Here’s a demonstration on why the politics of Elizabeth Warren aren’t out of the mainstream:
NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll: “By 63% to 35%, Republicans believe that the United States is a country where anyone can succeed, regardless of background. Democrats, by a 69% to 29% margin, disagree saying the widening income gap undermines that idea. Independents side with Democrats, 62% to 34%.”
If you go into West Virginia or Kentucky, you’ll probably discover that they’re out of step with “San Francisco” Democrats like Nancy Pelosi. They’re more culturally conservative. They like their guns. They’re not cosmopolitan. But they agree with Elizabeth Warren when she talks about the economy. They understand that Mitch McConnell is not on their side. That’s why Democrats in those areas of the country are eager to have Warren campaign with them when they definitely do not feel the same way about Pelosi. Is Pelosi actually to the left of Warren? I don’t think it even matters. It’s what they choose to talk about that makes the difference.
This is why big donors, like those mentioned yesterday, really don’t want Warren to run. She scares the crap out of them.
Most of those 63% of Republican believers are in defiance of their own experience.
Once said to a co-worker, as I was leaving the company after resigning, “They don’t pay us enough to be Republicans.” I was young and rash, but totally clear that economically the GOP offers nothing to 90% of Americans. However, those paid enough to be in the top 10% at least aren’t fools.
A lot of that has to do with who is speaking, an ex- college professor with little real wealth or a person whose wealth approaches a hundred million dollars.
While one who is for the people does not necessary have to be one of the people, it sure helps to be one when advocating an increase in economic democracy.
you are correct about Warren. Does Warren really say anything different from the President? THen why not want the President to go around with them?
oh yeah…
complexion.
She could also remind them of a nice school teacher they knew growing up. They don’t usually get those experiences with non whites unless they were in the military or sports. Obama might as well be saying “I am the anti Christ, follow me!”
Yes she does. She goes after both the rigged system and the bankster beneficiaries that created it. Obama invites those banksters to serve in his cabinet, to luncheon tete-a-tetes, and/or big WH shindigs. He also takes a lot of campaign money from some of them.
Oh, hi! Fancy meeting you again. See my comment above – now I am absolutely, positively certain that I was correct in directing it at you. TTFN!
She also holds peoples feet to the fire IN PUBLIC in ways the president has never done.
The in public part is important because of the message sent.
Ask Tim Kaine and Creigh Deeds. They helped create a self-fulfiling prophecy about the President’s ability to aid candidates for state and local office.
Probably because she has a populist economic message. Not dipping into the social issues.
I actually prefer the old-time Democrats that had a progressive economic message and a more conservative social issues message as opposed to many modern-day Democrats who are socially liberal and economically conservative/neo-liberal.
I liked Bart Stupak. Economic liberal and social conservative. It’s OK to be liberal on both, but the social liberal part won’t go over in the Midwest and South.
Going back fifty, sixty years ago:
were Dixiecrats and Catholics.
were Republicans.
Today, Catholics (outside the Opus Dei clique and anti-abortionists) generally ignore the Church on issues of contraception and same-sex marriage. Respect for the separation of church and state and that religion is a private and personal matter guides economically and socially liberal Catholic politicians. (Pelosi may be the most devout Catholic on the Hill, but she doesn’t talk, much less flaunt, it.)
Dixiecrats became Republicans with full confidence that they wouldn’t jeopardize their personal New Deal financial gains by freely indulging in their bigotry.
Fundie Protestants discovered politics and dragged their retrograde cultural beliefs with them.
Yesterday’s socially liberal and economic conservatives are split between Republicans and Democrats. With the former trying to get Republicans to drop all that old social/religious claptrap and the latter selling “free market” claptrap to Democrats. So far, the latter has been far more successful, and fears that Warren, Piketty, and/or OWS will wake up their base in ways declining income and wealth haven’t.
Not dipping in social issues.
That’s a very good point – excellent point because dems lose on all the hot button social issues when you get into deep red state territory. Making sex and guns the big issues wins over the economically disadvantaged when your economic programs are designed to hurt them.
Neo-liberal Democrats have little to offer the economically disadvantaged that are culturally conservative.
“Neoliberal” is like “socialist:” a word that meant something, once upon a time, but has been drained of all meaning by promiscuous overuse and now has the paraphrasable semantic content of “poopyhead.” We might as well agree that “lake water” is the term that we will now apply to politicians we don’t like.
It should be noted that Warren not only talks about the things that matter to people she also does something about them – or tries to at any rate when her fellow dems will let her.
I’ve said for a long time now that democrats should campaign in red states on the Warren platform, but only if they’re willing to act on it, too. If they talk it, but don’t walk it, they’ll lose the whole game for a long time to come.
There is nothing the least bit leftist about Warren.
I should know. She is my senator, I voted for her, and I like the job she is doing. But cracking the whip over greedy corporatists hardly makes her the second coming of Emma Goldman; people do themselves and her and America a huge disfavor when they try to build her up into the Great Leftie Savior, a fantasy that can only lead to disaster.
Apparently you missed my comment on Thursday:
Not clear what you’re attempting to school me on.
Who is calling her a “leftist”? The closest thing to a leftist in any form of elected government that we have is Kshama Sawant, and even she is being chastised for abandoning putting the minimum wage hike to the ballot.
But to not see a difference between her and Obama is ridiculous. They might even have the same ideological beliefs — privately — but that doesn’t much matter to me. On domestic issues Obama has had full control, where the meanie wheenie Republicans can’t be blamed by pwogwessives, he’s been neutral at best to actively harmful at worst. And that’s because he believed if the banks were “healed” that everyone else would be “healed.”
That’s a pretty big oversimplification of what happened and just for historical purposes FDR did the same thing when he was elected.