The Differences Between Warren and Sanders Matter

[BlueMTexpat]

Where socialism imagines greater concentrations of power, her vision ultimately points in the direction of a more decentralized, more competitive economy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/differences-between-warren-and-sanders-matter/605971/

While I don't necessarily agree with everything here, this is a worthwhile article ... and, best of all, not blocked by a paywall.

...
Of course, there are good reasons the world tends to lump Sanders and Warren together as ideological twins. Long before it was popular, Warren and Sanders pitted themselves against a common enemy on Wall Street. They are the two most important politicians prodding for a break with the economics of the Clinton-Obama era. Despite their apparent agreement on policy, however, their ideological frameworks are hardly the same. They diverge on fundamental questions about the role of the state, the contours of the market, and the underlying goals of political life. [emphasis mine]
...
Warren comes from another tradition, one that some of Sanders’s intellectual backers have dismissed as “middle-class liberalism.” That’s stated as a smear—and it hardly captures the radicalism of her program—but it’s also fairly accurate. Warren is an intellectual descendent of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who posed as both an enemy of economic concentration and a believer in competitive markets. Like Brandeis, Warren’s primary goal is to depose the monopolists and tame finance, so that a broader swath of the public can participate in the economy as owners and entrepreneurs. Earlier in the campaign, when she was bolder about distinguishing herself, she announced, “I’m capitalist to the bone.”

If Warren wanted to define herself in opposition to Sanders, she wouldn’t need to tie herself in knots. Where Sanders talks about revolution, her description of the American economy amounts to a restoration. She wants to return to another era, when the economy (and government) was less captured by Big Business. Her scourge is corruption, and embedded in her incessant denunciations of it is the hope that the system can be salvaged by extrication of that tumor. Where socialism imagines greater concentrations of power—greater state planning, greater public provisioning of goods—her vision ultimately points in the direction of a more decentralized, more competitive economy. Sanders’s keyword is equality; her best speeches have extolled liberty.

By contrasting herself with Sanders, she could press the case for her electability. Donald Trump has already begun to portray socialism as a foreign incursion, but Warren’s populism is in the American grain. It draws on a political vocabulary that traces back to Thomas Jefferson. She wants “structural change,” but her changes are premised on principles that are deeply familiar. (Matt Stoller’s recent book, Goliath, has a vivid history of the anti-monopoly movement to which she is heir.)
...

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More at the link.

[krissey]

1. A solid difference, I agree. In many ways. Warren also builds the Democratic party.

As a lifetime Democrat, that matters to me.

[BlueMTexpat]

3. This absolutely

matters to me as well.

[MH1]

5. YES. Building the party is important. Warren cares about that, BS doesn't even want to call himself

a Democrat, let alone build the Democratic Party. He'd rather burn it down.

[krissey]

6. "He'd rather burn it down."

Purpose.

[ahlnord]

2. Warren

Elizabeth Warren is more like Dwight Eisenhower than Bernie Sanders. She is pragmatic and looking out for the middle class. She does not want to bring the temple down on all our heads. She knows that capitalism run-amok will destroy itself; it must be well-regulated and kept in its own traces. And she has a plan for that!

[BlueMTexpat]

4. Yes, she does!

[Cha]

7. HUGE Difference, imo.. and of course it matters

[highplainsdem]

8. I agree. And I think she should start emphasizing the differences between herself and Sanders.

They had a non-aggression pact for a while, but his noisier surrogates never paid any attention to it, and it benefited him more than her, since her attention to planning coupled with her similarity to him on some policy goals might've made people assume there were similarly careful plans underpinning his ideas. Which wasn't true.

She should try to pin Sanders down on how he plans to pay for all of his promises.

She does run the risk, if she does so, of losing some supporters she'd picked up who originally supported him. But his surrogates are already suggesting she betrayed their causes, failed purity tests.

If she can turn that leftwing/progressive lane into two lanes, and pick up some support from more moderate Democrats, she could pass Sanders in the polls again.

But she has to be willing to criticize Sanders, not just the candidates slightly to her right (who are still liberals).

[krissey]

9. Warren did at the start and I think it served her well.

[BlueMTexpat]

10. From what I read, that is the

main point of the article.

I believe that Elizabeth has managed and will manage just fine, however. As I noted above, I don't agree with everything in the article.

IMO, Bernie's own behavior will continue to emphasize the differences between them more effectively than anything Elizabeth can say or do. One fact - pointed out accurately by HRC recently - is that he simply is unable and/or unwilling to work together with his colleagues in Congress, while Elizabeth is not only effective, but a recognized leader, role model AND Co-Chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus. She has also campaigned hard everywhere to raise money for and to elect other Democrats, including some who now support Bernie. Irony there indeed.

Bernie and his more rabid surrogates and followers may self-destruct if they keep on the way they are going. In that case, his more mainstream followers will likely seek other options. Warren will likely not be the only one they consider, but she will hopefully be among the more viable options.