Bernie Sanders is a self-styled socialist. Elizabeth Warren wants markets and capitalism to work for regular people.
This is what made her transition from Republican to Democrat quite easy. Today’s corporate-friendly (neoliberal) Dems are only distinguishable from Republicans by their position on social policies. Can we please stop giving them the advantage of the “moderate” label? The capitulation of most Dems to corporate interests would make both Eisenhower and Nixon blush. Considering them moderate only serves to position Dems who are closer to the party’s roots in FDR’s policies as “radical” in the perception of the public. The Overton window is being used more like a door to Dems like Clinton, Obama, and Warren who would prefer that it be opaque and closed behind them.
There was nothing moderate about Hillary, who Warren endorsed over Sanders in ’16. Their similarities are quite evident in their policy of nibbling around the edges of capitalism’s more egregious failings to avoid upsetting those who obviously support them. Warren vowed to forego corporate donations in the primary, but only after she had secured a few million from her Senate run, which she brought with her to her Presidential bid. To suggest that she “forgot” their source would be asking us to suspend our disbelief.
Bernie recognizes that the first priority in filling the gaping income inequity hole in our economy is to stop digging and admit that we have a hole. Simply giving the diggers shorter shovels does nothing to fill the hole. He’s also not a true socialist. Much like FDR, he sees government intervention in the economy as necessary to avoid capitalism eating itself by destroying the purchasing power of its customers in its quest for constant increases in short term gains.
He doesn’t advocate for workers taking over the means of production, only that their elected representatives set limits to how profits can be obtained and how much is good for the people, who are the primary charges of their government. This is “Democratic” socialism which is the methodology of all of those less affluent countries in Europe that kick our collective butts in every meaningful metric that keep societies stable and their people happy.
