Elizabeth Warren embraces her political conversion story to try to broaden her appeal
revealing tradition of apostasy in American politics. Ronald Reagan’s disingenuous claim never to have left the Democratic Party helped him woo millions of blue-collar Democrats. Hillary Clinton’s decision to downplay her early Republicanism, by contrast, signalled her lack of ambition to win votes from the other side. That Donald Trump switched camps at least five times before entering the Republican primary suggested his disloyalty to any party.
She stuck with the Republicans, she has said, because she believed their claim to be the best market managers. Unlike the socialist from Vermont, she says she is a “capitalist to my bones”. She left the right after researching surging individual bankruptcies, which turned out to be caused not by fecklessness, but ill health and other misfortunes. Why were so many hardworking people like her parents living so precariously? she asked.
Her signature proposal is a wealth tax of two cents on the dollar on assets over $50m. She optimistically claims this would raise $2.75trn in a decade, a windfall she would splurge on progressive priorities including universal free childcare, free public college fees and writing off college debt. That is Sanders-esque, with a tonal difference.
Setting aside the merits of her proposals, her focus on policy is clever politics, and unusual. Mrs Clinton’s loss to a candidate with no serious policies, though she had reams of them, has deterred most Democratic candidates from issuing detailed proposals. Mr Biden, the front-runner, has two policies, including a cut-and-paste climate plan. Ms Warren apprehends that Mrs Clinton failed not because she had too many policies, but because she had no theme to make sense of them.
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