ELIZABETH WARREN AND THE SOCIALIST LABEL

LOOKING CLOSER

Her face jumps off the cover of the May 20 issue of Time

Magazine. She’s moving in the polls. Conversations with Democratic voters suggest she’s making a strong impression with detailed policy proposals. The closer we look, the more it seems she’s as prepared as anyone for the Presidency. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has that elusive “momentum” every candidate wants.

There is, however, another side of her surge. For every positive  accolade she’s drawn because of her proposals and

her compelling, if largely unknown, personal story, there’s been a claim she’s vulnerable if nominated because President Trump will paint her as a socialist. The Time story, for example, begins with a New Hampshire college student who found himself “perplexed” when he learned Warren believes in entrepreneurship and markets, despite the description of her by a U.S. Chamber of Commerce

official as a “threat to free enterprise.” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, host of the network’s Morning Joe program, asks if Warren can beat Trump given the chance voters will see her as a socialist.  Other commentators, in assigning the 2020 candidates “lanes,” frequently group Warren with self-described Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Is Warren a Socialist?

Answering the question requires deciding a definition of “socialist.” Under the classic explanation offered by political theorists and economists, socialism means a political and economic system in which government controls the means and methods of production and distribution of goods and services. Extensive central planning characterizes such societies. Socialist systems strictly control access to commerce. Government determines who gets what business opportunities. Our review of Warren’s proposals doesn’t show her advancing such ideas. If that’s the socialist test, the former professor flunks.

Some western democracies practice a version of socialism in

which citizens enjoy universal access to health care and other government services. The United States long ago adopted some of these approaches (ever heard of Social Security?), though it limits them in ways other countries don’t. Warren offers numerous suggestions for programs that provide Americans various services at government expense, including maternal health projects, drug abuse prevention and treatment services, and childcare programs.

Other Democratic candidates also support Medicare for All, debt free college, and large-scale drug abuse programs. Republicans, in fact, acknowledge they can’t get rid of Social Security, Medicare, and other social safety-net entitlements. Many don’t want to. Whether those programs constitute socialism isn’t the question anymore. They remain with us, aren’t going anywhere, and will more likely expand than contract. 

Why do some label Warren a Socialist?

Those attacking Warren mostly miss her intent. The college student learned correctly Warren supports and encourages Americans in starting new businesses and developing successful enterprises. As a law professor, she taught commercial and business courses like secured transactions,

the process through which lenders secure loans, and commercial paper, the backbone of banking. She knows the system, how it works, and how it’s been perverted. Perhaps her adversaries fear she understands the positive and negative aspects of capitalism and know she sees how unrestrained capitalism injures workers and consumers. Her work in developing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau suggests just that. 

              

 

Examining Warren’s proposals reveals she seeks a level playing field for large and small firms and restraint on runaway capitalism by putting up guardrails and safeguards

that reign in excesses in the financial industry like those that caused the  2008 recession. She’d break up big tech and agriculture companies by reinvigorating the anti-trust laws (and perhaps passing new ones). One proposal would make some corporations obtain a charter requiring that they consider the interests of workers and communities, as well as shareholders, in corporate decision-making. Her ideas might improve capitalism, not destroy it, particularly by helping make small businesses more competitive and less at the mercy of mega corporations accountable to no one. She generally abhors monopolies because they destroy competition and artificially increase prices.   

            

        

The Tax Issue

Warren hasn’t shied away from proposing tax increases that would finance her ideas. She’d charge billionaires a two per cent tax on their wealth -- not their incomes – and use the money for things like the childcare program and the drug treatment initiatives. People in lower income brackets who need childcare and rural Americans embedded in the opioid crisis would benefit most (can you say Trump voters?).  Still, the taxes that would pay for those programs probably are part of the reason she gets the socialist tag.

The Senator’s tax ideas are not especially radical and spring from a fundamental principle more and more Americans support – making everyone pay their fair share. As we’ve written, some of our income inequality problem stems from tax code inequities. Wealthy Americans have expanded the gap between them and everyone else by manipulating the tax system. Give and take in the political and legislative processes will determine whether Warren’s proposals represent the best fix. Proposing ideas that level the playing field, make America a more equitable country politically, and economically doesn’t make a candidate a socialist. That label isn’t helpful in assessing the best way for tackling the intractable social and economic difficulties this country faces.

We aren’t endorsing Warren now, though we see merit in

her detailed approach and her proposals. This campaign remains young. We hope all the candidates offer ideas addressing the problems the Senator has tackled with her proposals. Those problems are big enough that the nation can use all the ideas it can get. What do you think?         

                

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE: FAIR? UNFAIR?

 

One consequence of the 2016 Presidential election has been calls for abolishing the Electoral College. Hillary Clinton received 2.8 million more votes than Donald Trump, but lost the Electoral College, 304-227.  About 107,000 votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan gave Trump his victory.

               

                                 Trump vs Clinton 2016 Presidential Election

Massachusetts Senator and 2020 Democratic hopeful Elizabeth Warren now leads the charge for dropping

the Electoral College. She, and others, see it as an undemocratic anachronism that violates the principle of one-person-one vote and unfairly blocks popular will. Conservatives (some support it only because it helped the Republican nominee last time) argue eliminating it will diminish the importance of small states and rural areas while unfairly advantaging big cities.

A Little History

The Electoral College resulted from compromises in drafting the constitution. The framers preferred letting electors choose the President, fearing demagogues would unduly influence uninformed, uneducated voters. They sought a balance between popular will and the risk of a tyranny of the majority. States with large populations might have outsized sway if the popular vote elected the President. The drafters discarded the alternative of letting Congress pick the President in favor of the Electoral College.  

            

The popular vote winner usually has also won the Electoral College. The 2016 result represented only the fifth time a candidate who didn’t win the popular vote captured the White House. It happened, of course, most recently before 2016 in 2000 when Al Gore won the popular vote, but lost the Presidency to George W. Bush in the Florida debacle.

 

Bush vs Gore 2000 Presidential Campaign - The fight over Florida

The Debate

Fear of harming small states now stands as the principal argument for keeping the Electoral College. Supporters say candidates would focus nearly all their attention on big cities like New York, Chicago,

Los Angeles, and Houston, not thinly populated rural states in the South and Rocky Mountain West. Wyoming, with a population of 577,000, has become the poster child for keeping the Electoral College. No Presidential candidate would pay it any attention, the story goes, if the country abolishes the Electoral College.

Fear of third parties also now gets raised as a reason

for keeping the Electoral College. Former Reagan administration official Peter Wallison contends America runs the risk of spawning a multitude of minor parties with strong, single issue focus, any one of which could elect a President in a three, four, or five party race in which the winner would only need a plurality of the popular vote. In his nightmare scenario, we’d require a run-off system or we’d face the prospect of coalition governments now seen in parliamentary systems. 

Those advocating change focus on the unfairness of the Electoral College. In a democracy, getting the most votes should translate into winning office. The popular will should prevail and protecting small state or rural state interests, while important, shouldn’t become the tail wagging the dog. In a system predicated on majority rule, this principle carries a great deal of weight.

A better view

Persuasive as the pure democracy rationale is, a better argument for abolishing the Electoral College may lie in the fact it doesn’t do what its supporters say it does. It doesn’t protect small state and rural state interests because candidates ignore those states in Presidential elections anyway. Voters in small states and rural areas might get more attention in a popular vote system than they do now. Presently, having a divided electorate, as measured by partisan affiliation, determines where candidates put their emphasis, not size or rural/urban status.

In 2016, two-thirds of all general election campaign

events occurred in six states – Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Ohio, and Michigan. The nine smallest states received zero attention as measured by candidate appearances. Big states didn’t fare better. California, New York, and Texas hosted three campaign events between them. Why?  Only the “swing states” mattered. It wasn’t rural/urban status or size that determined where the candidates campaigned. They appeared where people hadn’t made up their minds. Neither Clinton nor Trump needed time in California (a cinch for Clinton) or Idaho (locked up for Trump).

Now, rural voters in New York and California (both states have plenty) get ignored, as do urban voters in Memphis and Atlanta. If every vote mattered, Republicans might see the value of appealing to blacks and browns in Seattle, Chicago, and New York. Democrats might find risky blowing off white farmers and small town dwellers in Tennessee, South Carolina, and Nebraska.

The Electoral College is part of our history.  As one advocate for keeping it wrote, “a deal is a deal.” But, the reasons for changing it now outpace the value in keeping it.

Eliminating the electoral college probably means a constitutional amendment -- a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress and ratification by 38 states or calling a constitutional convention, which requires 34 states and has never happened. Twelve states, all controlled by Democrats except one swing state, have signed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in which they pledge they will vote electors for the national popular vote winner if states controlling 270 or more electoral votes agree they’ll do the same. All routes to constitutional change seem unlikely now, given the political dynamics.  

                 

 

Who currently benefits shouldn’t determine this issue. As journalist Ryan Cooper put it, “if a Democrat ever wins the presidency while losing the popular vote, it’s a safe bet the Electoral College will be gone in about five minutes.” That’s not how a democracy should operate. Principle should dictate this decision. Increasingly, it appears principle dictates ditching the Electoral College.     

A TIGER AND A MOUSE

Rob and Henry, avid golfers, respond to the victory by Tiger Woods at the Masters and look ahead to the upcoming PGA Championship.  

Woods upon winning 2019 Masters

After the emotional high faded and the chants of “Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!” stopped ringing in our ears following the 43-year old’s stunning win, in the ensuing solitude a sobering idea struck.  As the PGA Championship approaches, we hope there’s

no parallel here to a little book called Flowers for Algernon we came across in our youth.  Tiger's resurrection from golf’s scrap heap seems no less miraculous than the dramatic transformation depicted in that story, and in Charly, the award-winning movie the book spawned. For Tiger’s sake, and golf’s sake, we hope he does not suffer an analogous fate.

The Book and the Movie

American writer Daniel Keys published

Flowers for Algernon as a short story in 1959 and as a novel in 1966. Both feature a mouse named Algernon, who undergoes surgery that dramatically improves his intelligence, and a man named Charlie Gordon, the first human recipient of the same treatment. Charlie Gordon, portrayed in the movie by Cliff Robertson, who won an Oscar for the role, has an IQ of 68 and works as a janitor in a factory, where his co-workers constantly tease him. He has few meaningful relationships and it appears he doesn’t understand sex.

After the surgery, Charlie discovers sex and falls in love with a woman named Alice Kinnian, played in the movie by Claire Bloom, who had been his teacher as a mentally challenged man. Now a brilliant researcher himself, Charlie notices Algernon becoming listless and depressed. Eventually Algernon dies, showing Charlie the change is temporary. He knows his own intelligence gain will not last. Soon, Charlie regresses to his former self. The movie ends with Alice painfully watching the 68-IQ Charly on a playground with children. Keys reportedly resisted publishers and moviemakers who wanted a happy ending. 

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Tiger Woods

Golf had been waiting a long time for Tiger Woods when he burst onto the professional scene with his record 12-shot victory at the 1997 Masters. Trained by a father, Earl Woods, who thought his son could transform golf’s lily white image and make the game accessible to millions of people of color, Tiger dominated the sport between that first major championship and 2008 as no one ever had. In that 11 year span he won 14 major tournaments. Golf became vastly more popular, though the young players he inspired were mostly white. The reasons deserve exploration, but not now.

Then, it all fell apart, Tiger’s image and his game buried beneath an avalanche of injuries, dysfunction in his personal life, and hubris. He underwent five surgeries, one to reconstruct his knee, and four on his back.  One of those was a risky spinal fusion procedure in 2017 that left him barely able to walk. Two years ago at the champions dinner before the Masters, Tiger said he doubted he could ever play again.

He didn’t give up.  Step by step, he re-learned the game.  He resumed competition in

December 2017 and, in July 2018, almost won the British Open, holding the lead going into the final round. The next month, he closed with a 64 in the PGA Championship, his lowest final round

ever in a major, but fell just short. He won the 2018 Tour Championship, not one of golf’s four majors, but a significant triumph. That, and this 2019 Masters win for his fifth green jacket, leave him only one win short of Sam Snead’s tournament victory record of 82.

And Now?

The medical procedures that got Tiger Woods back on the golf course weren’t ordinary. His fusion surgery represented a last-ditch measure with no guarantee of success and no assurance it will hold up over time. No one knows how long his window for success remains open. Will the stress of high-level golf take too great a toll? When Masters officials moved up the final round because of threatening weather, Woods himself said getting “this body ready” meant rising at 4 a.m. or before.

Golf fans, and the players, know the sport needs a healthy Tiger Woods competing for major championships. He brings a buzz, an excitement, nobody else does. A perfectly rational argument exists that he should take this latest signature win and leave the game with his legacy complete, especially given the implausible nature of his comeback. No one should count on that, though. Tiger’s competitive nature won’t let the story end here, not with the PGA at Bethpage Black looming and the U.S. Open following at Pebble Beach.

              

The Flowers for Algernon/Charly analogy

hangs there, like a Sword of Damocles, over Woods and golf. If he’s injured again, this wonderful glow could turn dark. Should the miracle medical procedures hold up, logically he has about four years for challenging Jack Nicklaus’s record of 18 major championships and cementing his place as the sport’s unquestioned Greatest Of All Time.   Jack won his last major, the 1986 Masters, at age 46.

Maybe Tiger has longer.  We’ve come to expect the unexpected from him.   We hope it plays out that way and we live to see it. We should enjoy this while we can.