Why the Differences Between Sanders and Warren Matter

BY
ZAID JILANI

Elizabeth Warren is no moderate. But Bernie Sanders would be the most progressive president in US history — and he'd have a movement to back him up.


Excerpt:

With the announcement of Warren’s exploratory committee and Sanders’s likely entry into the Democratic race, it will be important for voters to carefully study the nuances of Warren and Sanders’s records and worldviews. While both are critics of the Democratic establishment, their long-held beliefs suggest they would prioritize different solutions, both in terms of the policies they would push and how they plan to achieve them.

Warren is a brilliant legal scholar who changed party allegiances after studying the abusive practices of the financial industry. As a senator, she has been effective at promoting change, primarily through brilliant interrogations at hearings and effective advocacy within the halls of Congress. Tellingly, she sat out the 2016 Democratic primary, choosing to offer compelling but private policy advice to the Clinton campaign.

That is a very different approach than that of Bernie Sanders, who defied the conventional wisdom in 2016 to run for president and became one of America’s most influential politicians thanks to thousands of volunteers and small donors. In a span of just a few short years, he has made his social-democratic policies mainstream. More Democrats now say they prefer socialism than say they prefer capitalism.

As soon as the next president takes office, they will likely face intense pressure from powerful interests, especially big business. The choice between Warren and Sanders may very well determine if that president confronts those interests with careful reasoning and principled advocacy or the force of a mass movement.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/01/elizabeth-warren-bernie-sanders-socialism-progressives