The Nation: Elizabeth Warren Has Made Her Story America's Story

[tishaLA]

<...> Warren preaches the need for “big structural change” so often that a crowd chanted the phrase back at her during a speech in San Francisco the first weekend in June. Then she gets specific. In Act III of her stump speech, she lays out her dizzying array of plans. But by then they’re not dizzying, because she has anchored them to her life and the lives of her listeners. The rapport she develops with her audience, sharing her tragedies and disappointments—questionable choices and all—makes her bold policy pitches feel believable. She starts with her proposed wealth tax: two cents on every dollar of your worth after $50 million, which she says would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years. (She has also proposed a 7 percent surtax on corporate profits above $100 million.) <...>

That “big structural change” would pay for the items on Warren’s agenda— the programs that would rebuild the opportunity ladder to the middle class—that have become her signature: free technical school or two- or four-year public college; at least partial loan forgiveness for 95 percent of those with student debt; universal child care and prekindergarten, with costs capped at 7 percent of family income; and a pay hike for child-care workers.

“Big structural change” would also include strengthening unions and giving workers 40 percent of the seats on corporate boards. Warren promises to break up Big Tech and Big Finance. She calls for a constitutional amendment to protect the right to vote and vows to push to overturn Citizens United. To those who say it’s too much, she ends every public event the same way: “What do you think they said to the abolitionists? ‘Too hard!’ To the suffragists fighting to get women the right to vote? ‘Too hard!’ To the foot soldiers of the civil-rights movement, to the activists who wanted equal marriage? ‘Give up now!’ ” But none of them gave up, she adds, and she won’t either. Closing that way, she got a standing ovation at every event I attended. <...>
https://www.thenation.com/article/elizabeth-warren-presidential-campaign-2020/

It's a good read!