Look at it this way: The American majority was never as conservative as Reagan, but that didn’t stop him from winning once he had a zealous grassroots conservative movement behind him and caught his moment. Politics is often about leveraging plurality-appeal into an electoral majority.
What do you base that on?
The challenge for progressives, that Reagan didn’t have to worry about, is that they can’t point to a positive institution to counter the evil corporations. The government is held in just as low esteem. A Warren campaign at this point would either be nothing but anger at Wall Street, or would be anger at Wall Street mixed with positive views of government that very few people believe. And the Obama administration has NOT helped in that regard.
Serious question to fight my own ignorance:
What’s not to like about the export import bank? Its revenue positive, so it doesn’t cost the tax payer, it supports American business exporting abroad in a way that other nations support their businesses, and unlike a protective tariff it doesn’t American consumers. I know a certain class of people have a bee in their bonnet about it but I’ve never been able to figure out why.
It distorts markets and hurts some American companies, like Delta, since Delta doesn’t get subsidies to buy Boeing jets like European airlines do. It mainly helps a few huge businesses that would be just fine without it. It’s as bad as oil company subsidies.
It is corporate welfare. That alone should make all but corporate-friendly politiicans against it.
This is scary: I’m actually agreeing with Shodan:
and adaher:
Warren is making a difference, but it’s not the sort of difference that’s going to manifest in her personally, or in anyone in her political position, being elected in 2016. She can do more for the cause by pushing legislation through the Senate than she could as President, and she can do more yet than that by simply shining a spotlight on the problems so that future senators and presidents can more freely address them.
I can see her running for the purpose of promoting her ideas, without a real expectation of winning - many primary candidates have done the same in the past. That way, she can move the dialog. If she were 20 years younger, I could see her running in order to set the stage for future runs - but because of her age, that’s not going to happen.
And as Goldwater proved, even if she ran and lost 40 states, it wouldn’t prevent progressive victories in the future.
One thing Warren says which is poppycock but a good soundbite is “Government is the things we do together”. Very Reaganesque. The problem for Warren is that we need a President who will restore faith in government, which is near an all-time low. That means “making the trains run on time” which means a technocrat with experience in doing just that. You can’t pave the way for progressive victories if Americans are anti-government.
Democrats like to talk about the “blue wall” that makes it hard for Republicans to win the Presidency, but Democrats face a “red wall” of mistrust of government that makes it impossible for them to get anything done and results in huge midterm backlashes when they try.
Laddo, you really ought to avoid this phrase, otherwise we might thing you have a hard-on for …
IT’s just a phrase often used to denote government actually doing its job right. If there’s a better one, I’d love to hear it. But government that works isn’t fascism, or at least you’d better hope it’s not, otherwise Warren has bigger problems than we initially thought.
The point is that in order for Americans to trust government, it has to work well. It has to be accountable. And it has to perform as promised, not underperform but still muddle along “acceptably” since some people are benefitting from a particular program.
Indeed…
A link to Tom Lehrer’s piece Whatever Became of Hubert? is in order.
I certainly hope the Democrats do not turn the 2016 primary campaign into a coronation of Clinton. Though unlikely to become an issue, she has had a couple health scares. We don’t want to be halfway through a largely uncontested primary season when she has another cardiovascular event.s with
It won’t be uncontested and frankly I think that Clinton has a good chance of losing in a primary to a candidate that gets to her left. She’s just too cautious and predictable.
Oh goodie, another prediction. 
The problem is that government working well does not typically equate to people “trusting” it – especially when the media are so fully in control of parties who have a vested interest in it not working well. A fair, just, orderly and efficient government ends up pissing a lot of people off: a lot of that “red tape” is not arbitrary regulation, that stuff is there for a reason, not merely to mess with our freedoms.
This sounded so dumb, I had to look it up. It’s mostly attributed to a young Barney Frank. How on earth is it “reaganesque”?
It’s Reaganesque in that it’s a persuasive statement in favor of an ideology that is positive and uplifting. Persuasive in theory anyway. In practice, government tends to be apart from us and rule over us rather than being something we do collectively.
Warren/Sanders.
Or Sanders/Warren. Either way works.
The most reliable word source online defines “reaganesque” as something akin to façadelicious. Or, also, referring to naming things after people who are not yet dead.
Hey, it was the first hit in the search. That has to mean something, right?
“Government, after all, is society; it is all of us getting together. The economy is not.”
– Jeff Madrick, Seven Bad Ideas: How Mainstream Economists Have Damaged America and the World
Um, okay, what else *would *you call the mechanism by which we all work together?