warren's stature would have the guts to acknowledge energy resource depletion (peak oil), the end of growth and what that means to us, we might have a shot at surviving this century without massive societal disruption.
The bogey man in this militarist fantasy is Iran, a state that has not invaded others (unlike the U.S.), without nuclear weapons (unlike the U.S.) that has an economy the size of Connecticut. Consider the U.S., a model aggressor state, with thousands of nukes, that spends more than the rest of the world combined on its military. The Iranian military budget: $6 billion.
Anyway, best wishes to Ms. Warren, but let's keep an eye on her rather than joining the cult of heroic leadership that I suggest our Constitution attempts to break up.
In that same vein, it's worth taking a look at Peter Hart's "Steve Jobs and the Cult of the CEO" here: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4439
Warren's experience with investigating the bankrupt individuals made me think of the book "Nickled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America", and how the odds are stacked against individuals at the bottom of the 99%.
"'I set out to prove they were all a bunch of cheaters.'... " Warren told the truth to power with this -- the emperor had no clothes on.
2. Her work in business law has given her the tools to deal with the Devil who is in the details.
3. Unlike Obama, Warren can sort out the input from people like Geithner and reject that which helps financial instiutions at the expense of our middle class.
I'll vote for her, but I'm not ready to sing her praises yet, we'll see how she legislates once she is in the Senate, or if her lofty rhetoric translates to mostly useless gestures.
Meanwhile, I think Bernie Sanders is the actual one you seem to be talking about here, he has a track record to talk about too.
Are you suggesting that she shares the values of those who require more money because that is the way they keep score?
Are you suggesting that she would further sabbotage the middle class because she identifies with her fellow 1%ers?
The CBO didn't say, although its report briefly acknowledged - that "high income taxpayers had especially large declines in adjusted gross income between 2007 and 2009."
Once these two years are brought into the picture, the share of after-tax income of the top 1 percent by Reynolds' estimate fell to 11.3 percent in 2009 from the 17.3 percent that the CBO reported for 2007. Changes in the tax law in 1986, for example, evoked a remarkable response -- with capital gains accounting for an extraordinary 47.7 percent of top earners' reported income as investors rushed to cash in gains before the capital gains tax rose to 28 percent.
When the top capital gains tax fell to 20 percent in 1997 and remained there until 2002, realized capital gains rose to 25.4 percent of the top earners' income, and it explained much of the surge of their income share to 15.5 percent in 2000. Thousands of businesses switched to reporting income on individual rather than corporate returns as the top individual tax rate dropped to 28 percent from 50 percent.
The 2003 to 2007 was actually evidence that the top 1 percent of earners report more taxable income when tax rates are reduced on dividends, capital gains and businesses filing under the individual tax code.