I obviously agree with @nytdavidbrooks' main point here. I'd like to add a couple thoughts...https://twitter.com/nytdavidbrooks/status/1184985279700131840 …
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Some of this is just strategically performative, to create the perception of demand for a moderating general election shift. But I also see what looks like naive belief in the naive ideological purism of a very savvy politician who was a Republican until her 40s.
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Second, Warren's stated legislative priorities are pro-democracy, anti-corruption reforms that are utterly necessary. This ought to be everyone's priority. I don't agree with every detail, but she's better than anyone on the structural issues & perverse incentives in the system.
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I think this needs to be stressed, because this sort of reform is truly badly needed, deserves bipartisan support, and I worry that efforts to cast Warren as a dogmatic radical encourages a future GOP agenda of McConnellesque stonewalling.
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This IMO poses a bigger risk than anything she might be able to actually achieve in economic policy. E.g., M4A and the wealth tax seem unlikely even with unified D control.
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I don't love Warren's trade policy, but I also worry less about it than a failure to pass basic electoral and anti-corruption reform.
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Rs err by viewing the prospect of a progressive D administration as the mirror-image of a conservative R administration. The D coalition is far more ideologically varied and requires a lot of negotiated compromise to come to consensus. Never-Trump R's should take heart in that.
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Last, I think Warren's diagnosis of the structural problems in our political economy is broad-strokes correct, even if I disagree with many of her prescriptions. Diagnostically, she's not all that different from
@lindsey_brink and Steve Teles in "The Captured Economy."Show this thread -
Because I think a bunch her plans aren't likely to be politically feasible, a Warren administration offers a big opportunity for skilled moderate legislators like Bennet to fill out her framework with more legislatively do-able (and IMO substantively better) alternative proposals
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From my perspective, this is not such a bitter pill to swallow.
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I'd like to see my never-Trump friends doing less to make it toxic for Rs to cross the aisle and vote with moderate Ds under a Warren administration, and doing more to develop and promote alternatives to her plans that can break the logjam of polarized legislative impotence.
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End of conversation
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Senior Fellow, Progressive Policy Institute.