Elizabeth Warren: Our Populist Agenda - in Her Own Words [View all]
Elizabeth Warren: Our Populist Agenda - in Her Own Words
1/4/15
Senator Elizabeth Warren has become the most visible leader of the growing populist movement that is uniting new majority around an agenda for economic change.
But with media visibility comes over-simplified media analysis. For example, a McClatchy news service piece, published December 24, characterizes Warren supporters as a liberal faction mobilizing "voter outrage" against the banks - as though Americans were not already outraged by the way bankers manipulate our economy. The story describes populists as pitted against "centrists who want the party to provide economic incentives for people to succeed, relying less on wealth redistribution through higher taxes or guaranteed incomes." Note the absurd implication that we populists somehow oppose helping people to succeed.
All reporters and pundits - and all Warren supporters - should read a series of speeches (stitched together below) in which Senator Warren carefully explains why so few people are able to succeed in today's American economy. And her solutions, drawn from some of the best thinkers and social movements in America today, go well beyond stale debates about redistribution, zeroing in on what it will take to create jobs, raise wages, and put government on the side of working Americans.
For those who know her ideas only from TV sound-bites, we present Elizabeth Warren's thinking about the economy in her own words - words that are teaching us how to talk about economic populism and build a new American majority for change.
(Transcripts at Huffpo article)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/roger-hickey/elizabeth-warren-our-popu_b_6414584.html