2020 Foresight: Elizabeth Warren, The Liberal Lioness

Progressives may have the next FDR laying in wait, but can Elizabeth Warren capitalize on her brand of economic populism in a way that profoundly reshapes American electoral politics? Or will attempts by conservatives to marginalize her appeal ultimately prevail? This article is part of a larger series exploring the prospects of Democratic presidential candidates in depth.

• Amy Klobuchar • Elizabeth Warren • Julian Castro • Cory Booker
• Bernie Sanders • Tim Kaine • Sherrod Brown • Beto O’Rourke
• Joe Biden (VP Stacey Abrams) • Pete Buttigieg • Mike Gravel

“She Persisted”

Thanks to the ham-fisted tactics of Mitch McConnell, Elizabeth Warren already has a nationally-syndicated catchphrase. During a speech criticizing then-attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions, McConnell invoked an obscure Senate rule to cut her speech short. In justifying the most, McConnell said: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” In the aftermath of that incident, “she persisted” became a rallying cry that played perfectly to Elizabeth Warren’s established image as someone who does not back down in the midst of a political fight. The framing of this event also played strongly in Warren’s favor, portraying her as a woman silenced by a man in a position of power, which has a strong level of appeal to the party’s base of women activists.

That is as good of a starting point as any, but Warren’s long history of persistence has led to her increasing stature as a leading figure in the progressive movement. Her lifelong dedication to the advancement of equitable economic policy is highly commendable. Her pivotal role as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s architect makes Elizabeth Warren imminently qualified to speak with credibility against the prevailing greed that has gripped Washington for decades. An effective and direct communication style will help her take this message to the national stage as a presidential candidate in 2020.

Furthermore, her early entry into the race will give her the opportunity to define the race on her own terms. Warren is the first major candidate to declare her intention to run in 2020. With Donald Trump and his campaign staff already going out of their way to lodge personal attacks against her, she has nothing to lose by declaring early. Her decision to get out ahead of the field and take the oncoming fire from Trump demonstrates a certain intangible quality of fearlessness that should serve her campaign well. However, Trump’s reelection campaign will be actively looking to bait Warren into a mud-wrestling match with the goal of overshadowing her policy platform and individual appeal. Warren must be careful to balance taking on Donald Trump with articulating her vision for the country’s future.

The “Pocahontas Problem”

Although Elizabeth Warren has a ready-made catchphrase and a fearless persona to build her political brand around, Trump also has a nickname for her: “Pocahontas.” It references the lone scandal of Warren’s adult life (Republicans really are grasping at straws here), a minor controversy over her self-identification as a Native American on an old college application. There is no proof that she benefited during the college admissions process from identifying herself as such. This proved to be an utter non-factor in her Senate race against Scott Brown, where the scandal first surfaced.

However, Elizabeth Warren recently made a high-profile gaffe in the publication of DNA testing results that showed Native American ancestry in her bloodline. The results were easily misconstrued by both the media and Donald Trump, her chief antagonist on the issue. This attempt to put the “Pocahontas” narrative to rest ultimately backfired, while simultaneously creating concerns that her appeal may be limited to college-educated white voters by a “racial blind spot.” Above all else, it calls her previously impeccable political instinct into question. She made this move on her own terms. Instead of reinforcing her stature as a fearless fighter unafraid to confront Donald Trump’s unrelenting mockery, she briefly turned herself into a national caricature of the stereotypical middle-aged white woman who just opened an Ancestry.com account.

Other than this over-hyped phony heritage “scandal,” the Senator’s record is relatively clean. Apparently, she once misstated that her grandmother lived to attend her collegiate graduation — when in fact her grandmother died the year before she graduated. This, along with the Native American heritage story, may become part of a broader effort by conservatives to portray Warren as inauthentic by seizing upon every little discrepancy they can find. There are also unsubstantiated allegations of academic misconduct being pushed by Brietbart. She is also accused of plagiarizing contributions to a recipe book edited by her cousin back in 1984 (you can’t make this shit up).

Notable Policy Positions

• Authored the “Accountable Capitalism Act”, a piece of legislation designed to encourage American corporations to adopt the “benefit corporation” model. This piece of legislation would require corporations to allow their workers to elect 40% of the company’s board of directors, restrict executives’ ability to sell stocks that they receive as compensation, and require that corporate political activity receive authorization from 75% of shareholders and 75% of board members.
• Also authored legislation to address America’s nationwide shortage of affordable housing. The bill would increase federal funding for the construction of low-income housing, encourage local governments to relax zoning rules through the use of incentives, expand eligibility for housing assistance, and establish new housing assistance programs focused on majority-minority communities and families that have negative equity on their mortgages. The proposal would be paid for by an increase in the estate tax.
• She also authored the “Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act” (see the theme here?) that would place a permanent ban on congressional lawmakers and other high-level federal officials to work for lobbying firms. Congressional staff members and federal employees would also have a “cooling off” period where they would be prohibited from engaging in lobbying. It would require acting Presidents to put assets into a blind trust and require candidates to release a minimum of eight years of their IRS tax returns. The legislation would also ban elected officials, cabinet secretaries, federal judges, White House staff, and senior congressional staff from owning individuals stocks while they serve in a position of political power.
• Recently put forth a policy proposal supporting government manufacturing of generic prescription drugs in order to lower the cost of health care.
• Supports and is a lead sponsor of the “21st Century Glass-Steagall Act” that would reinstate regulations requiring the separation of commercial and investment banking.
• Warren co-sponsored Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” legislation.
• She also supports legislation authored by Bernie to make college tuition free for families earning $125k per year or less.
• History of supporting pay equity for women and advocating legislation that would remove barriers that prevent women from suing over wage discrimination.

The Bernie Factor

Clearly, Elizabeth Warren has been steadily building her credentials as a serious policy-maker and a progressive stalwart. She regularly aligns herself with popular policy positions from Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign, while adding a level of depth to her own array of policy proposals that make her just as serious of a contender for the support of the progressive wing of the party.

The element that makes Warren most appealing is her ability to credibly argue for a bold, comprehensive economic agenda in a way that Hillary Clinton was incapable of doing. Many of Clinton’s supporters were aggrieved by Bernie’s attacks on Hillary’s ties to corporate America, claiming that they undercut a shared goal of advancing progressive economic policy. There is an element of truth to this; however, nobody can reasonably insinuate that Elizabeth Warren is in the pocket of corporate fat cats (she has never given a paid speech to Wall Street executives, for example).

Rifts from the 2016 may play another factor for Warren’s candidacy: by at first stating that she would not to endorse during the 2016 Democratic primary, and then breaking that promise of neutrality to tepidly support Clinton, Warren wound up alienating some of the diehard Sanderistas. Due to the high level of overlap between Sanders and Warren on issues of economic justice, many Sanders supporters assumed that she would naturally be sympathetic to their plight. A neutral stance was forgivable to a certain extent. Two years from now, Sanders and Warren may be headed for a full-on collision course as they fight for the same constituency of voters in the 2020 Democratic primary. The two have been closely aligned on policy priorities, which will make for an interesting predicament should both candidates enter the race (as they both currently seem poised to do).

In 2016, Sanders reportedly offered to step aside to clear the way for a potential Elizabeth Warren campaign — after experiencing the sweet taste of success, will Sanders be willing to step aside if Warren decides to run in 2020? Or would he see himself as the rightful progressive standard-bearer after Warren passed on the opportunity in 2016? If they both run, would they be effectively preventing each other from having a realistic chance at securing the Democratic Party’s nomination? This dynamic sets up a high-stakes game of chicken, upon which the progressive wing of the party’s presidential hopes will likely hinge.

Path to Victory

Make no mistake, Elizabeth Warren’s path to victory in the general election cuts straight through the rust belt. These are the same states that she will need to win in order to secure the Democratic nomination, while simultaneously scoring victories in reliably blue states in the northeast and the west coast. Although she may struggle to connect with some voters based on her academic background, something that conservatives will use derisively against her, Warren’s personal story very much fits into the classic “by your bootstraps” American archetype. At the age of 13, Elizabeth Warren waited tables at her aunt’s restaurant to help her family stay afloat — her father, a salesman, suffered a heart attack which led to many medical bills and a demotion. The family car was eventually repossessed after falling behind on a loan. Her serious approach to economic inequality and political corruption will be critical to Democratic efforts to retake the White House. Warren can speak to the struggles of the working class in a way that is personal; she isn’t just talking the talk, she has walked the walk.

Warren’s appeal will correlate directly with the economic outcomes of the Trump administration’s policy decisions. Naturally, she will have no difficulty speaking out against the President’s many well-documented “character flaws” (being generous here), but an economic downturn within the next two years would give Warren’s economic platform a significant boost in appeal. Even absent a recession, Warren can still credibly speak out against the greed that Trump personifies and the way that his administration has favored the wealthy over the working class. That’s why Trump has been focused like a laser on taking her down early. If anyone can destroy the illusion that Donald Trump cares about the American worker, it’s Elizabeth Warren.

There is also another, less commonly known appeal to Elizabeth Warren as a political figure: “the Dr. Phil factor.” Before she was a progressive icon, before she was the intellectual foremother of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other efforts to crack down on corporate greed, Elizabeth Warren was a frequent guest on Dr. Phil. Back when she was still an obscure academic figure, her appearances on Dr. Phil helped her hone her message and make the ideas that she expressed more accessible to a general audience. Rather than speaking in broad theoretical strokes about changes in how Americans view financial policy, Warren learned how to connect her ideas to the lives of the average viewer. In a sense, this gives Warren the ability to competently compete with Donald Trump on his own turf: television.

Warren will also need to dispatch with the array of other candidates, which will be no easy task — yet it is very doable for her. Warren’s standing as a 2020 contender has waned recently; she currently is polling in 5th place in Iowa with 10% of the vote. However, she is as well positioned as any other prospect to seize the progressive mantle and provide solutions to the Democratic establishment’s shortcomings. Grassroots organizing will be essential to Warren’s success, since she is unlikely to endear herself to the establishment wing’s financial donors. Warren also gives Democrats a sense of vision that was sorely lacking in 2016. Within the context of the chaotic dumpster fire of the Trump Administration, Elizabeth Warren may give Democrats their best shot at reshaping electoral politics for decades to come.

The Politics of Realignment

Author’s note: If you have not been exposed to Stephen Skowronek’s Presidential Leadership in Political Time, I cannot recommend this book more highly. It explains the cyclical nature of American politics in a way that is easy enough to understand, and provides critical insights through a relatively open-ended analytical framework. For the uninitiated among us, I will explain below.

When we talk about the “politics of realignment”, what we’re talking about are the giants of American history: Jackson, Lincoln, FDR, and Reagan. These men oversaw the formation of new political coalitions, seizing upon the breakdown of the political order established by the last reconstruction presidency. Andrew Jackson ushered in the dominance of the original Democratic Party, Lincoln forged the Republican Party from the remnants of the Whig and anti-slavery coalitions, FDR established the New Deal, and Reagan established a prevailing view of government as “the problem, not the solution.” Yet the Reagan political regime’s 37 year dominance has ever been more imperiled. The longer that Republicans continue to ignore an elephant in the room the size of Donald Trump’s ego, the more likely it becomes that his presidency will fracture the Reagan coalition beyond repair. Fault lines have been apparent for quite some time, reaching a climax with the demise of Speaker John Boehner four years ago. As Donald Trump’s disruptive approach to politics threatens to cause an earthquake of epic proportions, his marriage to the Republican Party remains fragile at best.

Essentially, this is the core of Skowronek’s theory: Presidents will either form around an existing political order (congruent and opposition presidencies), oversee the breakdown of the existing political order (a disjunctive presidency), or establish a new political order by realigning electoral coalitions (the reconstruction presidency). Each moment in political time requires a specific approach, and each President can be understood through analyzing the broader progression of political time and the climate surrounding them. In order for new coalitions to form, the old order must first break down. The Trump administration’s “rock the boat” strategy appears to be designed to force the politics of disjunction — time will tell whether or not he succeeds in establishing a new political order in his own image, but the odds are that he won’t be able to implement his vision beyond the disjunctive phase. Trump lacks the discipline and political cohesion to do anything more than disrupt the status quo.

At moments in American history where faith in the durability of government seems its weakest, a transformative figure has always emerged to restore order to an uncertain time. This should not be taken as inevitable or taken for granted, since the Trump presidency has made the fragility of democracy more apparent than at any time since the American Civil War. However, Trump’s chaotic presidency creates an opportunity for the right candidate to forge the next generation of American politics. Privately, Trump has complained that Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s financial policies will “turn me into a Hoover.” Before FDR could re-shape American politics, Hoover oversaw the dissolution of the post-Civil War Republican regime by failing to respond to the beginning of the Great Depression.

Enter Elizabeth Warren, the progressive firebrand with clear eyes and a full heart. Unlike some prospective candidates, Warren makes it very clear that she does not align with the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. She has a record of consistency and strength in regards to income inequality and economic justice. Elizabeth Warren has the potential to become one of the all-time great presidents in American history. Not just as the first female President, but as the President who marked the beginning of a new era in American politics. She has the right combination of expertise, communication skills, and vision necessary to achieve a truly transformative presidency.