Ezra Klein's quasi-endorsement of Warren is worth reading just to understand the powers and limitations of the Presidency. I'm happy for my movement to get its principles from Bernie Sanders; I want Elizabeth Warren to sit in the President's chair at meetings with top federal bureaucrats.
Ezra then goes on to how Warren is better on Medicare for All. Biden and Buttigieg oppose it; Sanders thinks he can pass it without eliminating the filibuster. Warren supports it and has a plan for the hardest part, passing the Senate. First, pass a public option in 2021 with 50 votes, which we're moderately likely to have, while it takes really extreme scenarios to have the votes for Medicare for All. Then come the 2022 Senate elections where only 12 Dems are up for re-election and 22 Republicans are. If Democrats win half the races, they gain five seats. And with those votes, you can go for full M4A in 2023.
Elizabeth Warren should be President. Bernie is second best; Biden is the worst major Democrat; any Democrat over Trump. But Warren is the best for making executive appointments, keeping bureaucrats in line with progressive priorities, and devising a legislative strategy with Pelosi and Schumer. And that's what this job is about.
In primaries you have to be flexible and switch over if your favorite candidate becomes nonviable by the time you vote. But I hope I can vote for her.
Campaigning in the age of television frames the presidency as a communications job, which, sometimes, it is. But those powers are overstated: Presidents are rarely able to dramatically change public opinion, and their interventions are as likely to hurt legislative efforts as help. By contrast, campaigns understate both the power and the difficulty of leading the world’s most powerful and consequential bureaucracy, and the next president will face a particularly hard version of that job, as Donald Trump has driven out a tremendous amount of civil service talent and demoralized many of those who remain. Warren has proven herself the candidate with the right skills and vision to rebuild.
Warren’s work on the CFPB gave her something rare among political candidates. One is interest in, and experience with, the federal bureaucracy itself. She understands the regulatory process, how it works, who has access to it. She knows which meetings matter, where power sits, which explanations for why something isn’t possible or isn’t happening are merely stalling tactics. She has seen, firsthand, the entry points that lobbyists and special interests use to hijack the process, the difficulties of collaboration among agencies.
What’s more, Warren’s political project is regulatory in nature: She wants to change how markets are governed so there’s more true competition, more information empowering and protecting consumers, and more broadly shared gains. When Warren says she’s “a capitalist to her bones,” this is what she means: She believes in the power of properly regulated markets, and she intends, as president, to properly regulate them.
The president has far more direct control of regulation than redistribution, and as such, much of what Warren wants to do — from using antitrust enforcement to break up monopolistic firms to simplifying consumer financial products to cancelling student loan debt to cracking down on the risks too-big-to-fail banks can run — can be done through powers the executive branch already holds.
The next Democratic president is likely to face a Senate where Mitch McConnell remains majority leader, and even if Democrats manage to take back the gavel, the most optimistic outcome is a slim majority with the hinge vote being West Virginia’s Joe Manchin or Alabama’s Doug Jones — and that’s before taking the filibuster into account. It is possible, perhaps probable, that the president’s primary power will come through their control of the executive branch. Warren is the candidate who would be most interested in, knowledgeable about, and effective at wielding it.
Ezra then goes on to how Warren is better on Medicare for All. Biden and Buttigieg oppose it; Sanders thinks he can pass it without eliminating the filibuster. Warren supports it and has a plan for the hardest part, passing the Senate. First, pass a public option in 2021 with 50 votes, which we're moderately likely to have, while it takes really extreme scenarios to have the votes for Medicare for All. Then come the 2022 Senate elections where only 12 Dems are up for re-election and 22 Republicans are. If Democrats win half the races, they gain five seats. And with those votes, you can go for full M4A in 2023.
Warren’s careful navigation of the Medicare-for-all debate has widely been considered a misstep for her campaign, as her admission of the political realities alienated single-payer diehards who don’t want to admit the need for any initial compromises, while her endorsement of Sanders’s underlying bill and her specificity on financing opened her up to attack from the moderates. But what’s actually happening here speaks to Warren’s strengths: She’s developed a more politically realistic proposal and path than what Sanders offered, and a more ambitious and compelling vision than what the moderates have proposed.
The truth of the Medicare-for-all debate is that it is extremely unlikely any president will pass a single-payer bill, but Warren is the only candidate to propose an even glancingly plausible strategy. As has been a hallmark of her campaign thus far, she’s taken the systemwide barriers to passing single-payer seriously, and has worked to come up with answers. Presidential campaigns reward uncut political optimism pumped right into the electorate’s veins, but carefully navigating a system designed to frustrate change is what a president actually has to do.It's important to get a sense of which politicians are good at which positions. Nancy Pelosi and Jeff Merkley are great legislators. AOC has built a new kind of social media policy intellectual position around her distinctive package of skills. Bernie is the movement-father who gives voice to the voiceless and summon the AOCs from the bars of New York City to Congress.
Elizabeth Warren should be President. Bernie is second best; Biden is the worst major Democrat; any Democrat over Trump. But Warren is the best for making executive appointments, keeping bureaucrats in line with progressive priorities, and devising a legislative strategy with Pelosi and Schumer. And that's what this job is about.
In primaries you have to be flexible and switch over if your favorite candidate becomes nonviable by the time you vote. But I hope I can vote for her.
