"I've Got a (Five-Year) Plan" Warren's Surge

Roger Simon, notable for being among the first to predict a Trump victory, prognosticates that Elizabeth Warren will be the Democratic nominee. You can read his column for why he thinks this will be the case, but I find the following, by Paul Mirengoff of Power Line more explanatory, despite the fact that he is only speculating on her recent rise (to as high as second) in the polls:

Cuba has had lots of plans, none of them good. (Image by Stéphan Valentin, via Unsplash, license.)

Warren is, I think, the most demagogic of the Democratic candidates. She demonizes capitalists while pretending to support capitalism. She serves up villains, mostly pantomime ones, while Sanders, her main competition in the radical lane, blames the system -- a more plausible but less visceral form of radicalism.

Joe Biden is wishy-washy. Sanders is a straightforward socialist. Buttigieg is crunchy. Harris has obvious demagogic traits but hasn't found her voice in the way Warren has. Advantage Warren, at least with a not inconsiderable chunk of Democratic voters.

Simon goes so far as to say that Biden is, as Donald Trump has put it, a "dummy," and that not looking stupid will go a long way towards winning the Democratic nomination.

But back to Mirengoff. I think he's right in part due to the fact that Joe Biden became the 800 pound gorilla as soon as he entered the race. Except for the young, small, democratic socialist wing of the party, I doubt most Democrats are ready to acknowledge (including to themselves) that what they want -- the familiar, if unstable, mixed economy that Biden represents -- leads to socialism. Sanders, whose lone virtue starts and stops at using that term, is losing ground in part because of that and in part because he doesn't offer specifics on how he will achieve all the free stuff he promises. Warren, whose campaign slogan is "I have a plan," attacks Sanders for that, and pays lip-service to capitalism. It is she who has found the balancing act needed to win her party's nomination. (1) She won't scare off those who are afraid to name the essence of that party's direction -- many of whom will support Biden until enough gaffes pile up and she strikes them as the "sane" alternative. (2) She will appeal to more calculating leftists who will recognize that her plans would go a long way towards achieving their goals while also flying under the radar of the conceptually impaired. (3) And then, of course, the cherry on top is that she's a woman. That fact should matter no more than her ethnic heritage, but it does in today's political climate.

I am not sure what this portends for the general election. Simon seems to believe that the investigation of the roots of the failed Mueller investigation will burn the Democrats, but he underestimates how unimportant this will be to Democrats, especially if Warren manages to fire them up. (Notice how little they care about the facts that (a) she passed herself off as Amerindian for years, (b) advanced her career by doing so, and (c) has no qualms about the whole idea of racial quotas. Why would they care if any revelations about Obama are true? They really just want to beat Trump and get free stuff -- or at least feel good about helping others get it.)

Biden's apparently very successful entry into the campaign completely derailed a column I was writing because it made the choice voters confront much more difficult to lay out than it had been. A Warren candidacy will, I think, be easier to write about, but harder for Trump -- no capitalist, and a less clear-cut choice than Republicans are wishing he is -- to win against.

-- CAV

P.S. Just to be clear, our country faces a choice between freedom and tyranny in each election, whether that choice is acknowledged or not, or the candidates reflect that choice clearly or not. I have not yet made up my mind about my presidential vote, including whether to cast one at all.