Elizabeth Warren’s Democratic Party Problem

This crystallized everything for me: at the end of the debate, Warren gave a friendly handshake to Joe Biden and patted him on the shoulder. Then, turning toward Bernie, he extended his hand, she refused, and a tense exchange followed. Although she once said “I’m with Bernie” she has now proven she’s with Biden and with the Democratic Party establishment.

But we knew this. It was this article “What Elizabeth Warren Is Quietly Telling Democratic Insiders” back in August that confirmed for me that Elizabeth Warren is not a ‘left’ candidate. She aims to be the ‘progressive’ candidate who can somehow also play nice with the Democratic Party power structure — epitomized by people like Joe Biden. The problem is that her entire policy agenda would actually require confronting that power structure — the rich donors and corporations who control the Democratic Party. As much as she’s smart and tactical, without a strategy to confront that structure, she won’t achieve anything close to her goals.

Although she’s refusing high donor fundraisers in the primary, she did not in her 2018 Senate campaign (she even had very similar kinds of fundraisers that she accused Mayor Pete in terms of “Wine Caves”) — and she pledges to take big money in the general election. She even had to transfer $10 million from those Senate campaign funds to fund her primary campaign. This is all to say she cannot claim the same separation from the networks of money and influence in the same way Bernie can.

So, to prove where her allegiance lies, three weeks from voting, she decides *not* to attack the actual front runner — not the stereotypical “corporate Democrat” — not the guy who managed to back out of his “No Super PAC” pledge. No, that guy escaped unscathed with few direct attacks in the debate; and he gets a nice and friendly handshake, to boot.

Rather: she decides to attack the one candidate to her left who represents an insurgent threat to the party’s power structure — the candidate who agrees with her most — and is currently surging in the polls. And she chooses to attack him with a dirty and cynical deployment of gender politics that obviously goes against what he has said for decades.

And, what’s more, to calculate this attack so as to tee up the most choreographed “big moment” at the debate — a moment that predictably had the corporate media gushing afterward. It’s enough to make high paid political consultants jump for joy.

Could the Democratic Party — and by extension, Joe Biden — have asked for more of a gift than the one Elizabeth Warren just hand wrapped for them?

Many “progressives” are upset because they *think* Bernie and Warren are on the same “progressive” team. They don’t see why they are fighting and why they can’t make a truce. They think they basically have the same policies. But the fact is they are on different sides of a massive fight at the core of the future of politics in this country. It’s simple: one is a dire threat to the Democratic Party power bloc — the other isn’t.

But, much of the “base” of the Democratic Party doesn’t want to hear that there’s a problem with the party itself.

If you’re part of what is now (and increasingly) the base of the Democratic party — financially comfortable professional class people — you likely cheered Warren’s calls for ‘unity’ and avoiding ‘factionalism’ to defeat Trump (an ironic call to make while deploying the most cynical smear possible of a viable and popular candidate). For this base, politics is like team sports (it’s like “rooting for laundry” as Seinfeld once put it): the desire is to just do anything to defeat the Republicans. And, all this fighting appears to threaten that goal. This is why this base has never really liked Bernie — because he’s too critical — and this might help the Republicans.

This base takes politics seriously; they know and follow politics; they feel very strongly about the horror of the current administration — but they also have a steady salary and health insurance. Despite their emotional investment, life for them is pretty steady regardless of who wins. They feel politics, but don’t necessarily need politics.

This base is different than the base behind Bernie’s movement filled with working class teachers, truck drivers, Walmart workers, and more — this base is drawn to Bernie because he pledges to fight the very class in charge of the Democratic Party — and finally win changes that would actually impact their lives in real, tangible ways.

It is hard for “Team Democrat” voters to confront the fact that it is corruption within the party — the fact the party only represents the 1% — or maybe 10% — that has created a level of social decay that makes Trumpism possible.

In a society where wages are flat, medical debt is exploding, life expectancy is decreasing, millions are dying of opioids, 59% live paycheck to paycheck, the planet is on fire, and 11 million spend 50% of their income on rent (or more), social conditions are getting worse for the vast majority of people.

These very social conditions are produced through policies — like the new Trump trade policy that Warren voted for — that put corporate interests first before the working class. As long as these forces control the party, the larger public continue to suffer — and will continue to look for an alternative — any alternative — to what is seen as the establishment or status quo.

Trump offers such an alternative — and the nationalist/xenophobic right wing is inspiring millions of votes all over the world. The more we think that “just winning” the current election battle without solving the corruption at the heart of the party itself, the more the Trumpist right wins the war.

A real left Presidential candidate needs to galvanize a mass movement to take on the powerful interests that dominate the Democratic Party. Last night, if there was any doubt, Elizabeth Warren proved she is not that candidate.