Progressives Only: Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren

[NOVA Green]

As a self-identified Progressive (Included in my 2nd Atlas name/sub-name(?) Oregon Progressive), who will definitely vote in the 2020 DEM Primary in either Oregon or possibly Southern California if a job offer materializes to mutual satisfaction....

I would pick Bernie over Warren in a binary contest....  (Obviously by the time the Oregon '20 primary gets around the field will likely be way way smaller, vs California where I would imagine most of the current contenders will be on the ballot when early voting starts around the same time as the Iowa caucuses.

I switched my avatar from Green to Democrat at some point around the time of the 2008 Democratic Primary.

I switched my avatar from Democrat to Socialist right after the Election of Donald Trump.

I haven't located my exact quote, but it was something to the effect that NOVA GREEN's avatar would remain Socialist, until the Democrats nominated a solidly progressive candidate for President that represented the economic interests of working-class Americans, as well as progressive foreign policy position.

Although honestly, I've warmed up a bit to Warren (As has my wife as well) on some of her policy positions, it still feels in many ways like she is "Bernie Lite", both in style and substance.

Regardless of that, why would I back a Democratic Primary Nominee who essentially has no real long-time background in supporting progressive movement activities, other than perhaps in some part of academia.

Bernie was directly involved in political activism, including Civil Disobedience at the University of Chicago as a Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War activist student leader of CORE and SNCC starting in '62.

After a stint of working as a writer and manager of the Eugene Debs Historical Society in the '70s, he became mayor of Burlington Vermont for a decade before being elected as the US-VT-AL representative in the US House.

Where I am going with this is there has been an extremely lengthy and consistent history going back some 57 Years, even in political environments where his progressive policy positions have been considered generally unpopular.

Additionally, had it not been for Bernie Sander's '2016 Presidential Campaign, I doubt that the Democratic Party debate on items such Universal Health Care and College for All, would be anywhere close to where they are today, to the point that the vast majority of current DEM primary contenders essentially support variations on "HOW" to implement these types of policies and not "SHOULD"....

Although, I like the fact that Warren has devoted roughly the past (24) Years towards issues such as Bankruptcy Protection and Financial/Banking Sector Reform (and is a verifiable expert on these subjects), these issues are peripheral to me, simply because, like many working-class Americans, we don't have enough financial assets on the table to have a stake in the system, and bread and butter issues like minimum wage increases, cost of health insurance, a tax structure that is overwhelmingly geared towards the money bags at the top, while we get no pay raises.

I would happily support a Bernie-Warren ticket, and regardless of which of these two Progressive Democrats win the Democratic Nomination will vote Democratic in the General Election for President, and encourage family and extended family to do likewise....

Assuming Trump wins the Republican nomination, I would vote for any "Yellow Dawg" that gets the nod.....

Now if it's a Weld vs Williamson race, might need to think about that a bit more.



mod note: Fixed bbcode tags

[NOVA Green]

Although, I like the fact that Warren has devoted roughly the past (24) Years towards issues such as Bankruptcy Protection and Financial/Banking Sector Reform (and is a verifiable expert on these subjects), these issues are peripheral to me, simply because, like many working-class Americans, we don't have enough financial assets on the table to have a stake in the system, and bread and butter issues like minimum wage increases, cost of health insurance, a tax structure that is overwhelmingly geared towards the money bags at the top, while we get no pay raises.

Mind you, Warren's interest in Household Finance precedes her interest in Financial/Banking Sector Reform and defined her approach to Bankruptcy Protection as well. She began working on this issue with Jay Westbrook, her collaborator in As We Forgive Our Debtors when she began teaching at UT Law in 1981. By the mid-1980s she was writing strong arguments against the conservative Law and Economics movement and its tendency to put theoretical economics over the empirical study of households and their situations. But the subject is highly personal for her as it ultimately derives from her childhood experience of her father's heart attack in 1961 and her mother's entry into the workforce. You can see this in her work throughout her career, like in The Two Income Trap, where she points out that single income households have a reserve worker that can pick up the slack.

For Warren, the Household is the unit of the economy and its financial condition is the prism by which she examines the economy more broadly. The 2004 video of her explaining the mechanism of the 2008 financial crisis, you see her framing it in terms of Household Finance. And her policies are built around this frame as well. The biggest household expense is Housing, so she released an aggressive housing plan early. In addition to Healthcare, which already gets a lot of attention, Childcare and Education are huge expenses, and she released detailed plans on those early as well. On the income side? When asked why she's running for president she says because a single minimum wage job is not enough to support a family. This approach of focusing on the micro and personal and expanding out from there is her signature.

That is an interesting take on Warren's political evolution, as well as potentially a window into which to view her political prism, but I'll focus one particular item you mentioned, which is deeply personal to me having been temporarily homeless a few years back after getting laid off from a relatively decent job, but with no savings....

Although she has come forward with a proposal to fund affordable housing through increasing the Estate Tax back to Bush era levels, several billion dollars to struggling mortgage owners, increase of fair housing laws, plus extra loan $$$ for red-lined districts, it won't necessarily scratch the surface of the housing crisis in America.

Granted it is better than the policy positions presented on housing issues by a few of the other DEMs that jumped in but not by much.

Sanders hasn't posted an official "policy position" yet on the subject, however Sanders has extensively spoken about the issues of affordable housing over the Years, and I wouldn't be surprised if we should see something more detailed in the near future from a First Generation Central and Eastern-European Jewish parentage, who grew up living in a rent-controlled apartment in NYC during the Great Depression.

I have problems with the whole "Free Market" solutions to the Housing Crisis that are essentially band aids towards a much broader problem.

The concept of the "ownership society", which was essentially the Conservative approach under Reagan and Thatcher in the 1980s, with the concept that voters that owned their own homes were more likely to vote Republican/Tory than those who rented, has been proven to be an absolute bust, instead lining of pockets of Developers and the Banking Sector than anything else.

The concept of housing mortgage deductions, one of the most popular elements of US Tax Code, has effectively been a mass distribution of wealth, from working and Lower Middle-Class Americans, many of us who live in higher cost housing markets, to Upper-Income Americans that have no crisis of Affordable Housing, but simply want to buy more house for lower cost.

The rest of us the 35%+ of Americans that are renters have no such respite.....

Again, Warren's policy subscriptions seem to rely on traditional political prescriptions (Albeit progressive sounding within the current political environment of the mid 2010s.

We need something bolder..... the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which the US basically wrote after the massive destruction of WW II caused by Nazi/Fascist movements in Europe and Asia, with backing from the other Four major "victors" of WW II under article 25 called for a "RIGHT TO HOUSING".

Not to bag too hard on Warren, since it's great that she's come up with a plan / policy statement, probably better than something officially posted as a Democrat in the past 25+ Years, but we need something more.....

"Article 25.
 
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

There are other places out there that might go into the affordable housing position of DEM candidates competing in the 2020 primaries, but I want to hear more of it, along with other bread and butter issues.

Again, this isn't to score any cheap political points on the Warren vs Sanders "Atlas Support Spectrum", but simply to acknowledge and raise the point that DEM candidates need to talk about this a lot more, and not just in California.....

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-where-2020-presidential-candidates-including-elizabeth-warren-and-kamala-harris-stand-on-affordable-housing-2019-07-25