Yes, you read that right: President. She’d be a great VP too, but she really should be president. Hopefully she’ll get her shot in four or eight years from now. Anyway, with that said, here’s why she’s the best.
There is really only one thing you need to know about Elizabeth Warren. She has the knowledge, expertise, talent, and ferocity to fight, and win, the political and economic battles that will return prosperity to the American middle class.
She, more than any other candidate in the 2020 Democratic primary field and indeed any other presidential contender in recent memory, correctly identifies the issues at hand and authoritatively prescribes detailed, well-informed solutions that get right to the heart of their underlying causes.
For those unfamiliar with her origin story, consider the following.
Elizabeth grew up in suburban Oklahoma, the fourth child and only daughter of her blue collar middle class parents. Her brothers all joined various branches of the military, but she had dreams of being a teacher. While this goal initially seemed out of reach due to the high cost of college, Elizabeth excelled in school, and not only graduated early but also earned a scholarship that gave her the chance to pursue the career she wanted.
But, as so often happens despite our best laid plans, life got in the way. She dropped out of college after 2 years in order to marry her highschool sweetheart and move to Texas with him for his job. Following the move, she then enrolled at the University of Houston to finish out her degree. Shortly thereafter, she and her husband once again relocated for his work, this time to New Jersey, where she soon became pregnant with her daughter Amelia at the age of 21.
Elizabeth stayed home to care for Amelia and, never one to sit still for long, enrolled in law school just after her daughter turned 2. Before graduating, she became pregnant with her second child. She then received her law degree, passed the bar exam, and began offering basic legal services out of her home while she continued to care for her children. She was not yet 30 years old when she realized her dream of becoming a teacher, and she received her first academic appointment as a lecturer in the law school at Rutgers in 1977.
Over the next 30 years, Elizabeth held teaching and research positions at a number of different universities, culminating in a 15+ year stint at Harvard where she would go on to publish a wide range of articles, papers, and books on bankruptcy, commercial law, and the impact of economic policy on the personal finances of middle class families.
If you listen to Elizabeth today, and certainly if you listen to her critics, you would rightly conclude that she supports progressive, inclusive policies that are aimed at decreasing inequality and lifting the income and wealth of the average family.
It was not always thus.
The worst thing that can be said about Elizabeth Warren is that she once took advantage of a college admissions system that preferenced certain specific groups over others. As a woman from a working-class background, she understandably looked for every possible advantage as she tried to gain access to an academic institution that had for centuries been dominated by white men from the most socially and economically privileged families.
The second worst thing is that she was, for the first several decades of her life, a dyed-in-the-wool, staunchly conservative, die-hard Republican. Like most of us, she inherited her political views from her parents, and she applied her considerable intellect to supporting and promoting them amongst her family and friends.
However, whereas most people never seek to seriously examine their own strongly held views, political or otherwise, Elizabeth had both the presence of mind and the openness of heart to think deeply and critically about whether the policies she had long supported would actually benefit the majority of Americans if they were implemented competently on a national scale.
After subjecting her own views and assumptions to this type of critical reconsideration, in the context of all the research and data she had gathered over the course of her career up until that point, she did one of the most difficult things that humans are capable of doing: she realized she was wrong and she changed her mind.
This major shift in her thinking also spurred a major change in the direction of her life, as it sparked her desire to influence not only the academics in her field and the students in her classroom, but the direction of American policy and politics on the national level.
Starting with that inflection point, Warren’s influence and role on the national stage took off and quickly reached escape velocity. Warren began taking on a number of academic and political efforts to change the nature and thrust of the American economy for the better, all with the guiding north star objective of helping all Americans live more stable and economically secure lives.
She, more than any other individual American, has proposed, advocated, and fought ferociously for the type and scope of policies that have the potential to dramatically improve the economic and social wellbeing of those who are currently at a massive disadvantage due to the structural and social inequalities built into the broken system we are all forced to live with today. Her work in designing and launching the CFPB is probably her most recognizable accomplishment, but it is only one in a long list of things she has done to support and assist middle class families in the pursuit of their dreams.
Elizabeth Warren is thoughtful, sincere, and empathetic. She is also smart, savvy, and incredibly disciplined. When she speaks, people listen, and they listen because they know that she speaks not only with the courage of her convictions but with the authority of an expert who has done her homework, read the relevant research cover to cover, and carefully studied the thinking of the greatest minds in the field.
Because of these traits and habits, she is almost always right, and because of her temperament and her willingness to adjust her views when presented with relevant new information, she, more so than probably any other American politician, is often able to persuade and convince people with whom she disagrees. Where others fall back on talking points and cheap insults, Elizabeth falls back on knowledge and data. She is able to keep her cool even when debating uninformed narcissists because she knows she has the facts and the weight of accumulated scientific research on her side.
She has also demonstrated a talent for getting things done, both within her own party and, crucially, in the face of concentrated bad-faith Republican opposition. In this hyperpolarized moment, when Republicans can see the tidal wave of demographic change gathering force to overwhelm their outdated, misogynist views, they are resorting to lies, stalling, and outright illegal conduct (hilariously, the only known case of widespread intentional ballot fraud was perpetrated by, you guessed it, the Republicans!) to maintain their minority grip on power.
If elected to the presidency, and hopefully even if she were elected as VP, Elizabeth Warren could become the hammer that finally smashes the rotten remains of the racist Republican machine to pieces. Crucially, she could also become the architect of a new political and economic order–one that prioritizes the urgent needs of the middle-class many over the corrupt wants of the wealthy-ass few.
She galvanizes the emerging left, impresses and cooperates with those in the center, and scares the pants off of the reactionaries on the right.
And rightly so.
In recent elections, Democrats have foolishly trimmed their leftward sails in a vain attempt to appeal to those in the center and center-right. This hasn’t worked because Democrats don’t win elections by picking off a few independent votes here and a few opposition party votes there. That’s the Republican playbook (the legal component of it anyway), and it only works for them because of the corrupted, sclerotic, and anti-majoritarian electoral college system that advantages them at the cost of (small d) democratic integrity.
Democrats win when democracy flourishes. More specifically, they win by motivating and mobilizing the gigantic majority of voters who would benefit from a more fair and balanced economic and political system. The enthusiasm gap that has allowed Republicans to snatch victory in 2 of the 3 most recent non-incumbent presidential elections, despite losing the popular vote by a significant margin, could be washed away by an unstoppable blue wave, but only if we can persuade people that voting D will in fact improve their lives.
Warren is the right choice for president (and for VP) because she provides the powerful progressive counterpoint to Joe Biden’s saltine cracker centrism. Do enough democrats like Biden to push him over the top against the entrenched party of Trump? Maybe. But if we want to not only win this election but send a deafening message by evicting the Complainer in Chief and his minions from all branches of government at all levels of power, we need to turn out our team and run up the score by a mile.
Putting Elizabeth Warren on the ticket is the best way to do this. And so she is not only the correct choice because of her many admirable qualities and proven ability to accomplish great things. She is also the correct choice because she is the only candidate who can provide the spark to light a fire under Democratic asses to get to the polls, bring their friends and family with them, and send Trump back to the deep dank hole he crawled out of once and for all.
If we want to win this fall, Warren is the way to go. With Warren in the race, progressives will not only turn out, but work tirelessly to turn their whole network out too. With Warren in the race, women and people with college degrees will be reassured that Joey-come-lately Biden will actually follow thru on his recently adopted progressive policy positions. And with Warren in the race, we can all rest easy knowing that, should anything happen to President Biden during his time in office, we will have a brilliant, capable, and impeccably prepared VP ready to step in and take the reins at a moment’s notice.
And yes, with Elizabeth in the race, some older white centrists may feel less enthusiastic about the ticket than they would if it included an Edward or an Emmett instead. But they’re not all that likely to completely switch their allegiance and vote for Trump instead, so I’m comfortable with their discomfort. Warren is the way to go and there’s no two ways about it.
