Revolving Door Project | Now Is The Time For Fighters

In speech, Senator Warren pushes economic policy worth fighting for

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It is a time of monsters, to be sure—of men doing monstrous things. But in any good story, and perhaps in real life too, the rise of monsters leads to the rise of fighters.

On Monday, Senator Elizabeth Warren gave a speech at the National Press Club about how Democrats can rebuild durable trust with voters, win elections, and enact systemic change. She spoke with energy about how Democrats cannot win back a lasting majority by watering down their economic vision, and how candidates in future elections must “credibly demonstrate that they will take on a rigged system in order to fix it.” In other words, she called for the members of her party to refashion themselves as willing fighters.

In a time of many urgent battles, some fall outside the scope of Senator Warren’s intervention here: the fight to reform our violent and racist immigration system; to prevent runaway climate change and repair our broken relationship to the natural world; to reimagine our nation’s place within the world, and break Trump’s fever dream of extractive dominance. Where Senator Warren is laser-focused is on economic policy that serves working people, a domain where she brings deep experience and a fighter’s spirit.

“We are not short on good ideas,” Warren argued, rattling off economic proposals: “Boosting pay and making life more affordable for working people. Building more affordable homes and cracking down on corporate landlords. Increasing the size of social security checks. Providing universal child care. Passing price gouging laws with real teeth. Guaranteeing the right to repair your own cars, machines, and business equipment. Strengthening unions. Building universal health care. Taxing the wealthy and giant corporations. Increasing the minimum wage.”

We at RDP have called for Democratic leadership to act as an energetic opposition party, forcefully calling out the Trump administration’s corruption while putting forward a political vision that addresses the urgent needs of the public and cracking down on corporate power run amok, instead of appeasing rich donors with a vested interest in preserving the current order. Senator Warren’s speech offered a roadmap for how to do both—stand against Trump’s corruption and cruelty, and for real change—without being burned by the ruinous contradiction of serving both the public and the preferences of Democrats’ big dollar donors.

“When Democrats water down their economic platform to appeal to wealthy donors, whether the transaction is explicit or subtle, we squander trust with working people,” she said. “And the money just isn’t worth it.”

Senator Warren offered a helpful reframing of the calls for a “big tent” party (something that our organization, in calling out corporate influence, has been accused of deliberately trying to prevent). The big tent can be designed to accommodate the needs of a big voter base of workers, or for a small group of big dollar donors, but not both—not if the big dollar donors want the tent poles to be the existing pillars of our rigged economy.

“Yes, Democrats need a big tent. But there are two versions of what a big tent means. One vision says that we should shape our agenda and temper our rhetoric to flatter any fabulously rich person looking for a political party that will entrench their own economic interests. The other vision says we must acknowledge the economic failures of the current rigged system, aggressively challenge the status quo, and chart a clear path for big structural change. If we are going to pick up the broken pieces from the 2024 election and build a durable big tent, we must acknowledge a hard truth. The Democratic Party cannot pursue both visions at the same time.”

The economy didn’t “rig” itself, some form of perpetrator-less evil deus ex machina. That’s why the recognition that you have to choose between the winners and losers of that rigging is crucial. You can’t rebuild trust with voters that have been repeatedly burned by a corrupt economic system while also preserving billionaires’ trust that you will protect their economic interests. As my colleagues previously wrote of the tech titans who form a core part of that donor class, “Any tent able to accommodate their outsized egos and influence will have no room for the common good or basic human decency.”

The fantasy of the Abundance worldview is that politicians can deliver for voters without going up against powerful corporate interests; can rebuild trust in government without an energetic focus on rooting out corruption. Regardless of how sincerely abundance acolytes want a government that serves the public interest, the abundance agenda is in practice being wielded by powerful, wealthy interests as a bludgeon against a left-populist economic agenda designed to serve working people, in no small part by confronting corporate power. As Senator Warren observed:

“So yes, we need more government efficiency, a lot more. But many in the abundance movement are doing little to call out corporate culpability and billionaire influence in creating and defending those very inefficiencies. Instead, abundance has become a rallying cry, not just for a few policy nerds worried about zoning, but for wealthy donors and other corporate aligned Democrats who are putting big time muscle behind making Democrats more favorable to big businesses. It looks like the corporate tycoons have found one more way to stop the Democratic party from tackling a rigged system with too much energy.”

Warren painted a picture of how the ultra-wealthy’s outsized influence in politics corrupts every branch of government, from judicial appointments to congressional candidates to pro-industry revolvers helming regulatory agencies:

“…there is a different and frankly much larger group of extremely wealthy people trying to influence policy. This group might align with Democrats on some social issues. They certainly are not MAGA Republicans, but they’re also not interested in changing an economic game that is already rigged in their favor. And in exchange for their financial support, they insist that the Democratic Party turn its economic agenda in a direction that mostly benefits the wealthy and further undermines the economic stability of tens of millions of families all across this country. These people push Democrats to embrace candidates who will slowwalk popular economic policies. They lobby for deregulation and special tax breaks that will pad their own bottom lines. They promote making big-time corporate lawyers federal judges. They pressure presidents to appoint tepid leaders at regulatory agencies, people who once in office seem positively allergic to enforcing the law when that might make life uncomfortable for big business interests.”

It’s worth remembering that weakened regulatory standards and the failure to enforce laws in order to assuage big business interests is not a dry, bureaucratic story—it can cost people their lives. Earlier this week, the Trump administration made the gobsmacking decision to stop quantifying the health benefits and human lives saved by air pollution controls when regulating polluting industries. By refusing to calculate the monetary benefits of these policies for actual people, the administration makes it easier to justify lifting the regulatory burden on corporate polluters, even though it has been widely known for decades that improved air quality offers extraordinary returns for the American people and the economy.

Less sickness, less death, longer lives, more productive time: these are measures of success by any sane person’s accounting. But the Trump appointees making this decision are former lobbyists for polluting industries, and are seemingly more loyal to the business interests of their former employers than to hundreds of millions of Americans. This, along with thousands upon thousands of accumulating moral outrages, is why we need our leaders to be fighters.