OMG, what drivel!
Brooks doesn't talk about actual results in the real world where most of us live. Instead it's just more political game-playing. What about climate change, health insurance, concentration of wealth? Those don't figure in to his predictions, just a bunch of buzzwords about Capitalism and the Constitution. His characterization of Progressives as Commie authoritarians is right of the Fox News playbook.
48
Totally useless column, inasmuch as it is filled with half-truths that do no more than mimic what is heard on Fox News. And yes, David clearly has disdain for a strong female leader in a way that he would not for a male.
23
Where’s the part about trump in a federal prison
43
I prefer AOC's look back at American from the year 2050:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9uTH0iprVQ
11
I nominate Mr. Brooks, the William Buckley epigone, the purveyor and polisher of "one the one hand and on the other hand" op-ed pieces to be given the first annual award of the wizened white never Trumper Republican society. The ones, who long for the days when a Joe Biden could hug virulent southern Republican racists and "get things done". The "good old days" of the cold war when we knew who are enemies were, when filling her up at the Texaco station was patriotic, when you'd walk a mile for a Camel cigarette. When you could count on the Republican "southern strategy" to win the White House and blacks and latinos weren't so uppity. And Barry Goldwater "told it like it was" and bomb bomb bomb McCain was a war hero in one of the most disgraceful and useless wars America ever fought. When the poor were lucky to get into emergency rooms and poor women had to have abortions in back alleys.
16
David, are you auditioning for the role of Polonius in a new production of Hamlet?
15
I don't really know anyone in the whole world who needs to spend some time in abject poverty as does David Brooks.
The scope of his sense of entitlement is boundless and he looks a bit like Marie Antoinette.
32
"...The whole tenor of American politics changed..."
...but too late to avert the catastrophic flood that washed away the New York Times building as David Brooks dreamed visions of Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley rowing down Broadway for the very last time.
15
Shields and Brooks and should be interesting tonight. Right? I mean correct?
2
Brooks is actually making a good case for electing Warren
14
Cool story, bro!
4
Oh brother. Only Brooks could read Warren as a radical. She’s going to bring back fairness and honesty to a system long corrupted by money and lawless republicans who do nothing but reward the rich. This is claptrap. Better to stick to layman’s psychology, Brooks.
21
It’s 2019 and David Brooks refuses to live in a time he helped create.
26
Well, reading that was a complete waste of time.
28
Stop clutching your pearls. Warren is no more radical than Eisenhower.
25
Whew! Thank goodness that we defeated domestic fascism.
6
Work of fiction.
3
Is this written for The Onion?
15
Loving all of the thoughtful comments on the brilliance of Elizabeth Warren. she is the real deal. Shame on you David Brooks, your lack of awareness is showing.
19
What solipsistic tripe from Mr. Brooks. Boo hoo hoo. Ms. Warren has the potential to be the most significant President since FDR. Fingers crossed.
14
Has anyone on the NYT payroll or any contributing journalists paid any attention because just from this title there’s an over abundance of wishful thinking that will be a repeat of 2016.
Perhaps Groundhog Day should be changed to November 4th in 2020.
2
We spend 32 million dollars 24/7/365 on corporate wars for profit and have since 2001. Corporate-backed Republicans invade countries that don't want us there and take what doesn't belong to us under false pretenses of fighting terrorism because the citizens of these countries have the temerity to fight back. We are imprisoning children, creating new generations of future terrorists that will be south of our border while we alienate allies that have been friends for years. We are in the middle of a world coup of natural resources by corporations who force us to continue to deplete the earth's bounty carelessly and recklessly. My question? If not now, when? If not Warren, who?
12
One thing wrong with Brooks' analysis: the assumption that Warren would beat Trump. Precisely who in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and, maybe, Florida who did not vote for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Warren in 2020? The degree of victory in the rest of the states is entirely irrelevant to the electoral college outcome.
Though most Blacks appear to detest Trump, they've heard "plans" and "promises" forever, and unless the Democrats nominate someone (Biden/Klobuchar ticket?), who they believe can actually accomplish something moderate rather than not accomplish utopia, many are likely to just sit home.
As well, the Democrats are busily neutralizing support from young, white, (primarily but not exclusively) male voters. What 20-year old guy making minimum wage (if he has a job), hoping for some sex and eventual marriage, is going to bother voting for candidates that tell him he is essentially worthless, guilty of original sin, and that everyone else should get preferential treatment over him?
Meanwhile, the "appeal" of Trump has not changed. He has essentially acted as expected since Day One. Thus there is not likely to be a diminution of those who voted for him in 2016.
The large majority of voters, especially those whose minds are actually open, vote on an evaluation of what the candidate will do for his or her priorities, not what the candidate says should be their priorities. Warren and many others fail on this latter point.
5
A wonderful Orwellian or anti-Orwellian fantasy. The Republicans are certainly long due for a reckoning, and I for one envision a future, as does Mr. Brooks, where the majority of young voters are either I or D, and the R or C party has lost all relevance. Vilify Latins, and you get no Latins in your party. I kind of do like Brooks' happy ending, where the D party recovers from the disaster of Warrenian giving away the collective farm Socialism with a more responsible balanced brand. However, that may just be Brooks' own fantasy world. I mean, when was the last time this country did something so right?
3
Brooks just inspired me to write to write the check and put a stamp on an the envelope lounging around on my kitchen counter addressed to Warren for President, P O Box 171375, Boston, Ma 02116. This 3rd generation Fed Democrat is grateful for the inspiration!
13
I wonder if this scenario would still play out the same if one of those flipped Senate seats in 2020 was due to Amy McGrath beating Mitch McConnell?
4
If all this comes true, will anything have been done to mitigate climate change by 2030?
5
I see a few problems: a Progressive President might just find a way to open the borders, and destroy our economy and educational system with numbers of people we can't care for and don't have jobs for. As Progressives don't like America to act like the world's superpower, the rest of the world will understand that they need to retreat back to tribal warfare, including getting hold of weapons of mass destruction and using them to threaten the West to take in migrants. Climate change will be combated under Progressives with obsessions over plastic straws, and the protection of our infrastructure (sea walls, moving highways, settling on the least destructive energy source) that will be necessary to survive won't be provided. And just look at the tent cities that mayors of Western cities think are appropriate for the United States: obviously they feel we must pay for our sins and live like the most unfortunate Africans and South Americans. . America wouldn't make it in any recognizable middle class form to 2050.
Thanks to the Warren presidency, we will still have a livable planet in 2050.
9
Warren is a crazy. She literally thinks money grows on trees.
At least Sanders has the honesty to admit the Middle Class is going to have a tax increase.
Both of them are a GIFT to Republicans.
Sanders helped Trump win last election … and both Sanders and Warren look poised to try again!
4
David, have you ever lived anywhere outside the United States? I mean, I get it, it's tough being a thinking conservative in 2019 America. You have to concede that your party is the party for people who think Donald Trump is a good president. That's incredibly sobering. But mocking people who espouse policies that exist in many other industrialized nations is kind of a sad excuse for a tantrum. Look, decades of Republican pandering to racists, xenophobes and the fearful culminated in the party that now sickens you. But unless you were steadfastly opposed to those decades of pandering, you are part of the problem. Harsh, I know, but why not admit you carry some blame for Trump rather than lashing out at people who want to make the government work for the people.
9
Argument? Logic? Evidence? Bueller? It's a reasonable guess that she's going to win the Democratic nomination, and then the Presidency, but Brooks doesn't understand her, or Progressives, at all. Less daydreaming and more work would make a better column.
2
"In staffing her administration, she rejected the experienced Clinton-Obama holdovers and brought in a new cadre from the progressive left."
The problem, M. Brook, is that your article is not based in reality, and is nothing more than an anti-left knee-jerk reaction. Your premise that Warren would run the office as an idealist is wrong.
If you looked at the facts, you would have seen how, after years criticizing Obama for picking his officials from Wall Street, Warren actually staffed the CFPB in a remarkably diverse way. She did not refrained from hiring bankers where she felt their experience would be needed.
The thing most people don't realise with Warren is that she really is a "pragmatic to the bone"; all her public talking and pounding only has the purpose of getting the population behind her liberal agenda, so that she has more bargaining power. She then uses this power with remarkable efficiency.
People who worked with Warren dislike her not for her idealistic speeches, but instead because she is so efficient in getting things done her way.
Source: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/09/12/warren-obama-2020-228068
5
David Brooks is the model of speaking from a holier than thou position. I do believe he should do some self-reflection of his own. Also maybe listen to the young people, to seem to have a better perspective than he does on what is needed politically.
4
If memory serves, in 2008, Obama controlled both houses, had high approval ratings and spent quite a lot of time trying to work Republicans in Congress to find some common ground. In retrospect, a complete waste of critical time where a lot more could have been done. Fool us once, blame on you.
5
Let's be wary of prognosticators. Our country is a kaleidoscope not a melting pot. A chicken in every pot is a noble cause but don't take away my chicken to fill your own pot.
The country is saved by people who think like, wait for it, David Brooks. And we call Trump a narcissist.
1
"In a wildly diverse nation, voters handed power to leaders who were coalition-builders not fighters. The whole tenor of American politics changed."
And what about the 65 million twitter followers of a mean incompetent reality show sociopath? (and commander -in chief)
These are people without the ability to understand fact from fiction and they are NOT going anywhere!
By 2042 the trogs will mostly all be dead BUT "gen humanism" will find it hard getting around with gas masks -let alone voting.
Escape plan needed and accessible texclusively to the rich.
1
I am so grateful to be among such wise and articulate NTY readers. I always learn so much from your comments.
3
Frederick Douglass was a classical liberal.
Lincoln was not. He was an opportunistic butcher that completed Andrew Jackson’s despicable efforts to kill States exit option in the crisis of ‘28.
The political ignorance of today “journalists” is amazing.
Woof! What a prognostication. But for all these changes that David see, I think he overlooks the huge roadblocks that will stifle any badly needed change. Big Money! Big money has bought and paid for America, and they intend to keep it. The Big Time Operators (BTO's) don't intend to see their investment slip away. It's how Trump got in, and what keeps Republicans in office. No David, you got a lot of it right, but you over looked the part that still controls life in the USA. "The more things change, the more they stay the same!"
2
I like Lizzie. I really do. But she just isn't Presidential material. Secretary of State or anything else, sure. She'd be great domestically but too weak with everything else. If she had been Prez during the Cuban Missile Crisis the missiles would have been installed and Central and South America would have ended up communist - along with a good deal of the rest of the world - controlled by Russia and China.
You can't solve everything with the carrot, sometimes the stick is necessary. And she'd be afraid to even pick the stick up.
1
We'll all be under water or cooked to medium-well by then, Brooks. See: problem solved.
1
from your pen to God's ears
She will be the FDR of her time.
Brooks would have hated Roosevelt too.
9
My hope: President Warren will bring the big boys [sic] into the Oval Office to teach them how to work out compromises (once again). Thus will we start inching forward (once again).
2
David sure is not very good at reading a person's character.
1
What mush, David. Have you considered that Warren is canny?
That she is putting Bernie out of business in the primary and energizing the young? She can moderate, pull back from pie in the sky proposals. By then, her followers, like me, will accept the political and social reality you bloviate about here.
I am betting she is smarter than you.
6
David, does this mean you now consider YOURSELF a moderate liberal? Or are you without a constituency?
Warren Presidency
AMEN
For the sake of all mankind!
4
Brooks is waiting for the chance to vote for Wilkie.
4
What a catastrophic phantasy you have projected, David. Is it really Bernie who lacks "self-awareness" as you say? Or perhaps this is something you need to explore within yourself?
3
One thing wrong with Brooks' analysis: the assumption that Warren would beat Trump. Precisely who in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and, maybe, Florida who did not vote for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Warren in 2020? The degree of victory in the rest of the states is entirely irrelevant to the electoral college outcome.
Though most Blacks appear to detest Trump, they've heard "plans" and "promises" forever, and unless the Democrats nominate someone (Biden/Klobuchar ticket?), who they believe can actually accomplish something, however moderate, rather than not accomplish utopia, many are likely to just sit home.
Meanwhile, Democrats are busily neutralizing support from young, white, (primarily but not exclusively) male voters. What 20-year old guy making minimum wage (if he has a job), hoping for some sex and eventual marriage, is going to bother voting for candidates that tell him that everyone else should get preferential treatment in life over him?
Trump's "appeal" has not changed. He has acted as expected since Day One. Thus there is not likely to be a diilution of those who voted for him in 2016.
Most voters, especially those whose minds are actually open, vote on an evaluation of what the candidate will do for his or her priorities, not what the candidate says should be their priorities. Warren fails on this latter point.
But these are just some of the trees I am describing, and the background forest Brooks describes is certainly worth contemplating seriously.
3
This facile piece, even in its fantasy, illustrates exactly what's wrong with the Constitution Brooks implores us to idealize. Notice that it is the Senate, not the House, where Warren's imaginary proposals fail. That would likely be because the Senate is inherently undemocratic, with small states like Wyoming (600,000) getting the exact same representation as much larger states like California (40 million). Indeed, the disparity is the fourth worst in the world, after legislatures in Russia, Argentina, and Brazil. Recognizing the inherently undemocratic nature of our Constitution -- and how that dynamic currently favors right-wing politicians and policies, primarily through the senate and the electoral college -- is long overdue.
9
This article is a pure fantasy - should Elizabeth Warren become president, she will do a magnificent job, as Warren will undoubtedly do her best for all the nation.
8
Mr. Brooks makes no mention of climate change. Doesn’t he read the New York Times?
Obviously, Mr. Brooks takes his role as a defender of the status quo very seriously.
If the scientists are correct, climate change will require a radical re-evaluation of everything.
That’s probably going to mean that a handful of people can’t own everything. I sure hope that doesn’t mean we’re headed towards civil war, but if pundits like David Brooks aren’t willing to consider the fact that big changes are being forced upon us by necessity, then we’re in much bigger trouble than I realized.
10
Great conversation starter by Brooks.
Coincidentally, read Bill McKibbens excellent piece in the new special climate issue of Time, "How We Survived Climate Change".
It's 2050, The world has changed forever but we averted the worst. Here's what we did.
Great complementary bookends.
3
I liked this article a lot, David makes a lot of sense, but he seems not to be taking into account our $21 trillion dollar national debt and it has to be paid for somehow. I don't believe in cutting social programs, which means a wealth tax on the wealthy is absolutely necessary.
Whether Warren is able to sell this reality depends on how successful she is at framing it. That is all.
6
David nice try but you’re forgetting something: in 2050 the Eastern Seaboard cities are largely underwater. The political results are CONSIDERABLY less pretty as everyone cheats and schemes for advantage in its face.
6
@Prof Not really. The sea is a LITTLE higher by then, but only another inch of so....
1
Not a word about climate or the instability and unfairness of unregulated neoliberal (moderate liberal) capitalism, or the influence of all that cash at the top, in suppressing the popular common sense reforms that progressives are pushing.
2
I am not sure that the current progressive
Democrats are not all that different than
the FDR New Dealers. I don’t see Elizabeth
Warren as any kind of Radical except that
she is a woman and will make a great President.
A woman President, now that is a radical
idea and after Trump, exactly what we need.
15
I take issue with the assertion that a President Warren's policy proposals would fail in Congress.
According to repeated surveys, large majorities of the US population want many of the things the progressive wing of the Democratic Party advocates, such as universal medical coverage for all US residents (in some form--not necessarily the single-payer variety), much higher taxes on the super-rich and corporations, and more democratic, inclusive political institutions.
A more realistic scenario is that the right-wing majority in the Supreme Court, which is essentially the Republican Party in robes, would use their control of the judicial branch to prevent such progressive reforms, much as the court did during the New Deal. The justices of the 1930s had the good sense to compromise with Roosevelt; it's far less clear that Trump's justices would do the same.
9
Mr Brooks is correct I think in predicting a Trump loss and result in a closely divided Senate that will stymie the far left agenda. I think he’s also right that whomever is in office is going to inherit a potential devastating recession they will be holding the bag for.
The best thing for a damaged Republican brand may in fact to avoid being in control of the government when the recession hits and have the Democrats promptly flushed back out.
1
Mr. Brooks, I respectfully disagree. She will pivot toward the center as president. She is a very pragmatic, canny politician, leader, academic, intellectual! Have you read her books?
17
President Warren will undoubtedly disappoint and disillusion many of her supporters. I believe the last president who didn't was Ford, because he was never elected and therefore never really had any supporters to begin with.
Even now, I am not 100% excited about every aspect of Warren's candidacy. I wish she would stop dancing around the question about middle-class taxes - yes, they will go up, and it's a trade-off I and many other Americans understand and are willing to make for universal health care - which, like Warren herself, will not be perfect but infinitely better than the status quo.
I was absolutely disappointed in both Clinton and Obama, the two presidents I voted for who actually won. But I am not alone in thinking that the world is better for their having occupied that office - and much better for their election opponents having lost to them.
Therefore I will continue to enthusiastically support Elizabeth Warren - knowing full well that if she wins my enthusiasm will soon fade.
6
It seems Mr. Brooks doesn't understand that the situation for ordinary people in this country is rapidly approaching a crisis. Bolder solutions will be needed than any current candidate has proposed. And if a financial downturn hits, things will become critical. Moderate liberals and others who promise business as usual are not going to "triumph easily" by any means. And if the reckoning doesn't come in 2020, just wait. It will.
9
For all of Brooks' shrewd observations, one axiom, that Warren would be an ineffectual far left progressive unable to get laws passed to advance her ideas, is wrong. She is too smart to not run in the presidential election as anything other than a center-left Democrat and that is how she will govern.
11
As so often is the case, this is a slick and partly dishonest analysis. There is no reason to believe that capitalism will solve the inequality problem. It never has. Those who exercise power in our capitalist system have shown no inclination to do so--and capitalist culture, incentives, and structure don't lean that way. And I'm pretty sure that after all these years, you know that.
7
@Barry Dym
We will never solve "the inequality problem." There will always be inequality in every society. There will always be a hierarchy, an elite, people who have more power, wealth, success, skills, connections, luck, achievement, etc., than others. That's the nature of a social species such as homo sapiens.
Inequality is not the problem. That far too many people are unable to achieve basic security and opportunity, and have lost their voice in our democracy to corrupt elites who no longer feel any kind of connection to the non-elites that is the problem. As it's been put, they are "tourists in their own country."
Please let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
There has never been a more magnificent tool for taking people out of grinding poverty, empowering individuals and leveling the playing field than capitalism.
Let's fix capitalism, as Liz Warren wants to do, rather than undo it as "progressive" radicals want to do.
6
Your road map takes one BIG wrong turn that takes you in the wrong direction. Warren will allow Congress to make the deals that will pass bills for her to sign. If Republicans play obstructionists, and don't vote for anything, they will be sealing their own political death sentence.
10
I noticed that Mr. Brooks carefully avoided saying what the moderate solution is to the climate crisis. Tell me, David, and I'll seriously consider becoming devoted to their cause. You do know, don't you David, that we don't have much time. In fact, we might have less time than another term of Trump insanity or Obama timidity or pie in the sky middle and upper class thinking. And by the way, the whole tone of this piece is filled with sanctimonious characterizations of those who see the need for some fundamental change grounded in serious, scientific assessments of the facts rather than in puritanical devotion to ideology.
5
The days of the baby boomer white-male constituency (I are one) is coming to an end and with it the assumptions of their political orthodoxy. Hopefully, young voters with a view of their future are stepping up to their responsibility to engage in the political process. Mr. Brooks may not be contemplating the coming wave of Occasio-Cortez oriented congress-people and Senators.
I for one like Warren for the courage of her analysis and her data-oriented policy decisions. I am willing to see how far she can take us. It will be a sign of huge progress to have a president who can speak English in full sentences again. Today that seems a high bar.
17
In science we learn that there are problems with every solution; those problems are not insoluble, but every solution has problems. In any case your story has a nice ending, that is, if the population is smart enough and motivated enough to defeat Trump.
Elizabeth Warren is not stupid, and will not try to introduce legislation with no chance of winning (perhaps because she just read your column). The world changes and one of the tenets of the Englightenment men who wrote our Constitution was that we could influence change in the world and to our betterment. Progressives are moving towards what our Constitution and Bill of Rights promises everyone, a fulfillment of the Founders' dreams of a nation of free men and women building a better future. Based on the belief, that mankind could control its own destiny better without a God-appointed King to lead them. Up until now, when by a unfair law that gives rural populations an Electoral College advantage, the 33-40% of the population that did not believe in the ideals that shaped our nation in 1776 are the same sort of people who believe Trump to be a God-appointed leader. They are against the very idea of America, they don't like freedom, they don't like the 'pursuit of happiness'. They don't like 'equality under the Law'. They believe if they're Americans for a few generations, then the land is theirs, and they can chant, 'blood and soil', but it isn't.
4
Without a question there is a great possibility that one of the
socialist candidates, Warren or Sanders will win the Democratic primary. In a general election Sanders would have a much better chance to defeat Trump. That said if either wins the presidency you will see a great realignment in American politics where center left and center right voters will search for a new political home which could be a reformed post-Trump Republican party. Needless to say that a Warren or Sanders presidency would be a complete economic disaster and Democrats would be trounced in the Mid-Term elections.
1
Interesting fancy Mr. Brooks. I am reminded of someone whistling past the graveyard for some reason. As if Mr. Trump's limited chance of being re-elected were scary big...suggesting too, perhaps better to let Trump inherit his own recession...and if so, again the demise of the Republican party. But then, the graveyard, looms... what if, Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Trump, and Mr and Mrs. Minions remain? National bankruptcy???
2
Sorry David, but the republicans will lose the senate in 2020 by a large enough margin that Warren will get all her legislation and then some. We will finally be rid of capitalism as we know and will welcome democratic socialism. Get used to it, the changes are a coming
14
@Mark Finley
I agree with you Mark. But I'm not happy about it.
.
The bad guys will win.
Don't get me wrong. I can't stand Trump. But Warren will take us in the wrong direction.
1
Support this thesis, please.
Mr. Brooks, I am a liberal, Progressive Democrat, and a retired history professor and museum professional. I read and reread the Constitution. I have taught early American history for decades and respect the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and as much as, or maybe more, I think, than most Americans. My major field is American cultural and intellectual history.
Mr. Brooks, it is the GOP that has violated both the spirit and the texts of both of those documents, especially under the thrall of both Trump and McConnell. I know of what I speak.
35
I stated yesterday here that Warren's policies could die fast if they hit the current McConnell senate.
so David picks it up today.
The problem is not the "red states" that would fight her policies, it is the legal bribery called campaign financing. The fossil fuel industry and the other wealthy/elite run the county with their money. It is now oligarchy versus democracy.
People are now seeing all this truth and it certainly is not because of the main stream media. They are corrupt and do the usual propaganda that Chomsky talked about. If a person does not know about this Chomsky "Manufacturing Consent" they are living in the last century. People see the corruption, the money, the Mitch McConnell's, the power hungry elites and it is going to come crashing down. And david is incorrect and has his usual distortions. The time is coming and we can start putting out the bets as to just when.
4
Your prediction that Warren will be "good at condemnation, not coalition-building." rings hollow given her history of pushing through the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a sensible government program that was nevertheless considered as or more radical than any of her recent proposals, and a target of Trump's destructive disassembling of regulatory checks on business.
Get-along Obama, with the great assistance of get-it-done Nancy Pelosi, was only able to achieve a fraction of his goals, and I thank them everyday for Obamacare. It's hard to predict numerous factors, the Senate make-up, and the mood of the country, but I assume that Warren will also only get some of her goals accomplished.
The good thing is that if we get 20 years of Democrats, we can finally declare the Age of Reagan over, and America can start making progress in addressing the issues we need to address, one Democratic majority at a time.
20
You underestimate Ms Warren just as you despise Progressives like the Corporate Democrats do.
If justice prevails, a new Sheriff will be coming to town and they will not be coming to make Grand Bargains or means testing Social Security or cutting taxes on the champions of the new Gilded Age.
I love it how Conservatives- both of the Republican and Democratic variety- think that they are the only competent voices in the discussion and only their concerns matter. When Progressives changed America, we had our biggest periods of social mobility and a broad middle class blossomed from sea to shining sea. The sons and daughters of blue collar workers had the chance to pursue their dreams and create great companies and industries never previously imagined. The passed laws that cleaned up the air and water, banned discrimination in employment, credit and housing and created consumer watchdog agencies that worked until conservatives undermined them.
Progress ALWAYS comes from the political left. If Conservatives had their way, we would still be a colony of the British throne.
18
David: coalition-building is, sadly, passe. Obama tried. For example, he went for a Republican-passed health care law from Massachusetts as his model, but it was deemed too liberal, or it was decided to kill any and all Obama initiatives.
Let's be frank. What is needed in, for example, health care? We need to either seriously consider taking away employer-based insurance, or offer a public option. Employers should not have that much power in one's health care. Incentivizing work with employment success is against health care as a guarantee. Also, there should be no lifetime limits and smaller co-pays and/or deductibles for affordability. You cannot be denied health care, and have it taken away.
That is the problem that Warren can deal with. But, she also deals with administrative costs, which are huge, and drug prices. So a practical fix is something she could achieve. But in order to garner support from the base, she has to offer a major overhaul.
As far as free college tuition goes, it's not such a socialistic idea. Germany does it. In New York State we have free tuition at state schools.
Finally, tax cuts. I assume, David, that you are quite comfortable with the Trump tax cuts, 90% of which went to the top 1%. If Warren simply makes proposals to even things out - child care, a middle class tax cut, health care costs going down, then the middle class wins. It doesn't seem so far-fetched as you seem to imply.
Besides, Warren is a capitalist.
18
What no mention of the Supreme Court that must be expanded in order to circumvent the disaster that this administration has laid to waste? And the biggest elephant in the room (pun intended) Climate Change which may be so far gone already everything else is irrelevant. And IF we survive it is imperative we adjust our education system so that it is nationally funded and our less knowledge enthused states can no longer fall off the cliff.
8
In the years leading up to 2016, a columnist named David Brooks wrote copiously of the dangers posed by liberal Democrats. From his ivory tower, Brooks viewed the landscape and found it insufficiently populated by lovers of the free market and bootstraps - the latter being what people are supposed to use to pull themselves into prosperity. He gently chided those who didn't embrace his brand of naive conservatism.
Alas, in 2016, after his many years of ignoring or, worse, glossing over the selfishness and general mendacity of an alarming number of his fellow-Republicans, Brooks was shocked! at the election of the worst president imaginable. In the years since, Brooks has been seeking gentleness of spirit and openness of heart, yet inexplicably hasn't abandoned his affection for many of the principles that have been driving us all into a ditch.
Now Brooks is forecasting the future, having failed to prevent the present. In fact, one might argue that his vigorous defense of conservatism contributed substantially to the mess we're in. Please, Mr. Brooks, leave prognostication to the psychics.
P.S. If you'll pay attention to Senator Warren, Mr. Brooks, you'll find she endorses capitalism. She abhors rapacity, however.
22
The happy ending is so implausible I could cry. Perhaps more likely:
"Thirty years later, ranked choice voting and proportional representation finally eliminated gerrymandering and enabled third party and centrist candidates some traction. With more finely differentiated options available, nuance and compromise re-entered American political life, ending the cold civil war of winner take all absolutism."
6
Thanks Mr Brooks. I think your assessment is fair, as are your concerns. As you said Mrs Warren is self-aware, so during her first term proper political dialog could be restored which could address your concerns. So next Friday, I submit, it is your duty to imagine the alternative second term of the Trump Presidency from the year 2050.
4
"Progressives had much less faith in American institutions — in capitalism, the Constitution, the founding."
Conservatives, who are currently lined up lock-step behind Trump, abetted by his hatchet-man McConnell, give lip-service to these American institutions while eviscerating them in action. Voting is for white people; Democratic elected Presidents cannot nominate Supreme Court Justices; the Republican President can spend money without Congressional authorization; the Republican President can obstruct justice and turn the government into his private piggy-bank without fear of consequences from any elected or appointed Republican official.
As usual, Brooks defends conservatives as if they are not responsible for Trump, as if they did not create Trump, and as if Brooks himself can defend them separately from defending Trump.
10
It was the fall of 2019 when an obscure economist, C. P. Klapper, was first seen in the public forum, being interviewed about how to avoid a recession in October. What he proposed was more sweeping than that, as the American public was soon to see. Both President Trump and Congress set to work implementing his ERC scheme. In no time, the federal debt plummeted and the economy was experiencing a solid boom, yet with only a modest inflation. Mr. Klapper was soon consulted about his other ideas, including making the provision of the necessities unconditional, so that they would at last be freed from wage slavery. These were also implemented with only beneficial results. As people were enjoying their new-found liberties. they hardly noticed the change in Presidents. Indeed, by 2030, they restored the runner-up Vice Presidency as an ombudsman office, in order to bring greater service and less leadership to the executive branch.
No mention of race, gender, "white privilege"?
3
And while the mealy-mouthed media continued red-baiting, Miami and New Orleans went under water as the climate suffered under liberal "unity."
6
Stick to whatever you call what you usually do. Don't try bad fiction.
8
To the author,
Mr. Brooks you are highly respected in my circles and you are often revered for your fair-mindedness. In particular, you were highly praised for (finally) coming around to reparations. I personally have bought your first book twice, to give as a gift and for my personal consumption. Forgive me, but what does writing this article accomplish? You do not offer any of your expertise to advance Warren's campaign, other than inform her that she is too left. You do not warn her future voters of their mistakes, nor offer an alternative path to solve the effects of late-stage capitalism resulting from the failure of the democracy to represent the interests of the plurality, rather than the vested interests of the financial elite. This is not the first time I've caught myself thinking you are hitting your contractual obligation and promoting "The Second Mountain." There is a clear fervor for candidates who are speaking to the financial needs of the struggling class and she seems to be our champion, especially since Trump lost that thread.
To the Times,
Please don't discount me as an angry Warren voter. This piece is not the standard that I hold for my subscription nor I expect NYT to hold for its opinion section. Krugman, Ms. Goldberg, and Leonhardt crush it regularly. I have read the Times for over half my life. I feel like this piece is not really answering the call of the times. Fear-mongering hardly seems appropriate. There are moderate voices worth listening to.
14
And all the while the world slowly burned....!
5
Warren was a Republican before she changed her mind after researching the causes for bankruptcy. Is Mr. Brooks still a Republican? I would agree that the GOP will become a minority party if its leaders do not grow a backbone soon. However, I strongly disagree with the prediction that Warren is leading a left-wing populism movement in the style of MAGA-inspired and Evangelicals-supported mass hysteria. Medicare-for-all should not be confused with build-that-wall. Single payer healthcare for all, with supplemental private health insurances for those with the means, should be a national goal because health care is not a commodity. it is a human right.
10
Every time I read what David Brooks has to say about Warren, I am left wondering - would he say the same things if she was a man? She is so far from his caricature of her, I think her strength is threatening to him.
370
@Cassandra Every time I see a response to political criticism of a candidate who is a woman that questions whether the criticism was made because she was a woman, I wonder more and more if that’s become the go-to response of any supporters of that woman when she’s criticized by a man.
44
@Cassandra As he pointed out, it was her ridiculous policies that red state Democrats dared not vote for.
Where did you get that it was "because she is a woman"? There's not a hint of that anywhere in the column - you appear to be projecting your own sexism onto others. A candidate should not be elected _because_ of their gender and you seem to disagree with that obvious principle.
10
@Cassandra
I love Elizabeth Warren, and hope very much she becomes president. I really, really disliked and distrusted Hillary Clinton.
Did I from a misogynist to an enlightened feminist in just three short years, or is it that I see them as human beings first, not women? You may want to try that out.
10
Just because we have been besieged by the lunatic extremist Tight doesn’t mean we are doomed to embrace a lunatic Left.
There is a fundamental psychological inclination toward rigidity in the Right and a core commitment to rational flexibility in most of the Left.
2
This story is better than Alice in Wonderland as told by the mad hatter
3
Yeah, nothing happens in Congress until the Republicans are wiped out all together so they can no longer stonewall with fake filibusters where you simply send an email to stop a bill in its tracks. Let's go with "steep and quick" decline of the Republican party so our government can work again.
Also, when does Brett Kavanaugh resign in shame?
One can only hope.
12
I think it's a great column. Uncannily credible fiction. Take Brooks's points one at a time and put emotion aside long enough to get the full impact. Read and heed.
Sexist? Come on.... He puts the proper spin on the Klobuchar candidacy. She'd be a strong President and nobody's fool. Why is she running so far behind? (Because as she's said, she's had to be "the mom in the room.") Give her a chance.
Unrealistic? Really? Warren preaches but doesn't show the ability to create and nurture the coalition needed to accomplish her overstated objectives. Certainly not a uniter, even though her intellect and heart are in the right place.
The old saying, "Democrats fall in love and Republicans fall in line" seems as true to day as ever. Leave it to a minority of Independents to make considered, unemotional decisions. But give them a viable choice. Please.
1
In 1967, in one of the news mags, I read a too clever prognostication of what was going to happen in the sixty eight election. If I remember correctly, it ended up with Bobby Kennedy ruthlessly wresting the nomination from LBJ. It got nothing right. Everything that happened in that frightening year, from the tragic assassinations to the convention riots was far beyond the imaginings of a writer. It was just silly, as is this column.
4
Mr. Brooks' comment that "Progressives had much less faith in American institutions — in capitalism, the Constitution, the founding. They called for more structural change to things like the Supreme Court, the Electoral College and the basic structures of the market" is misleading.
To clump all progressive, liberal thinkers into a clump of individuals "who have no faith in American institutions" borders on the ridiculous. If some Democratic candidates call for changes in the Electoral College--it's because change is needed. And the Supreme Court has been loaded with conservative judges, one of whom, Brett Kavanaugh, doesn't deserve to be there--and wouldn't if not for unethical Republicans voting for a man who is basically a sleaze bag.
It's unsettling to read Mr. Brooks, who wants to play neutral, but just can't do it. There are always snide, twisted comments about Democrats that have very little resemblence to truth.
6
I'm so sick of populists and "disruptors" like Trump and Warren. I sympathize with the the marginalized, frustrated people who vote for them, but abhor the futility of their choices.
Populist leaders don't make things better - ever. They pander shamelessly, build cults of personality, make fantastical promises, and destroy more than they build.
Our troubled social and democratic institutions need to be thoughtfully reformed to benefit all Americans, not rashly torn down just to satisfy the angry mobs. If the old guard is complacent and deaf to the needs of the people, replace them with a new guard, but one that respects the underlying greatness of the American experiment and wants to see it fulfilled.
2
@Patrick Talley How exactly is Elizabeth Warren a "populist"? She is steeped in knowledge of and experience with existing institutions which she wants to return back to their original intention and promise. She appeals greatly to nerds and wonks like me. I don't hear her yelling "Build that Wall!" or "Lock Her Up!" or building a cult of personality? And she actually apologizes. Imagine that.
2
Ridiculous to forecast out from "2050" and not mention climate change once.
4
Real hot take by David Brooks: "I would appreciate it everyone out here could just chill out." (The implication, of course, is that everything, generally speaking, is going all right for David Brooks)
This might be hard for you to hear David, but things are not all right for a majority of people. The status quo has broken precisely because of this. Please stop wringing your hands and join the fight for the future.
3
You forgot the part about how the evangelicals built rafts and left the United States for the Bahamas where they built a utopian community based on the Handmaid's Tale and a governing document borrowing heavily from Sharia Law. Unfortunately it was all wiped out by a climate change induced hurricane. The first ever to register at Category 6. R.I.P.
4
I used to kinda like you David. Looks like that’s over.
3
Zealots have no place in religion or politics. The “my way or die” mindset needs to end sooner than predicted. But good question if it will.
Liz Warren will lose to Trump is equally plausible. Comes down to 6 or 8 States, and not mine which she would win handily.
Hopefully Joe Biden - or a comparable moderate - will not fade and will be elected.Just imagine 4 more years of Trump. Better yet, don’t.
David might be right. If he is, and the Democrats skip a step and pick Biden and Biden wins, the first stage of the "Unity" political force can start sooner and smoother. One can only hope. On the other hand, Warren can start to moderate a little now and mend some moderate fences. Bernie needs to bow out soon or she won't be able to do this... and she needs to.
As usual, I didn’t have to wait long for your first moral equivalence, and it was a doozy. That’s where you put Warren and Trump as two ends of a pole, with the “moderate liberals” presumably in the middle. I suppose had you been around, you would have done that with FDR and the America Firsters.
10
This article is stunningly ridiculous. If you want to criticize Warren, go for it. No-one has any idea what the future holds but I bet you anything that Warren would handle a recession a lot better then our Failure-in-Chief. There's enough fake news from the president now we have fiction from the NYT. Grow up.
7
Squirt the Wonder Clam could do a better job with the economy. I think Warren is very thoughtful but I wonder if she is practical enough to realize that Medicare for all, as good an idea as it is, will not pass in the Senate. You can’t start by taking away private insurance. Baby steps. In my opinion, the hill to die on is climate change. That is the issue that will galvanize the coming generation of voters.
@Justox1 Agreed. well said.
This fantasy prediction does not seem to include any aspects of Warren's character or how influential she is in the Senate. Her virtues of intelligence, hard work, and her ability to explain issues to those who would rather not be educated are formidable. My prediction is that she will overcome.
10
There is an alternative history which is equally likely. Mr Trump might very well prevail w China and about a dozen middle American states become epicenters for global manufacturing. With increased wages,consumer spending roars and tax receipts climb. Budget deficits do in fact stop growing. Trump is hailed a global hero as the G-10 is no longer subject to China. As the largest polluter in the world, green house gasses recede.
By 2050, the coastal Liberals have created a number of clean-tech energy sources. This ‘creative destruction’ has killed the entire fossil fuel energy. In the meantime, the impact of automation in the manufacturing industry is felt more and more.
Money making jobs are dying. The jobs that are rising would be environmental cleanups, removing plastic from the oceans etc. These jobs would need more state funding.
People would now sit together to write a new social contract for America in the automation era.
"One by one, her proposals failed in the Senate..."
One by one his, Trump's, agenda failed in the Congress, except for that tax cut for billionaires and the biggest corporations which got a huge windfall. Something like 70% of the benefits went to the wealthiest 10% of folks who spent it on stock buy-backs.
Otherwise, the wall that Mexico would pay for, the repeal of Obamacare, the big plans for infrastructure, the big peace in the Middle East, the swamp drainage, and much more all came to naught.
There, David, I fixed it for you.
2
We can agree on one thing, David: electing Elizabeth Warren is the first step towards getting the society we both want. So I assume you’ll be voting for her in the next election?
3
cool story bro
1
This could be the last time I bother to start reading a Brooks column. This, he says, is what he thinks Warren lacks (paragraph 10) "a basic faith in American institutions...they just needed reform...basic faith in capitalism and the Constitution and...the classical liberal philosophy embedded in America’s founding...an inheritance from Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass’s millennial nationalism, a sense that America has a special destiny as the last best hope of earth." The only part I could possibly agree with Brooks about is the last sentence, "last best hope of earth" Yes, with Trump as president, many people on earth have surely lost that sense.
2
Sometimes you seem smarter than I expect, today you didn't. The Dirty Party, your party, has survived for a pretty long time (since Reagan) with a failed agenda. Right now, there is nothing else but the Progressives and the status quo, and the status quo is going to lose over the next few election cycles. But if the Progressives fail, you can sure that they will not become demagogues and cons like the Dirty Party has, they will not become liars.
2
“Trump was instantly reviled by everyone — he had no loyal defenders.”
Dream on. Trump has complete control of the Republican “base”, and will be sought after by red state Republican candidates, regardless of what happens in 2020.
1
I want Mayor Pete to win.
1
Not yet, he needs more experience. He should be VP this round
@Jim
He's not qualified for veep, either. Buttigieg needs to gain state legislative experience via governor or senator,
He is such an unknown. He has accomplished absolutely nothing. He is slick, well educated and intelligent but there are thousands like him in any top tier investment bank at the VP level.
David forgets to write at the end "and these moderate liberals passed universal immigration, a wealth tax, and banned Americans from owning weapons of war while ensuring any person Earth was legally able to applly for asylum at our borders"
@Jay
As of course it should be.
2
From your lips to god's ear.
I usually like Mr. Brooks' columns and insights, but I guess that's not the case when he puts on his Nostradamus hat and gazes into the scrying pool.
I'm curious why Mr. Books thinks an incrementalist (like Biden) be best equipped to deal with an "inchoate desire for radical transformation?" Radical change has happened multiple times in the history of our country. Is now the right time for it? I don't know, but people seem to want it and the incrementalists haven't been getting the job done.
Speaking of incrementalists - I wonder why Mr. Brooks thinks a Biden presidency would be less of a failure than Warren's? At least 41 conservative senators are going to push back as hard as they can against any reforms no matter how middle of the road they are (see: Obama's entire presidency) so I don't see how either candidate passes much legislation. The only people that are going to solve this particular problem are the voters themselves.
Additionally, I laughed real hard, for obvious reasons, when I read Mr. Brooks calling others out on their "moral superiority." Why is it always liberals who get bashed with claims of being morally superior? Sure, some liberals act are morally superior, but my gosh, conservatives basically claim to be America incarnate ("REAL AMERICANS") and is that not the same or worse?
5
Interesting prediction. Wait, aren't you the guy that predicted Trump would never be the Republican nominee?
2
A year before the primaries begin, Bernie's Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are blindsided when they lose the endorsement of the Working Families Party (WFP) to his progressive rival Elizabeth Warren, causing a migration of former DSA-ers to Warren's newly-christened Self-Awareness Party of Progressive Youth (SAPPY) with its own Squad-like core of photogenic power elites dubbed the Weakness-Mitigating Network (WMN) of America.
However, when Sanders and company stubbornly refuse to go gentle into that good Vermont nightlife, a long drawn-out battle ensues which, once again, weakens the inevitable nominee, Warren.
Then comes the unexpected development in the Republican Party when Mike Pence is dropped from the ticket in favor of Nikki Haley, who exploits Warren's weaknesses with the white and black working-classes allowing Trump to close the gap and win the election -- before the impeachment begins. . .
1
Mr. Brooks failed to account for the changes in the Electoral College brought on by the submersion of Florida by rising oceans and the displacement of millions of Floridians who travelled the new trail of tears seeking higher ground in the hills of Georgia and Alabama.
1
I'd like an analysis of David's ability to predict the future. From what I have heard him espouse in the past, he seems a bit disconnected from reality.
If you believe in magic people in the sky you can clearly fool yourself into believing nearly anything, like that you have the ability to predict the future. Or, that the policies of the GOP have lead to a great America with Donald Trump as president.
I am so disappointed... Warren will move to the center when she gets the nominations, so many pres. candidates do what she is doing, should not be a big surprise... scaring potential voters through NYT is not very honorable...
From Golda Meir to Margaret Thatcher, from Indira Gandhi to Angela Merkel, history and David Brooks have shown us that powerful women with bold ideas can’t succeed
If only..
" progressive populism burned out as right-wing populism had. The Democrats became the nation’s majority party. This party ran on a one-word platform: unity. After decades of culture, class and demographic warfare, moderate liberals defined America as a universal nation, a pluralistic nation, embracing all and seeking opportunity for all.
In a wildly diverse nation, voters handed power to leaders who were coalition-builders not fighters. The whole tenor of American politics changed."
Unfortunately the Democratic "Party" (actually, a caucus of self-serving incumbents) shows no will or ability to counter the silly labels of open borders, gun confiscation, socialism and communism and may lose yet another winnable election.
This can happen because the Democratic "leadership" (quote marks indicate irony) does not inform the American people on the harm the Trumpistas are doing to ordinary people.
This old, old guard of dems - all of them - seems to think people listen to record players and shows not a clue how to promote the positive goals and accomplishments of Democrats in contrast to the Swift-boating sound-bite-savvy right wing.
Why is Indivisible more organized, focused and effective than the D "party?" Sister Districts? Swing Left? For God's Sake Tony The Democrat has mobilized more soldiers to the cause.
What is the DNC? A sop, a sham, a chimera engaging would-be activists to no good end.
These organic movements mentioned, and others, like the kids in the streets for climate, will find a way to displace or replace the so-called Democratic Party... and not a moment too soon.
...
A few weeks ago, Mr. Brooks predicted that the Democrats would lose if Warren is elected. Now, the D's win but falter. Perhaps Mr. Brooks views will continue to evolve. A big part of Warren's credibility for me is that she fought for and built the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
3
Here's another scenario: Sen Warren wins the Presidency, the GOP keeps the Senate, and Pres Warren becomes the first to get no hearings on her Cabinet or judicial nominations for her entire term. "All her nominees are extremists and outside the mainstream." It's the logical next step after the GOP's success with Merrick Garland.
1
9/20/2034
David Brooks is a goo historian, but his specialty is “Ancient History”, like the times of Presidents Adams (father and son) and the Bushes (father and son). On modern history (i.e. ‘After Trump’) he suffers unexplained attacks of ‘surreal’ spells. The above story was written in one such!
This is the truth:
The Republicans were soundly beaten by the Warren-Sanders ticket in 2020 and captured the WH, Senate, Congress and State Houses! The Supreme Court turned left miraculously. The “Progressive Era”, in its fourth term, has solved all problems, domestic and foreign. Everyone is ‘middleclass, every family has two EVs and a private jet. Mexican robots do all the jobs Americans wont! Greens pushed back Global Warming to 1700 CE! The Billionaires, Bankers and CEOs are richer than ever --- thanks to the soaring markets.
History stand still.
P.S. President Trump has not yet conceded, nor his heirs apparent, Jr and Jerad! Netanyahu and Boris Johnson are their frequent visitors. They are working on Brexit, Middle East and India-Pakistan problems.
Thanks a lot, David Brooks. So sorry I read this dismal piece. A reminder of why I should skip your opinions.
I continue to have hope that Democrats, under Elizabeth Warren, will make positive change -.not accept the corrupt
government we now endure.You may not believe in our country's ability to be honorable, but I still do.
1
Outside of Sanders, most of the Democratic Party candidates for president are, to varying extents, there at the behest of the party leadership to de-fang the societal and economic changes that are clearly needed in America today. Elizabeth Warren is probably the exception, and I am not even sure about that. Nonetheless, any of them will be a better alternative than the mess that currently exists in the Trump administration.
1
Why wouldn't President Warren have as much influence over the re-election of Democratic Senators as Trump enjoys today? she could motivate them by fear just as easily, if her progressive sect of the party is as dominant as sweeping the 2020 election suggests.
Let's hope it turns out that well. Lots of Warren support in these comments. However, Brooks is on point here - the demonization of the capitalist system that generates the wealth for this nation is like the proverbial shooting of the goose that lays the golden eggs. The last thing we need is a "capitalist skeptic" as our president. I hope Biden hangs in there and creates a different outcome in the Democratic primary.
4
The populism is from crony capitalism. The goose was shot by the donor class and this is the price.
Either we regulate it or our democracy fails and with it capitalism.
An alternative scenario:
If Warren wins and the Dems capture the Senate the stock market will plunge 25% (or more) before she even takes the oath and the ensuing business and investor panic will guarantee and probably exacerbate the looming recession. With interest rates already at historically low levels, the Fed will have limited monetary tools to fight it. With already gaping budget deficits, Congress will have limited fiscal tools to stimulate the economy. These conditions will also make it extremely hard for Warren to pursue her expensive domestic agenda which she sold to the public without owning up to its cost and the need for large tax increases to pay for it. In short, a mess which may allow to the GOP to return to power.
5
@Waylon Wall
Dream on. It's the Republicans who have looted the treasury, blown up the deficit, and trashed the economy every chance they got (S&L crisis, Bush tax cuts, Iraq war, 2008 financial crisis bailout, Trump tax cuts, etc., etc.
This is completely ridiculous! Brooks is looking at America through a kind of 1950's political lens which is no longer relevant. He never once mentions the corporate oligarchy which has snatched from the people nearly all control over their government and institutions!
Warren is not a political animal, she is a scholar who has looked around herself to see if anyone else is more qualified than she to wrestle back democracy from the jaws of the oligarchy, and has correctly determined that the answer is NO. She is the dictionary definition of a PUBLIC SERVANT.
6
We don’t have to suffer through a Warren presidency to elect a coalition-builder, we can save our democracy now with Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Trump loves nothing more than to fight and Warren wants us to know she’s ready. Mayor Pete will not match energy with Trump - a total waste of time.
Mayor Pete looks at root causes of issues about which voters are concerned, is inclusive in addressing solutions.
I urge voters to listen to his superior ideas.
2
Is there a gesture that will appease conservatives angry about noting the 400th year since slaves came to America?
I would say we could offer a "four fifths compromise" but they have already taken that via gerrymandering and vote suppression.
1
Republicans are so eager to paint democrats as absolutist radicals, despite little real evidence to support it, that they trip over their narrative in the effort, and on a consistent level. Most of the big successes of our country in the past 100 years were progressive ones, and republicans hate that and they stood against most of it at the time. All their capitalist loving, their infatuation with free markets, as if the rest of us don't go shopping too. It all smacks of desperation, as they long to make you believe that the past forty years wasn't their era, their time, where their ideas and policies had the most favor in our history. Look where it has left the nation and you know why they try so hard and seem so desperate. Conservatism has failed the nation and fights hard to keep on failing it, as it fools it. Let's move on folks, and let the pretend historical narratives be ignored in favor of looking at the real historical record.
3
Under Warren's first term these policies were enacted and then continued under the new president, her former VP, Jesus Garcia. ( This made up person is a yet to be discovered younger person who will energize the young voters):
1-Education: K-12 and beyond. Free and low cost options for post K-12 education and training powered the economy during the 3 terms. Renovation of K-12 schooling including facilities along with community based solutions, better pay, and the recruitment and retention of quality teachers was enacted.
2-An entire redesign of our national infrastructure which included our energy grid and energy production went far towards stemming the tide of global warming and created jobs.
3-Healthcare for all at an easily affordable price. A hybrid of successful plans from across the globe was implemented. People began to take better care of their health through nutrition and exercise.
4-A complete overhaul of taxation and banking provided more transparency. The burden of taxation was placed on those who profited the most. A larger and fairer share of the pie was provided for those who created the goods and services which created our amazing abundance.
5-Term limits and campaign finance reform. A 3 term limit for Senate and a 16-20 year limit on SC justices was approved. End Citizens United
6-Election reform: Secure elections, end of gerrymandering, removal of electoral college. All were implemented.
And the people rejoiced and prospered!
3
Someone's going to steal David's idea and it'll be a SyFy series or movie next season...
1
Well thanks, David. for letting us know that we can look forward to dominance by the Democratic party for years to come..........that's encouraging!
My only comment is that if that level of disgust and turn out brings about these big changes in all levels of the government, my guess is that red states in general will then be more purple, if not blue, and so their roles will be further diminished along with their numbers.
Can't wait for this all to happen......bring it on!
1
Brooks' thinly veiled contempt: Warren can get elected, but she's apparently so incompetent that she will be worse than Donald Trump at passing legislation.
We're sitting in the middle of a historically incompetent presidency and a GOP that believes refusing to legislate is good legislative behavior, and Mr. Brooks prophesies the ineptitude of progressivism.
The thing he misses entirely is that most progressive policies are overwhelmingly popular among voters, and Warren advocates for the abolition of our absurd and abused senate filibuster. See you in a couple years, Mr. Brooks. We'll see if you augured well...
10
This is super pointless. Any thinking person will vote for whoever opposes Trump. Period. Why write this at all? The very fabric of our country is being shredded daily by this man. I would vote for anyone I know over Trump.No one I have ever met has less scruples than he does.The dogcatcher? Yup. This time around, he or she has my vote if that's all I have to choose from.
5
I'm surprised at David Brooks's assumption that Republican support will simply fade away after 2020, the GOP's base ages and dies off.
This has been predicted for some time - easily more than a decade. And yet it hasn't happened so far, despite demographic changes that should already favour Democrats. The Republican party has been a minority party for a long time - yet it has consolidated its hold on state houses, governorships, the US Senate, federal and state judiciaries, and much of the government bureaucracy.
The GOP establishment is backed up by an array of ideologically-driven advocacy organizations, think tanks, conservative colleges and universities, non-profits and lobbying outfits, amply funded by billionaires and corporations. Conservative SuperPacs, flush with $Billions in supposedly "arms length" campaign money (a convenient partisan fiction) fund the dominance of the airwaves and polls by the minority party - and the election of conservatives at the state level who gerrymander districts in their own favour.
This conservative political infrastructure - and the corruption it engenders - will not just go away within a few years. It will take a long, hard fight - and Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, and a tough Democratic president, and the appointment of centrist and liberal judges, to reform and realign American democracy.
3
Brooks looks to our higher natures for salvation, yet he is remarkably cynical about peoples' ability to change for the better. Why is having free college such an offense? Why does he resist healthcare for all (simple healthcare, as he himself will learn when he reaches 65 and in a few minutes signs up for Medicare)? Why is resistance against the giant corporations anathema? Does he think we are mired forever in our worst instincts? This goes against all of his other writings extolling our sense of community, and blahblahblah. Morality these days is defined by climate attitudes because without supporting a giant upheaval of the world as we know it, there will be no world left.
2
Congratulations, Mr. Brooks, you took a page right from the Republican campaign playbook. Paint the Democrat as rabidly wedded to its policy wish list, and incapable of accepting incremental change. You left out the paper straws, the LED light bulbs, and the hamburger ban.
The Warren (or Biden, or whomever) presidency will look more like the art of the possible than the revenge of The Squad.
6
Disappointed in your prognostications David. Warren will get things done, but it will take a prolonged movement to advance her ambitious progressive agenda. She has what it takes to launch that movement and hand it over to her successor after 8 years in the White House! By 2050 America will be transformed into a better nation because of Warren!!
176
Meh. These kind of prognostications about the unknown always tell us much more about the authors than they do about what will actually happen. I'm sure that's the case here.
For a truly odious example, google James Dobson's infamous "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America," which was written as a pure scare tactic during the 2008 election.
Brooks's article is of course infinitely more benign, and it does hit on some actual trends in demographics and politics, but it's impossible to say with certainty where those will lead.
4
Oh puhleeeezzeee. Utopia by 2030? Only if we just bury our heads in the sand and pretend that an existential climate catastrophe is not actually happening. The trouble with Mr. Brooks' column is that he doesn't realize the 'break' has already happened. Our world is being shaped by the accelerating destruction of the human habitat that we cannot stop or control. Linearity is simply the delusion of people who have made the certitudes of post-war capitalist modernity into a fetish. By 2030 the climate crisis will have intruded on every area of human life remaking our society, economy and politics.
4
Yet again, I am surprised that I agree with Mr. Brooks' look into the future. Being a moderate/liberal Democrat from Kansas, I predicted Trump's "win" because I see clearly what our electorate has become. If my party leadership continues to be swayed into believing everyone wants Medicare for All, we will either lose to Trump again, or elect a wonderfully progressive candidate who will get nothing passed in Congress. If the moderates I support (Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Booker) could be elected, they could get us on the right track and help unite us. We could then slowly move on to a more progressive agenda. Right now, I just want someone or something to stop the rapid dissolution of our democracy, the intentional neglect of our environment, the overt disregard of our European alliances, and the criminal and perverse abuse of power in the White House. Anyone, please?
4
One can only wish, David. I like your dynamic, but when a fearful middle class embraces an authoritarian leader to bring stability in 2024 what happens then...
1
So where does climate change fit into this morality play where David Brooks is proven right about everything? Do we moderately pursue moderate policies and suffer moderate environmental catastrophes, with moderate levels of refugee flows?
1
Wishfully thinking again, eh Mr. Brooks?
I doubt that the scenario will be as glum as you make it. Increasingly more people will be voting and will be voting for their own best interests, rather than their baser prejudices. Big Money is already seeing that the future is blue and is financially supporting progressives in bigger numbers with bigger numbers.
The times they really are a'changing, including the demise of the Republican Party as known today.
3
I think David Brooks does not understand Sen. Warren's policies. She is a capitalist who understands that captialism in the US will not survive if we do not reform it and have public policies which address income/wealth inequality, inadequate healthcare, quality education, job opportunity and climate change. We need to regulate capitalism and corporate misbehaviour while we create a robust social democracy and confront climage change. America will not thrive unless we take this path.
5
Ridiculous. Anybody but Trump should be the column. That's all that matters, from the left, right, or center. Period. Anything else is irresponsible.
3
Why does NYT continue to give space to Brooks's wishful thinking?
It is obvious Brooks would like something a little to right of Hilary Clinton and a little to the left of Trump. Unfortunately the Republican party has moved so far to the right that soon it will be on a par with AfD of Germany.
Brooks dreams of an America in 2050 when the people would supposedly welcome back the Republicans from the wilderness.
Republicans will have no place in a society where their racist, pro-wealthy, anti-science, misogynistic views will be even more blatantly anti-people than they are now.
Dream on Mr. Brooks. By wishing such a dystopian view of the future, you show you fit very well in the Republican party, a party that cares more for power than the country and its people.
4
Every time I read a David Brooks column I say to myself: "maybe he got it right this time" only to be disappointed again and again and again.
Today's column proves this point. This bizarre dystopic view of a potential Warren administration is wildly off the mark.
6
"In staffing her administration, she rejected the experienced Clinton-Obama holdovers and brought in a new cadre from the progressive left." David -- This is where your column breaks down. Elizabeth Warren is stupid about NOTHING and has never been a go-it-alone politician. If her candidacy resonates to progressives, it is EXACTLY because she plans AND adapts AND is inclusive. STOP PORTRAYING WARREN AS MORE CHARMING THAN BERNIE SANDERS BUT JUST AS IDEOLOGICAL. THE IDEOLOGY PART IS A LIE.
David -- Time to resign from the ivory tower, gentlemanly but quite blindly conservative punditry class, from bloviating about things of which you are quite ignorant and pre-disposed to perceive other than reality.
1
David Brooks, this is a fine piece of fiction, and you make many good points. But it is missing the elephant in the room. Bloomberg Businessweek put on its November 5th, 2012 cover: "It's Global Warming Supid"
The NYT has done a magnificent job covering the climate crisis. Please take a serious look at their Magazine of around
August 1st, 2019, titled, "Losing Earth: thirty years ago we could have saved the planet."
I would recomment you look at this weeks Time Magazine 9/23/19 titled, Special Climate Issue, 2050 How Earth Survived, with the cover story by Bill McKibbon, and other spectacular pieces by Al Gore, and Aryn Baker. I haven't read them all yet. But for God's sake, or for the sake of our grandchildren, wake my friend, and "study the Science," as 16 year old Greta Thunberg just begged a group of congressmen and women to do.
You are one of my favorite Republican, right of center, writers, thinkers and analysts, but you are starting to embarrass me because you don't see, read or feel, that they are suffering multiple days of heat in Jacobabad, Pakistan of 51.1 degrees Celsius. That is multiple days of 124 degrees Fahrenheit. Global warming was predicted by climate scientists, because it is based on high school chemistry.
4
By 2050, climate change will have caused billions of dollars of damage and requiring billions more in infrastructure spending just to keep economic growth from grinding to a halt. At the same time, automation will have displaced millions of jobs and left millions of people without hope of a middle-class life. American politics will never be the same once the realization has set in that government-led programs, led by good people, are the only logical solution to problems of this scale.
3
The premise is easy to believe. Warren is clearly the choice of the DNC and has been from the start. Biden is there to try to seal support from the (vanishing) Dem moderates and from African Americans. It's a bait and switch operation that should work--to some degree.
What I would add to Brooks's history is that, along with the legislative failures of the Warren regime, the schools and higher education underwent a transformation. Universities lost the monopoly on 4-year degrees and their big hold on federal aid to students. Families refused to go on forfeiting their wealth to the universities and colleges. Certificates, licenses, other kinds of degrees, online education, experience, and actually showing what you can do became the gateways to employment. This led to a much more diverse and practically knowledgeable work force, one far less ideological and doctrinaire. This supported the positive trend toward moderate liberals and moderate conservatives who established the powerful middle of American politics by 2030.
1
This prediction could have been valuable 20 years ago, but it forgets the most drastic change coming to our world in the near future and it is climate change. The old ways don't have an answer for the coming world crisis, and it could be that capitalism and consumerism as we know it , is not compatible with a warming planet ... The earth cannot sustain six billion consumers, and talking about the future of the us with the old right- left divide is not looking forward.
What a day for a daydream
What a day for a daydreamin' boy
And I'm lost in a daydream...
You get the picture...It will be interesting to see what really happens. We can't even predict the past, never mind the future...
1
This is the second Brooks column that I have read in which he has attacked Warren. The columns are in his usual intellectual, high minded demeanor. They make plausible scenarios. Yet they leave me wondering why he singles her out from among all the Democratic candidates for such close reading. I find him so admirable a commenter on human life, on his own included in a wonderful memoir. I'm left wondering if there is something about her he just doesn't like, something unnoticed in his honest self examination, that gives rise to this selection.
I would appreciate his survey of the demeanor of the candidates, particularly because in this media saturated age, demeanor can be destiny. Is there something about Warren?
1
The idea that Biden is responsible for Booker, Klobuchar, Buttigieg and Bennet not getting traction is way off. BKB&B haven't gotten traction because they don't have what it will take to defeat DT and get this country back in shape after the debacle of Trump's imperial corruption. Brooks wants the Dem candidate to in fact be a moderate old-style Republican because that's where his fusty heart still lies. But that's not where Dems are, let alone progressives.
2
Brooks hoped for definition of "moderate liberals" are people who continue to let the health insurance industry blossom and make huge profits, while thousands of Americans go without proper health care or go bankrupt when they get sick. Just like now.
No we need Elizabeth Warren as President, and a Democratic House and Senate, and Brooks' fantasy story will have a much happier ending, much to his chagrin.
1
Sir, I am a sociologist and demographer of the U.S. Population social structure. I have liberal elite education, am queer, did teach for america and am what some would a bleeding liberal -- thus I usually disagree with what you think while admiring your argument and sometimes cannot counter it though I know it to be ugly and wrong -- however today you wrote the most beautiful and prescient thing I have heard about our future and have lit up my life again with HOPE. I sincerely thank you my fellow American.
Beautiful!
This is one of Mr. Brooks more distressing columns. He expressing the type of fantasy that one would normally associate with a young man - "sophomoric". Unfortunately, for Mr. Brooks despite his fascination with social psychology he appears to be remarkably unaware of how silly (to be kind) his fantasy seems. I'm afraid despite his antipathy for Donald Trump, he remains a "never anybody but my fantasy about what I imagined the Republican party should be". It's a bit sad really. To think he's expressing this nonsense while Trump and the Republican party ignore the basic principles of justice and democracy. Shameful.
3
It's tough to take Mr Brooks seriously on this. For those who remember, his portending reminds me of his hyper-enthusiastic chanting for the Bush/ Cheney war in Afghanistan. He can really get it wrong.
5
Thank you. I hope you are right.
I don’t think the US is ready to be done with the current Man in Office. They still believe he will get them more money and drive out the people of color who they think are taking their jobs. Also, the great powers all are sure of him now - the oligarchs, the Republicans, and the right wing media.
Warren and Biden lack charisma, which is more than anything the quality that determines Presidential elections.
Himself will win by a larger margin than ‘16.
The larger point being made here, that moderation and unity will eventually prevail, is surely right. But it will take a lot more time, and a lot more suffering than anyone imagines.
@Mr. Little - Warren lacks charisma?
Where have you been for the past couple of weeks?
Her rally in NYC gathered 15,000 excited progressives.
Re Donny, let’s hope and pray he goes quietly into the night or a dark, dank prison cell.
So, Warren is self aware enough to change her campaign strategy, but she isn't self aware enough to change her agenda once in office to get it passed with a Dems majority in both houses? I say that is unlikely, she does know how to compromise to get things done.
3
Here's another dire scenario. The centrists win and nothing much changes. Capitalism rages on unchecked and unregulated. The rich get richer and the rest of us lose more ground. Massive migrations increase as climate change gets out of control and dooms us all to endless wars for land and resources. Pollution and unbearable temperatures create a hellish existence with repeated natural disasters. Fun times.
2
Just the latest version of the message we always get from conservative commentators when it looks like the Republican Party may be vulnerable to a Democratic challenge: back off progressives, roll over, play nice. This is reminiscent of old-time attitudes on gender roles, with the Republicans as males and the Democrats as females: although its OK for men to fight hard, women should stick to consensus-building.
Of course, the idea of prioritizing compromise has been tried recently, by Obama. It failed miserably, with disastrous outcomes for the party both nationally and locally. Obama's unwillingness to fight for crucial priorities for the 99% like public health care that would have made it clear again that the Democrats are the party of working people paved the way for Trump.
Compromise has its place of course, but you must start by fighting tooth-and-nail for what's right, pushing your priorities as far as they can go and showing strength to the other side. If you instead start with a deeply compromised position while the other side sticks hard to its guns (as Republicans always do), then you end up with incremental improvements at best, insufficient to produce results which make it clear that your ideas are best for the country.
4
I eagerly await a Brooks' follow-up column looking back from 2050 on the Trump second term when he continued to enjoy a majority of Republicans in the Senate. Will that column have a happier ending, David?
140
@WmC at the rate Trump is going if that happens there will not be a 2050
25
@WmC You are whistling past the graveyard. The cumulative headlines, today's about Ukraine being only the next rung on the descending ladder to hell, make it unlikely Trump will serve another term, unless that term involves a striped prison uniform.
8
So basically what Brooks says is the Democrats are following in the Republican party's footsteps.
To see this all you have to do is replace liberal/progressive with Conservative/Tea Party (take your pick of right wing group) throughout the op-ed.
But there's one big difference. The right wing extremists goals were to destroy Government institutions - not remake them.
Want proof? Just look at Social Security and Medicare.
Now THAT was a progressive agenda.
Next up healthcare and the environment.
Once people get a taste of additional Government institutions actually being created that aid people, there will be no going back. Say goodbye to billionaire's tax cuts.
3
This article is quite a sensible "warning" to Dems on the Left; however, I don't think "I'm a capitalist to the bone" Warren needs this warning. In fact, I don't know why she doesn't start referring to herself as a Social Capitalist or.... a Capital Socialist. Unbridled capitalism and/or state socialism will both ultimately fail. There must be a mix.
2
David, you are totally missing the point of the Warren campaign. What she's proposing isn't that radical, in fact her proposals echo what you write; us progressives have not lost faith in capitalism, we simply want more help so that we can compete within it. And that help comes in the form of universal health care, student loan debt forgiveness, and more affordable college and early child care, as bulwarks of a healthy society and some semblance of economic security from which to compete. And yes, some structural changes to capitalism to make it work better for average Americans. Stop trying to scare people that we are wild eyed communists!!
3
I think Warren is much more of a midwestern liberal pragmatist than you are willing or able to see. She strikes me as much more "Oklahoma" than "Massachusetts."
1
Mr. Brooks' scenario is predicated on the belief that Warren is simply a progressive Trump, with his lack of self-awareness and understanding of Government, his incompetence, and his lack of actual concern for the country and its citizens. Uh, no.
1
It is relatively easy to conclude after reading this opinion by Brooks that he fears democracy in action.
5
Too bad we have to wait until 2030 under your scenario.
The gentlemanly status quo of the mid-20th century isn't coming back, Dave.
Now, it's entirely possible Warren will get the nomination in 2020. She may even win (I doubt it as she lacks the macho charisma that Americans love). Moderate Democrats will certainly stonewall any solid progressive legislation as they did under Obama.
With global warming getting worse and the further stratification of economic classes, we're going to see more political extremism, not less. The defenders of the status quo will suffer the most. The second a recession hits, we very well might see late Wiemar levels of political violence. Young people saddled with debt and priced out of cities with nothing but a bleak future ahead of them will have nothing to lose.
1
Not a word about the environment or climate change in this thought experiment. Apparently the experiment was undertaken without much thought.
2
And they all lived happily ever after.
THE END
Not quite. Your entire fairy tale rests on one sentence:
"Warren and her aides didn’t help. Fired by their sense of moral superiority, they were good at condemnation, not coalition-building."
Your writing reflects a typical Republican bent: the opposition thinks they're morally superior. You underestimate and mischaracterize the progressive drive. A sense of superiority has nothing to do with anything. A sense of morality is the entire motivation.
You also underestimate Warren's intelligence. She knows that politics is the art of compromise. Her campaign platform of proposed policies is the way she introduces herself to the voters. She and they both know that those proposals will change in the process of compromise and enactment. Warren knows she can't shove anything down people's throats. Yet you take her campaign platform and her passion for her proposals as written in stone. Voters are looking for passion and idealism; they respond to emotion.
Take Medicare for All: do you think Warren doesn't know that millions of people want to keep their current coverage? Well, she does. Even now she's a bit vague on this issue. Medicare for All is a longterm goal; the endpoint is to ensure that every person in the country has health care granted as a human right.
Warren projects authority, but she's not an authoritarian. As a progressive, she takes the long view, and she sees a long and winding path. Pity you can't do the same.
7
"Before Warren, people thought of liberals and progressives as practically synonymous."
I don't think so. The previous presidential election revealed they are different. It's getting more obvious that they have different agendas and different views of the world day by day.
Here's a more plausible scenario: Trump's turnout is bigger in 2020 than in 2016, because all his 2016 stay-at-home supporters who thought he couldn't win in 16 see things differently in 2020. As a result, his Electoral College margin expands vs 2016. With Trump on the ticket, his suburban supporters, including many 2018 nonvoters, flip most of the new Democratic House seats back to red and the GOP retakes the House. The Republicans easily retain the Senate.
GOP voting policy, judicial dominance, and weakening of the national policymaking infrastructure combine to cement GOP national power for at least a generation.
It is far too easy to underestimate the willingness of economic moderates to hold their noses (many for the second time) and vote for Trump, especially if the GOP can make the socialism charge stick. The Democratic primary process seems designed to enable the Republicans in that effort.
1
It is sometimes hard to distinguish the moderate and progressive positions, particularly since Senator Warren has moved from moderate regulation to nanny state controls as she embraced the extreme feminist agenda. In her dramatically read Audible book, This Fight is Our Fight, Warren discusses depression era reforms and distrust of business as she advocates for bad solutions to persistent problems. Consider Warren’s position vs. a better alternative:
Free collage vs. free digital texts, lectures, tests and transferable credits for those willing to learn.
Medicare for all vs. free prescription medication and free non-specialist primary care for all (at one tenth the cost).
More union workers vs. guaranteed transitional jobs at all professional levels with non-profits at a little below private business wage rates.
Wealth Tax on the rich vs. Inverse taxation of wealth and income to provide the lowest income and payroll tax rates for families willing to pay a tax on net wealth.
Unrestricted abortion vs. a father’s right to refuse consent.
Confiscate firearms vs. Mandatory firearm and ammunition insurance priced at the risk of harm.
Decriminalizing undocumented border crossing vs. Real immigration reform and border control.
David Brooks fails to mention that all of the President Warren’s initiatives fail because there are bipartisan plans on the drawing board which are better and more cost effective.
1
The strange mind of David Brooks leads him to conclude that a Warren Administration would be staffed by people whose "sense of moral superiority, [rendered them] were good at condemnation, not coalition-building." Did I miss the column where he called the Bush people out for their own "sense of moral superiority"? What is the basis for his conclusion that a President Warren would surround herself with ideologues?
4
An 8 year plan for a restoration of sanity in government! Sounds like a good reason to vote for Warren.
3
Instead of painting her as a symbol of leftist populism, it might be worth paying attention to what her campaign is like in reality. At her rallies, attendees are asked to talk to the people around them, "say hello to your neighbor," which reminds me of my minister calling on us to turn to our neighbor and say "peace be with you." This doesn't sound like the Trump of the left. Mr. Brooks, you should go to a Warren rally. I think you'll find a leader trying to fill the soal of America with hope, not hatred.
2
Assumption is that Senator Warren, despite her obvious intelligence, is an ideologue who lacks awareness and is therefore unable to pivot, compromise, or other make adjustment to move her agenda forward incrementally. Quite Presumptuous.
2
I guess I would qualify as a moderate liberal under David’s construct, and Warren is not my choice. I am a Michael Bennet fan. But reading the comments gives me hope that her intelligence, pragmatism and political skill will give her the foundation she needs to survive and succeed in building a better America, and that she will moderate her stated ideological positions as necessary to get things done. Pancho’s comments on the Supreme Court are spot on, and I hope that a Warren administration can harness public opinion - and can be tough enough - to overcome years of hardball, dirty tactics (as recently outlined in the NYT op-Ed page) and truly reflect the society we are and the ideals we aspire to. So I am now more optimistic than I was that we will put our current nightmare behind us. Thanks to David for the first part of his scenario and to the readers for the finish.
3
Thanks Mr. Brooks. Nice, thought-provoking piece outlining potential dynamics that may emerge given the current politics environment in the US.
In the end, when all the dust is settled and the wounds are healed, the center (moderates) will win.
David, I think we all revere the Constitution, even progressive democrats. But the constitution has always been treated as a living, breathing document, and as society has evolved, so has our understanding of what it takes to implement the values and intentions of the founders.
So we have dropped the 3/5 of a person rule, reinterpreted who gets to vote, outlawed slavery, dissolved the segregation system, etc. ( On the negative side, muh of the country has re-interpreted the second amendment as "Every individual can keep his own war weapons arsenal."
So let's take a look at how to better ensure an educated citizen, fair working conditions, better opportunity to compete for people who weren't born rich, better checks and balances on unbridled power. That's democratic, not far-left.
3
Wait, so your theory is that Democrats elected in red states would somehow suffer from suddenly putting a majority of their folks on a comprehensive health care plan, ending systematic voter suppression that privileged the other party, and improving the economy by ending insane trade wars and working with companies instead of fighting them to roll back sensible regulations that they are fine with?
5
I didn't think it was possible but Brooks has hit a new mark in his search for perfect intellectual dishonesty. Every politician and every policy that Brooks has ever supported has brought us to the logical conclusion of Donald Trump. Now Brooks is all warm and fuzzy for Biden and moderate liberals. The Dems have been running one version of moderate liberalism and even old fashioned moderate republicanism for 40 years (Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama and Hillary Clinton) and if Brooks ever supported any of these candidates he kept it to himself.
Brooks brings to mind Jonathan Chait's description of Kudlow. 'He's elevated flamboyant wrongness into a kind of performance art".
8
David Brooks forgot a few guesses in his wonderful history lesson. yet, he failed to say that during winter months in 2019 and early 2020 Iran (or some group) fired on American Iconic sites and Warren passed away [from something blamed on Russians less than a few weeks after taking the White House, thus leaving Bernie as POTUS. But Bernie was hospitalized already and He passed away from "old age" Somehow the Supreme Court in a 6 to 3 vote concerning Bernie and the 25th Amendment "force the Court" to make new law or Nancy Pelosi would have been President - the Court called for Brand New elections The winner was Ivanka Trump who ran with her brother (guess which) as veep. And so it goes, Until 2045 when very old Mayor Buttigieg won, running with his wife as vice president. Everything was happy for several decades under a Buttigieg Dictatorship before Aliens from Pluto - the Non-Planet = took over and started the Alien Antaraxic Party which ran unopposed because they relieved the people of the Earth to soothe or tranquilize them. The End-or The Begining?
3
For those of us at the "bottom" this constant misrepresentation of Bernie, in the case of this article, that of "lacking self-awareness."(Just how do you mean this? Why is it so easy to eschew him? Where do you derive this idea of him? Are you that afraid? There's no explanation of your reasoning at all.) This man, being a civil rights activist since the 60s, who has re-shaped politics whether you want to give him any public acknowledgement or not–is almost hilarious. Almost. I recommend writing anywhere else besides a very small table at the Four Seasons.
4
Hmmm.... I wonder what Warren would have to give up to other Democrats. For F.D.R., Southern Democrats had to stomach the economic programs as long as he wouldn't touch segregation. Since much of the crux of her campaign centers on social safety items, health/medicare for all, college tuition, etc., she may have to limit immigration as the increased spending on immigrants could threaten all those programs.
Wrong! Whether or not Elizabeth Warren wins, three will be at least three of her progressive proposals that will get significant traction, all involving some form of help for the families that require two wage earners to get by. Two of these can be lumped together as extensions of public education, one extending downward to pre-school, and the other extending upward to community collages. The third is a proposal already being considered by some corporate executives: more representation of employees on the board, ultimately leading to improvements in wages and benefits. None of these would be considered democratic socialism. But there is a good chance that increased taxes on the wealthy and stricter enforcement of tax laws will be used to pay for the first two proposals. And a higher limit on taxable wages for social security is also likely to secure its solvency. And there may well be some level of forgiveness for student loans, based on the financial situation of borrowers, also paid for by increased taxes on the wealthy. Lastly, the Green New Deal, while not fully implemented will have a significant impact on the economy.
2
Very good David. But you neglect a few elephants, not least the one charging around today - those millions of young people worried about the climate emergency. These kids will be voters in just a few years, and they won't be fobbed off (or bought off) like their parents were. Besides, a few more climate-amplified hurricanes, floods, and tornadoes, and some harvests starting to suffer (and thus food prices rise), and it will be plain to everyone, of any political persuasion, that business as usual, or even step-by-step reform, simply will not do.
4
Interesting column. I like the idea of Warren winning, the Democrats taking the Senate and the present day Republican party dying out. That said, I see Warren, if it's apparent that she's going to get the nomination, start to pivot to a center left, mainstream Democratic position. I don't see her as quite the same degree of strict ideologue as Bernie. If elected, her cabinet will be a mix of young democrats (nominally and vocally progressive at least) and older Obama-Clinton hold overs. Old debate champ Warren will be smart enough in office to tailor legislation to votes in Congress ones that have a chance to become law. If the recession of'21 comes it's the kind of thing that will happen no matter who is president. Progressive legislation does better in a recession climate than a prosperity boom climate. That's the best hope for medicare for all. 2050 may look back on the Warren presidency favorably.
302
@Cicero
There is something fundamentally different between Sanders and Warren. He is, at heart, a revolutionary, while she is a reformer. It is easy to imagine her as the young republican she once was. She is practical and plays well with others. Lots of what she advocates is common sense.
41
@PST Agree entirely, and add that I see a similar difference between "moderates" Biden and Klobuchar. Klobuchar accurately describes herself as a "practical progressive" in contrast to the type of centrist/liberal represented by Biden over the decades. The center of the Democratic Party today probably lies in the space between Warren and Klobuchar--I'm pretty sure that either would serve as President with this in mind.
10
@Cicero if there is constant in all this chaos its that progressives such Sen. Warren are unpredictable, in that the same old Dem tendencies are not a given. She is very much aware of the peril of the planet, that it is to say the least a game-changer. You might be surprised.
12
2050:
After a 40-year rightward lurch starting with Ronald Reagan's presidency, the Warren election in 2020 is now seen as the beginning of a necessary correction to the extremes of American capitalism, similar to the Teddy Roosevelt presidency at the end of the gilded age.
New structural supports, including living hourly wages, universal tax-supported pre-K and college, Medicare for All, immigration reform and the Green New Deal began this modern progressive era. While climate change remains an existential threat, the Warren presidency is now seen as the beginning of the United States's transition to a mature social democracy, joining Western Europe and Japan.
2
Yes. See how the progressives are destroying a liberal in Canada, and how utter chaos will be the result if they prevail. God save us from the extremists, what ever their political strip may be. And David might want to mention the role of conservatives in this; in that they stayed pretty quiet while the right was spewing propaganda against Obama. Why did the suspend principle in the name of electoral expediency? That is as much a part of this as the progressive's contribution. We all need to own Trump because he came out on our watch.
It is disgusting to see these pundits try to get their candidates elected with underhanded, and unsupported attacks on people who have actually dedicated their lives to trying to help others. These pundits should have been writing about all of Trump's and GOP corrupt activities for years. But, instead wrote about their amazement that Trump was so popular. Even then, they did not challenge his racist remarks and sexually abusive behaviors. And they continually followed Trump's lead and never stuck with a story til its conclusion. But, now because Brooks likes Biden, a former Republican, it is okay to get involved in judging the candidates. Even worse, he is trying to let us know how she would govern. She was successful in business world, successful at setting up the consumer protection bureau and has been a tireless supporter of the average American. The reality is that Trump/GOP have been shoving hard right policies down our throats and the Dems with Obama compromised by accepting many conservative leaning policies. Time to change that. And the way to do it is to get a leader with much more liberal policies so that the GOP is forced to move to the left and back into a moderate position.
4
This is column is less science and more cynicism. Mr. Brooks casts his narrative as a completely ahistorical, subjective adventure of competing moods and ideas. Mildly entertaining at the level of fantasy? Possibly. Accurate or truly thought-provoking? Hardly.
As with hurricanes, behind the names we call political trends, blow powerful objective forces. Mr. Brooks fails to address that. Opinion columns should make an effort to deal, more with the objective developments that produce the social cataclysms: war, environmental change, famine, and economic disruption, and less with what people might happen to think about them on any given day. There is, indeed, a method to be discerned behind this seeming, inchoate political madness.
When a sick man visits the doctor he needs the diagnostic tools of medical science, not the swirling dust of uninformed and random thought.
In contrast to an entire generation of Republican "conservatives" that lined up shamelessly behind a colossal nonentity, Donald Trump, and a raft of Democrats that continue to peddle diversionary illusions about a return to a nonexistent past, Warren has the courage to speak truth to power.
That may not be an end point, but it's certainly an indispensable beginning. If anybody also believes that there's a solution outside of "structural change" and intelligent "plans" combined with active civic dialogue to achieve that, they're merely fooling themselves and anyone influenced by such idle, time wasting dreams.
2
You people backed Hillary and we got Trump. I hate to see us with him again but seriously, once more, if this is the best we have as far as Democratic leaders to pick from and their lax immigration views then Trump it will be again. The most progressive candidate scares the Middle to death by Trump.
1
From your keyboard to God's ear. If our country, our three branches of government and our democracy are somewhat healed and functioning in 2030, I'm good with that.
The assumption Senator Warren would insist on a self defeating platform is absurd. FDR ran as a centrist and promised to balance the budget and protect business. He became president and realized what was needed was liquidity for banks and the unemployed. He gave away federal funds to boost spending. He was practical minded. Warren is smart enough to know that abrupt sudden change always creates a backlash, her career is moderation. What is at stake is the Republicans must finally reject Trumps irrational populism and reach out to moderates. They will as they did with Eisenhower who refused to junk the New Deal. In 2050 what will be understood is that progress demands sustainability and a stable wage program. The idea Republicans are hopeless reactionaries and Democrats mindless leftest is absurd. Both parties have a history of grasping the moment and acting responsibility, this is why they have lasted for more than a hundred years. The country is not going to fall apart. Trump is a brief moment of absurdity. He created and will destroy this moment.
What David really wants is a Democrat who will accept all the changes in policy that Trump has unleashed, but will be nice while changing nothing substantive. And doing nothing.
3
Very eyes forward of you Mr. Brooks. But once again I think your gauzy romantic vision of another time is getting the better of you.
I'm not sure, in fact I am fairly sure Elizabeth Warren can't get elected in the middle of the country. I'm not sure when blind, deaf, pigheadedness came into fashion but Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seem to have it in spades.
Even if she does get elected you are going to see a country at each other's throats. She isn't capable, nor does she seem to care about uniting anyone. That people here think she's inclusive makes me spit my coffee at my monitor.
Once again, wealthy educated liberals: Not everyone wants to go to college and more than a few who go should not as they are playing and taking spot from some deserving individual whose Daddy isn't an alumnus.
I suspect she'll be a one term president and the GOP will rise again. Roaring back even crazier and more corrupt than they are now.
I'm not feeling very good right now about this country. It looks like we want to replace one brand of crazy with another.
2
Interesting fantasy column. Unfortunately, it ends rather abruptly, as if Mr. Brooks ran into the limit of space the column was allotted.
.
It's like some of those early 1930s movies which wrap up too quickly and come to a close so precipitously because the time limit and budget for making the movie was reached.
But, I agree with Brooks' thesis and predictions.
And President Warren ushered in long-overdue statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, expanding her party's majority in the Senate in the bargain.
1
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Stick to the plan.
The premise seems to be that Warren would be blind to the moderate liberal majority. She is not stupid.
1
David, When did you hallucinate that it would be suicidal to impose a single digit percent tax on income over $13 Billion? The wealth tax. Who told you that people don't like, indeed love, their Medicare? They do. They'd like the prescription aspect fixed, with negotiated discounts. Liz has a plan for that. No one is in love with a big deductible, pre-existing exclusions, cherry-picking, and $205,000,000 a year Commercial Insurance CEO's. When Americans become educated concerning the Yuge benefit of having working immigrants paying tax into a system that benefits citizens, they may say, "Come on in!" Because immigrants are a net plus. David, The Warren Presidency will only stumble if losers and liars continue to create Fake News. Cut it out.
1
I'd rather deal with a schism in the Democratic Party than another minute of GOP governance.
I certainly hope you have a time machine and aren't making this up.
Nice, David! Let's see what the history books (coming soon to Amazon!) say about the "Trump Years."
I’m going to turn 70 next month. I can’t wait until 2030. But on the other hand, when the climate destroys the planet because Republicans refused to act, I won’t be here to see it.
1
@Mickey T, we owe our children grandchildren a great deal. They constantly remind us too but we prefer to be selfishly tone deaf. The time has come for all good men...
"Warren Presidency." Just those two words together brings me unbridled joy. Witnessing the neutering of the Republican Party, the most malignant, dangerous and disloyal force in American politics, would be icing on the cake.
2
David, now write one with your prediction of where we'll be if Trump gets a second term.
2
I loved the first 50% of your column, hated the next 30%, and probably won't live long enough to see if the last 20% comes true.
figures, a grey haired white man is already predicting a Woman's Presidency to fail. THAT is the problem with moderate liberalism. they don't have the self awareness to admit their own bias, be it racial or gender based.
1
"Trump’s victory in 2016 had served for them as proof that racism is the dominant note in American history, that the founding was 1619, not 1776."
It is and it was.
Careful David, clutch those pearls any harder and they might break. Scared of What a progressive administration would do to America? Look at California and Minnesota to see the reality. Think your neo-con trickle-down policies will work with a GOP administration in 2020? Look at how those policies have gutted places like Kansas.
Also, nice try tying a 2021 recession to Warren. What is it with low-info GOP hacks and trying to blame the effects of Republican administrations on incoming Dems ("Why didn't Obama do anything about Hurricane Katrina!")?
1
Why is Brooks so worried about Elizabeth Warren? He should be worried Trump will get reelected. But doesn't he know a flea would make a better President than Trump?
1
This is wildly optimistic.
Things are going to get worse, more partisan and probably take a couple more jerks right-left-right-left before possibly settling back at the middle (the only place a sustainable democracy can be).
If it happens...the worst case,which we can't easily rule out, is that liberal democracy has run its course and China and Russia are the future.
1
Ok. Now do one if Trump wins in 2020 and looking back from 2050.
Sounds like we definitely need Warren to win in 2020.
1
There are soooo many inconsistencies and red herrings to logic and experience in this dumb fantasy. To say that Warren does not have faith in American Institutions, capitalism, and the Constitution is flat out fear-mongering. If Brooks has heard anything Warren has said, he never really LISTENED so he misunderstands based on his own dinosaur fate.
2
Ah! The newest version of the old American Western.
I expect better from this commentator. Although I tend to disagree with him, he has generally impressed me with his thoughtful approach. Unfortunately, this column ranks with those "And Then I Woke Up" 8th grade compositions. It's not an accurate look at present, past or future. It's not particularly fair. It's not insightful. It's not even fun. So, in that regard -
"Dear Mr. Brooks: If you have this gift of seeing into the future, please email me the next 11 years of Kentucky Derby winners. Don't worry about any 'misses.' I am certain you cannot be less accurate than you already have been here."
Oh, yes. And then I woke up.
1
Mr. Brooks, I so tire of you and all of the other curdled (But principled, yes, o so principled) conservatives who have stood by and watched, alienated, as your party crashed through the barrier of restraint into insanity and now stand on our liberal sidelines, kvetching furiously.
I do feel sorry for you as you so clearly don’t have a relevant and contemporary ideological place to call home, so you find yourself, teeth clenched, joining the Democratic hubbub as a voice of “centrist reason”. Go away, please. You lost your party. Stop trying to tell Democrats how to run theirs. The policies you so dismissively call progressive are populist in name and fact i.e. popular. The country has tipped so far into a pay to play corporate-bought political playground, aided and abetted by historic well-meaning but ultimately detrimental centrist Democratic Party accommodation that we need to shift far to the left to have any hope of ending up with a center that works for all as individuals and citizens. Elizabeth Warren is not a necessary evil, she and the doctrine of fair play she espouses are just plain necessary.
3
Mr. Brooks, wonderful article!
And then I woke up.
1
This is an interesting thought experiment, Mr. Brooks. But we are better served by commentary on what has actually happened instead of an imagined future that is bent to suit your purposes.
Yep, the woman president can't get anything done. Woo hoo! One more for the men (sarcasm, and I am one).
Well, Brooks is being very simplistic. The Republicans will start a civil, race-based war if they are thrown out by the vote. Count on it...
Ah, David...the last sentence says it all, but me fears it to be wishful.
Brooks sure does like to think of himself as some sort of soothsayer, but for all of his "middle-of-the-road" trappings, he is still under the spell of American capitalism to see anything else clearly.
The victory of centrist liberalism in a new party could occur without a Warren debacle first.
I think Mr. Brooks left out Trump's Wednesday, November 4, 2020 national emergency declaring the election invalid and ordering Attorney General Barr to indict Warren for massive Democratic Party election fraud. Days later five Supreme Court Justices agree to let Trump's election invalidation declaration go forward while it is challenged in court; tentatively setting a new 2022 election date. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, as usual refuses to criticize Trump. While part sarcasm, I see a dystopian future as our democratic values and institutions are drained of energy and sucked into the black hole that has become the Trump presidency.
David Brooks once wrote that ideas might be discussed "standing around the salad bar at Applebees."
He had to be told there was no such salad bar.
He really has no ideas either
and almost all of the top ranked comments on this piece
have it right.
David Brooks doesn't get it.
the classical philosophy embedded in America's founding? Like slavery, indentured servitude, no votes for anyone but white property owners, genocide against native populations, lavish government support for robber barons, Jim Crow, huge numbers of minorities in the prison population?
Wow. Talk about straw man. Brooks makes a straw woman out of his desperate need to paint Democrats as exteme. Pathetic really. Truth, integrity and being reality based may be too much for poor David Brooks, unreachable at this point in his career.
What is your goal? I've heard one excuse after another and family scables, attempting to form an action plan that works for agencies for the aging. However, hear me, just because you're considered aging doesn't give you the right to be abusive. I didn't take my kids to the family Christmas dinner for a reason. Cheers.
https://www.carie.org/
"The Democrats became the nation’s majority party. This party ran on a one-word platform: unity."
"Unity". Sounds fascist. Mussolini could not have said it better. You did not notice that, Mr. Brooks?
Even "I am with her" as lame as it was, was better.
1
In 2050 we'll still be living in the rubble left from CW2.
Lol, this is hilarious. I think he missed the point that what he calls "progressives" are the group who have the most faith in American institutions, and are fighting for good policy goals that make people's lives easier, at the expense of corporate welfare and billionaire tax relief. That is the unifying theme of both progressive and conservative populism, it's what immigrant groups want too. Lol David Brooks. I think he's right about a recession, tho - those billionaires are not giving up without a fight.
1
The moderate liberals won in the end.
Everybody got health insurance, but health care continued to be a business run by businessmen, and continued to leverage the unique necessity of its product to expand its share of the national product. People with major health care needs continued to struggle against bankruptcy and often lose.
Income and wealth inequality continued to rise as the "creators" (actually the possessors) of wealth managed to stay ahead of government attempts to redistribute the gains that our capitalist oligarchy produced. Businesses continued to be free to invest where they saw the greatest opportunity, and they continued not to see much opportunity in rural areas and Rust Belt cities and neighborhoods.
Increasing climate problems were addressed mainly as opportunities to make money or attract government subsidies, our ethanol policy was the shining example for our efforts against global warming. The energy sector was bribed to stop denying climate change by giving it the major role and opportunity to make money in dealing with the changes
Financial institutions continued to make their own rules and did very well until they had to be bailed out and put back on their feet to do very well again.
Each interest group got something in accordance with its power, but there was not enough to go around. Frustrations built up and the electorate chose a competent strongman to preserve the current order rather than a radical redistribution of it.
I think a far more revealing piece would be, looking back in 30 years, how we let the environment be destroyed, but kept our economy in great shape.
I hope we'll find out (i.e. a President Warren) but I believe Brooks is completely misreading her. She is a nationalist in the tradition of Teddy Roosevelt and Robert LaFollette. She won't push "Medicare for All" save by adding a Medicare buy in to Obamacare and perhaps a very staged expansion of Medicare downwards to people in their early sixties and fifties -- maybe even children too. It's badly needed.
Brooks is projecting the decay, decline and destruction of his youthful love, "Movement Conservatism," onto everything else.
2
Bernie and/or Warren will prevail and they will be able to lead this country onto the 21st Century. If they run together they will be unbeatable. Here is what they will deliver:
Medicare for All; Free Public Schooling from K through Graduate School; Gender Equality, Tax Reform that will make the super rich pay progressively; Abolish the NRA and comprehensive gun reform; Abolish Citizens United and similar menaces to the principles of the French and American Revolution son the 18th Century; Free internet access to all (we already paid for the research even though you may have been not paying attention); modern infrastructure in cities and highways connecting them; clean air and water; Great New Deal.
And all this will be pushed through legislation which will not have a choice but conform to the will of the people. The people will be not given the daily malarkey called American Rhetoric. They will be given Facts.
Facts like how much we spent and continue spending for losing wars in Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq/ISIS and what the cost of a war with Iran could be. How that amount compares to the costs of implemented my list above. Facts like proper accounting for costs/benefits of Medicare for All: the deductibles, premiums, co-pays and bill versus the tax increases -- not just the tax increases. Facts like what the profits of drug companies look like.
So no fantasies and time travel short stories. You are no H.G. Wells, that is for sure.
4
Nice try David. With Warren narrowing the gap with Biden, and democratic socialists finally beginning to concede that Bernie will not win the nomination, it's time to trot out "the lesser of two evils" narrative. Specifically, you argue that the country can safely cast out the boorish and embarrassingly impolite Mr. Trump and vote for Warren because some unknown force will intervene to prevent her from actually implementing ANY of her radical and transformative policies. No thanks!
What Elizabeth Warren wants to do to this country is probably the most radical political agenda ever attempted. Three trillion dollars in federal spending to throw away the world's most efficient energy system and replace it with academic theory and hoped-for technologies. Huge taxes meted out not to pay for public programs that benefit everyone, but as retribution for disfavored or unequal economic success and to favor politically preferred constituencies and identities. Crushing new regulations that will burden and impede US businesses, while the rest of the world marches toward efficiency and competitive advantage. Huge give-away programs that will enslave even more Americans in the cycle of government dependency. Free college, free healthcare, debt forgiveness, without even the slightest nod toward personal accountability.
No thanks David. If you don't want to live in Elizabeth Warren's America, the only safe course is NOT TO VOTE FOR HER.
2
@AR Clayboy
"Three trillion dollars in federal spending to throw away the world's most efficient energy system and replace it with academic theory and hoped-for technologies."
That is roughly what they said about horse carriages :)
1
Like Hoover before him, Mr. Brooks sees Democrats devoted to a progressive agenda as a political virus that will destroy the American Republic, capitalism, and the fundamental moral values of the American people.
The same result was predicted by Republicans for FDR’s New Deal, Truman’s consolidation of it, and its extension by President Johnson’s domestic program.
More to the point, history and the American people have judged the administrations of Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford as affirming the progressive legislation of the liberal era. None chose to destroy the accomplishment of those Liberal Democratic presidents by Executive decree or legislation.
Only with the Reagan, Bush,Clinton, and Trump’s neoliberal counter-revolution have progressive domestic agendas from Teddy Roosevelt to Obamacare been declared destructive of American values.
Both conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats ultimately push farther than the American people are willing to go. Yet, from Jefferson and Jackson to the crisis of 2007 , progressive solutions to intractable national problems have been affirmed by the American people. If Warren is elected , it is absurd to suppose her proposals will end in the disaster Mr. Brooks predicts.
2
What a wild ride. Maybe you should become a novelist. :-)
1
What a great column. I usually disagree with Mr. Brooks, but in this case I feel like he is spot on. In particular, I think his predictions about a Warren presidency could prove prophetic.
There is much to like about Warren, and she is obviously infinitely preferable to four more years of Trump. But she isn’t a uniter. Her presidency would undoubtedly be four more years of stalemate and division, even in the unlikely event Democrats could control the Senate.
I think Brooks accurately describes the problem: Biden is perceived as the only centrist option, and a safe win over Trump, and yet no one is in the least bit excited about his candidacy, which means we are likely to be saddled with Warren, whose agenda represents a considerable overreach.
But is it really too late to reboot this thing? Is there no possibility Booker or Klobuchar could win on terms that unite the country? If not, I feel like the “history” Brooks describes is a likely outcome, even if conservatives and centrists alike don’t want to see it happen.
1
David, while I am thrilled with the first chapter of your Letter from the Future (and in general I am an admirer of your writings), you left out climate change as the key factor in what happens after she takes office. Playing along with your conceit, I do think President Warren will realize, after the long slog of the 2019-2020 presidential campaign is overshadowed by catastrophic forest fires, hurricanes and ice melt, that the first thing she needs to do as President is pick up the phone, call our allies, and embark on the mission of saving our planet. She will gracefully admit in interviews that Medicare and free college for all might have to wait.
This supposed historical parable is really an attempt to introduce fear of success to supporters of Elizabeth Warren. Brooks always wants compromise and moderation; he never advocates powerful changes, no matter the realities on the ground, or, as it were, under the rising waters. He's deathly afraid that his America might be lost, so he does his story-telling best, vaguely imitating William F. Buckley, to stand athwart history.
Mr. Brooks' little history leaves a lot out. It appears on the very day that young people all around the world are taking to the streets to demand that their elders pay attention to the realities of climate change. Mr. Brooks' head is elsewhere, lost in his perpetual worries that the US won't go back to the 1950s or 1980s or whenever it is that his nostalgia leads him. But there can be no going back and if America has yet another "special destiny", it will be forged through change, not through moderation or the old conservatism.
6
Just as it's unwise to expect good health to result from letting the unquestioned urges of the body guide diet and exercise, it's unwise to expect "free" capitalism to self regulate with positive results. This is understood by Warren and many progressive arguments. By taking in consideration of the actual substantive conditions of reality instead of dwelling solely in the abstract, it's obvious that for capitalism to thrive, setting conditions is necessary and not some brainless socialist rejection.
2
Nice story; one big mistake: if the Dems got the Presidency, the House, and the Senate, it does not follow that they could not enact their agenda. Maybe their agenda would fail in practice, but that's a lot different from the scenario you propose.
3
As a centrist Democrat, I decided 6 months ago to support Warren. Why? Because I think she, more than any other of the candidates, actually deserves to be President. I do think she will try to do one major ultra progressive thing, perhaps health care, perhaps free college and like Obama, it will result in an inferior policy compromise. She will be undercut from the right as Obama was, and like the first Black president, the first female president will bring out the worst out the GOP's identity warriors. She, like Trump, might actually only serve one term. But, like Jimmy Carter, and very much unlike Trump, she would have deserved to serve that term.
8
Warrren's approach to economic policy issues is surprisingly mainstream, reflecting the neo-classical economics taught at most top universities, and increasingly even at the University of Chicago (according to recent reporting).
Yes markets are good, but they are rarely free, and government action can address market failure.
5
This is a problematic account in my view. Notably, I don't understand the last assessment. Why can't a candidate be a fighter AND a coalition-builder? Clearly Senator Warren is trying to build a coalition. Her message is a POPULIST message after all.
And it's also unfair to conflate the divisiveness of the Conservative Far Right that Trump absorbed with the movements being led by Sanders and Warren. The proposed policies from Sanders and Warren are inherently inclusive and democratic. I bet most Americans see the policies this way. As tools of unification. At least I do.
3
This is a compelling fantasy prediction. It is wholly plausible, except for the possibility that Warren will shift from her campaign tone to one of sound governance. Universal health insurance will be pursued incrementally as the Senate posed a real obstacle to instant Medicare4All. Border security and humane management of asylum seekers made decriminalization reasonable, but required more than 'catch&release.' Again, the Senate objected and compromise was sought. Tuition support for the neediest to attend trade & community college preceded free universities.
In short, basic rationalism prevailed.
2
Sometimes rhetoric, arguments, pursuation is all about moving the center. Will President Warren get Medicare for all through the Senate? Probably not. Could she get a public option through with the support of centrists who might of considered a public option quasi-socialism in 2009? Pretty plausible. Would she sign it with a moment of wistful resignation that it wasn't all she wished for? In a heartbeat.
2
brooks forgets to include warrens trillion dollar infrastructure buildout and blooming of solar and wind industries exploding the economy upwards with 30 million new jobs and billions more in private investment.
plus the added cosumer cash from cancelling all student debt and the 50 percent reduction in health care costs due to medicare for all.
plus the shriveling of the republican party making the country effectively a new Grander California exporting the highest tech goods and sevices to the world .
including solar cracked hydrogen to replace all fossil fuels forestalling and eventually reversing global warming . saving not only civilization but all life on the planet.
2
Wait a second, Mr. Brooks; you left out the part where she grants clemency to Donald Trump and commutes his sentence (for treason) to life imprisonment.
1
Ah, wishful thinking! Brooks missed the most likely scenario of all, though. The great criminal trial of Donal Trump and his ensuing life term in prison. Instead we read veiled dogma supporting Brooks' political fantasy world. But "centrism" isn't an ideology per se. It is the inevitable outcome of left and right working out their differences through compromise and understanding. Until democrats recognize that is OK to be progressive, just as republicans have become the party of populist conservatism, we're going to remain stuck in the centrist mud.
2
Good column, with one serious blind spot - climate change. The fossil fuel industry has owned the United States and its capitalist system since Dick Cheney became Prez in 2001. That, and other big biz lobbies owning their own pieces of the U.S., has caused people to sour on capitalism, crony capitalism, that is.
2
How about we focus on Brooks’ main point - unity? Policies are interesting but without folks willing to commit to the social experiment that is the US, none of it really matters. How about a broad commitment (by our candidates and ourselves) to the fact that truth can be discerned, that checks and balances (not expediency) is paramount and that democratic institutions only work if people are willing to play be the rules? This should be the ante before we make any policy arguments.
Even if you (we) are right, we ain’t seen nothing yet if we continue to bludgeon each other with our righteousness (except the one articulated above).
3
The euphoria ended when Warren tried to pass her legislative agenda. One by one, her proposals failed in the Senate: Medicare for all, free college, decriminalizing undocumented border crossing, even the wealth tax. Democratic senators from red states, she learned, were still from red states; embracing her agenda would have been suicidal. Warren and her aides didn’t help. Fired by their sense of moral superiority, they were good at condemnation, not coalition-building.
Then we hit the streets and actually got something done.
@Chris Martin
Actually, the moral superiority schtick is Bernie and his bros' domain.
Oh, how these never-trump-unless-you-don't-do-what-I-want republicans love to tell democrats what to do, since we've done SO well in the past almost 40 years of their free market rule. Just look at what we've become!
5
The Democrats nominate Joe Biden, who ends up losing to Trump. Another four years of this man in the White House has predictable consequences: the continued radicalization of the Democratic Party, which next time around nominates someone promising things even beyond the trillions of dollars in spending Sanders and Warren promised. This person, to the distress of the few sane individuals left in America, wins the presidency.
The radical leftist president spawns in the GOP a madness as yet unseen. We end up in a near-civil war situation where political institutions begin to totally crumble, after their reputation was trashed under Trump. As the radical leftist president's programs fail to achieve their intended ends, supporters find scapegoats and demand higher taxes.
By then, though, Modern Monetary Theory has made a seeming need for higher taxes unnecessary. Supporters are told of this to their great delight. Former alt-Left media, now gone mainstream, sings the praises of MMT. At this point, America starts to look rather more like Venezuela -- with elements of Zimbabwe. The Right stages a comeback, but the counterrevolution's bloody struggle ends with a guillotine on the White House lawn.
Bankers and corporate titans' moderate liberal heads roll. The People take over the means of production. The Revolution has succeeded, we're told, and Justice has been done. In the coming years, destitute-but-equal kids will be taught that the Establishment brought it on themselves. Etc.
I’m disappointed David Brooks ignored how climate devastation could very well be a huge factor in any future scenario. Otherwise, some interesting points especially about how we on the left can turn on each other as demonstrated by the primary fight between Clinton and Sanders.
2
Mr. Brooks, struggling to be relevant in the future, having abdicated his relevancy in the present as a persuasive voice.
Still planning on being around in 2050 (hoping to be coherent) after a Warren presidency demonstrates Americans care about people, after Republicans demonstrated they only care about people who look or act like themselves.
Its going to be an interesting 30 years.
3
Okay, but this misses the core reason people will vote for Warren: She's a pragmatist. Bill Clinton ran on universal health care and a major overhaul of govt and pulled back when health care lost and the economy hit the skids. Obama ran on hope and change and ruled as a shrewd but (over)cautious pragmatist. That's why we keep electing these folks: They live in the real world. Trump doesn't. Bernie definitely doesn't. Warren does. The next ten years are going to be brutal - recession, debt problems, deep division in the electorate, possibly even a war. Moderate liberalism isn't going to fix any of that. Pragmatism will.
4
I’m disappointed David Brooks ignored how climate devastation could very well be a huge factor in any future scenario. Otherwise, some interesting points especially about how we on the left can turn on each other as demonstrated by the primary fight between Clinton and Sanders.
2
I’m disappointed David Brooks ignored how climate devastation could very well be a huge factor in any future scenario. Otherwise, some interesting points especially about how we on the left can turn on each other as demonstrated by the primary fight between Clinton and Sanders.
Pretty sad that a candidate running on a platform of anti-corruption and making our system work for all is branded a far-left, progressive populist in the NYTimes. And nice try, equating progressive populism with the retrograde populism embraced by the GOP.
And by 2050, our concerns about "revered" American institutions like the Constitution will be positively quaint compared to the environmental crises we'll be facing. I'll be less worried about words we never lived up to (or were all that serious about as a nation) and much more worried about the fact that humans and their cats have killed off 97 percent of birds.
3
@fairlee76
Hey, don't blame the cats.
Hey, David - It need not be a "failed warren presidency." It cold work out pretty well - and the Republicans would STILL be out of power.
David Brooks is a thoughtful conservative who thinks about not doing anything too radical. Unfortunately, the world moves on at its own pace, and we ignore it at our own peril.
Brooks wants to move slowly but the world is moving quickly. What would a 'moderate' answer to climate change be? Would it be policy that makes people comfortable? Are we going to move at a comfortable snail's pace while the planet's average temperature moves to and above the 2 degree mark?
By the time moderates are comfortable with serious actions to protect the planet, it will be too late. Giving up your beloved 10 mile per gallon SUV when your planet is being ravaged by water wars, massive climate change migrations and the nationalism and racism that that would bring isn't going to help.
The same is true of issues like income inequality, monopoly control of the economy, gerrymandering and voter suppression and white nationalism. What's comfortable for 'moderates? ' Maybe we could compromise by giving black people three fifths of a vote.
How about automation and the middle class unemployment that that could cause? What changes will satisfy moderates?
In short, the world is facing problems that require solutions that will make moderates uncomfortable. Warren represents a voice for the minimal changes that are necessary for survival. Brooks wants to be comfortable in his old age; others want to survive long enough to see old age.
2
I'm sorry. I think you are confusing the 2020 election with the 2016 election which was won by Mrs. Clinton. Everything in this article is what would have happened, except she would have been fighting a very Republican Congress and literally nothing would have been done. The recession would have occurred earlier and she would have been completely unable to deal with domestic issues. Foreign policy would have been her forte. The world might be a better place, but America would be struggling.
2
In Brooks' scenario things eventually turn out well. He fails to present a case for the consequences of linear change if it was to immediately follow the trump disaster. Senator Warren's track record was in the success of her financial regulatory reforms in spite of the Republican efforts to dismantle them. I don't think she could have accomplished that without a coalition. Warren was a teacher and from what I understand a very good one, she knows how to work a room. Just what do you think good old linear Joe would accomplish, maybe some watered down legislation at best. David the Democratic Party is a big tent even though the DNC has tried so very hard in recent years to make it otherwise as they did when they pushed Hillary and demonized Sanders. We will survive our internal differences. Testimony to that is the passage of the ACA. So sit back Mr. Brooks take a deep breath and maybe and old conservative like you can learn something new. Don't be afraid of change.
2
Actually, what happened in 2020 was that, recognizing that the moderates had it right, the Democrats nominated Gov. Steve Bullock, who was elected president because he had realistic, popular solutions to things like health care and care for the environment. He had an amazingly successful two terms, during which time the nation came back to normal, there was eventually universal health care, dark money was forced into the sun, and sensible regulations were put into place for gun control and environmental protection. Not all problems were solved, but the country was back on track.
1
@csherman
Not going to happen . . .
Any more than David Brooks' apocalyptic scenario. . .
It is nice to see that even David Brooks beginning to understand the American situation. The far-right is a minority. It is losing members regularly to a younger generation is more progressive. Eventually, there will have to be a realignment. That realignment will be the progressive versus the moderates. The far-right will not have enough people to have a seat at the table.
David’s quaint obsession with billionaires will give way to an obsession by most people is keeping the planet healthy and society fair. Many remarks in this area about a new FDR and the new “fair deal” for the country is heartening. Now, all we need to do is get the New York Times into the mainstream and out of the center-right. We can do it. Just keep commenting the way we are now.
To get to the next level we need to get money out of politics. Join makeitfair.us. Look up the American anticorruption act. Get involved. It’s important!
President Warren, having learned from President George W. Bush, consistently refused to negotiate against herself and fought for what she believed was essential for the future of the country and the world. But having been trained in the cut-throat world of university politics, where the fights are so vicious because the stakes are so low, she formed alliances and cut deals when necessary to make progress. Having surprised all of the center-right pundits, she cruised to re-election.
6
Fun to speculate. I would have started...
Democrats had high hopes in 2020, but were disappointed as they were in 2016. Despite Warren as the nominee, young voters stayed home and black voters were as unimpressed with Elizabeth as they were with Hillary. Trump on the other hand was able to get his base to the polls. In addition, middle class suburban white voters turned out in droves for Trump, afraid of Warren's socialism as depicted in GOP ads and thankful for focused middle class tax breaks delivered in early 2020. Not only did Warren lose, but the House went back to the GOP as the Democratic moderate red state Representatives were sent packing by voters afraid of The Squad. He now had the next 4 years to further pack the SCOTUS when the opportunity would arise. After his inauguration, Ivanka became more politically active, positioning herself for 2024.
@Mark
I think you are making a miscalculation here. In 2016 many people stayed home because they didn't like Hilary Clinton. In 2020 many people are going to vote because they don't like Donald Trump.
One thing wrong with Brooks' analysis: the assumption that Warren would beat Trump. Precisely who in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and, maybe, Florida who did not vote for Clinton in 2016 will vote for Warren in 2020? The degree of victory in the rest of the states is entirely irrelevant to the electoral college outcome.
As well, as much as most Blacks appear to detest Trump, they've heard "plans" and "promises" forever, and unless the Democrats nominate someone (Biden/Klobuchar ticket?), who they believe can actually accomplish something in the Washington of 2020, accomplish something moderate rather than not accomplish utopia, many are likely to just sit home.
The "appeal" of Trump has not changed. He has essentially acted as expected since Day One. Thus there is not likely to be a diminution of those who voted for him in 2016.
The large majority of voters, especially those whose minds are actually open, vote on an evaluation of what the candidate will do for my priorities, not what the candidate tells me should be my priorities. Warren fails on this latter point.
But these are just some of the trees I am describing, and the background forest Brooks describes is certainly worth contemplating seriously.
3
1. Biden is currently favored to win the majority of Super Tuesday 2020 states because of the demographic make-up of his support so t
2. The prediction that an Elizabeth "capitalist to my bones" Warren presidency would explicitly rail against capitalism is a flimsy one. If anything, she is an institutionalist, more in line with the "moderate liberals" this column describes than with the radical, upend the system, activist left.
2
This sounds convincing up to the election of Elizabeth Warren, and the failure of her left-wing agenda. But, the forces of reaction are simply too strong to allow a single election cycle to bring in the reforms she proposes, especially if the predicted economic downturn hits early in her presidency.
But Brooks' prediction fails most severely because it ignores the world-wide situation. Foreign crises inevitably occur, and hamstring the domestic agenda, as the president gets more and more involved in military and diplomatic decisions of urgent import. Even more serious, however, is likely to be the climate crisis building to a head, with natural disasters piled on each other, and the looming threat to human life on Earth. Trump and his know-nothings could ignore this threat, knowing that they'd soon be gone, leaving Democrats to pick up the pieces (as usual), but conscientious Warren will batten the hatches and engage in an essentially conservative effort to save as much of the nation as possible. Health-care won't be universal, but the more urgent call will be to save those who are being washed out by floods, or killed by heat waves. The struggle for abortions and bathrooms will have to be abandoned, and the phony threats of North Korea, with it's ten nukes, and Iran, with no nukes at all, will be put on the back burner. Business will not be as usual, but a crisis can be a good thing, too, so after the failed Warren presidency, something good may emerge.
1
I was thinking of re reading the Foundation Trilogy. I am pretty sure that it Isaac Asimov writes better Sci Fi than David Brooks, so maybe I will.
1
Something about the pendulum comes to mind.... yes, the question is, how long does we endure swings to either extreme. But we also must ask how long do we endure that "period of the pendulum" as well? Isn't there something in between stasis and revolution?
1
Right. And there's no difference between a primary campaign and campaigning for a general election? Please.
What we're hearing now is called healthy American debate in democracy. We on the left like to discuss, analyze, investigate, explore, and duke it out. We're not the right who close their minds, bow in abeyance, fall in line, and prefer their voters uniformed and angry.
What it is about the right that the only thing they have offer is fear and anger?
3
@RMS: Amen, Amen, Amen!!
The political right in this country has been, at best, in a state of stasis for decades now and, just as commonly, actively regressing. There has not been a new idea out of the GOP for as long as I can remember. It's the same three or four mantras, the most common ones being, "cut taxes," and, "government is the problem," since the Reagan Era.
I want, nay, demand a discussion of ideas and want government that is willing to try the new, because we know that what's going on now is simply not working for the vast majority of the citizenry.
@RMS: By the way, I believe you mean obeisance, not abeyance.
I prefer the so-called left (which we really don't have in this country by any objective measure, at least not with any political power) that wants people to be informed and, as a result, very angry.
I can only look at this column with bemusement. The idea that Elizabeth Warren is some sort of radical populist is just plain laughable. She's already demonstrated that she can (and wishes to) put together coalitions that work.
She's not my first choice, but she's far from the person portrayed in this column.
2
This excessively nearsighted article commits two fallacies. First, it assumes that the Democrats are a mirror image of the Republicans--that because the Republican fratricidal war between the centrists and extremists proved fatal, the Democrats' much lesser tensions will also prove fatal. Second, it assumes that political faction is everything and neglects the importance of actual policy. Warren could well win the presidency, but if so it will be because the center-left rallies behind her. Her financial regulation will succeed because enough members of the financial community realize that it's in their interests to get rid of the reckless bad actors in the name of stability; she'll bend on Medicare for All, when push comes to shove, and work with the Democratic Congress to pass something closer to a public option. She'll make progress on electoral reform and climate change, both desperately needed. And the idea that people will vote for a Harvard law professor in order to overturn the Constitution is absurd. They may, however, come around to the view that, as has happened before, it needs to be repaired in order to keep functioning.
3
I was really hoping to see this column finish with the Buttigieg presidency following Warren's. It should occur in 2020, but as progressive as we are developing IT and other "stuff," we are remarkably slow to evolve when it comes to the truly important issues including climate, health care, education, etc. I wonder if Iceland will allow me in?
1
Oh, shut the heck up, Dave.
8
Reagan & a compliant congress moved the country so far right on tax & environmental policy that today the median US HH net worth is $97k, and the globe is approaching a WWIII scale global climate crisis. Warren recognizes that today’s Republican Party is the greatest historical threat to organized human existence. You don’t defeat an existential threat with coddling & negotiating. Rather, you sell the electorate the truth — the Republican Party is a deadly serious, cultish con. Would each of her plans pass thru Congress? Of course not! Would she move the “center” closer to pre-Reagan norms? Someone had better. The alternative is indescribably frightening.
Warren's first act as president is the wholesale revocation of Trump's presidential directives as starting point from which to build a better, more inclusive, forward thinking America.
2
You could easily replace Elizabeth Warren’s name in most of this this with Jimmy Carter’s and set it in 1976.
I saw a different history David. I think you didn't imagine that Warren with a majority Democratic senate, repealed the filibuster rule and was able to get nearly all her progressive legislative proposals through. She didn't get Medicare for All but instead Medicare for those who hate their current insurance or just need better insurance. Assault rifles were banned for purchase with voluntary buy back at twice their cost. A carbon tax was passed as well as a modified wealth tax. The green economy thrust us out of the Trump induced recession and by 2050 the CO2 levels were no longer rising. Oh, and without packing the court, President Warren replaced 3 right wing judges, and at 2030 Chief Justice Ruth Bater Ginsburg retired in 2033 at the age of 100. President Pete Buttigieg presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom that same year.
2
Okay, here's my look back: The most amazing thing of the 2020 election was how urban Americans were once again shocked by Trump winning the election. The country was again confused by the popularity of the Democratic candidate in all but the place that mattered the most: Wisconsin. Though she won a much larger share of the popular vote, Warren lost the electoral college. Shortly after that Ruth Ginsburg passed away and the president appointed another conservative to the court. GOP minority rule was cemented into the American system, nudging the country further into its ongoing decline. As China advanced and pushed the boundaries of science America retreated into its current kleptocratic theocracy.
3
Mr. Brooks -- My Dad, just18 in 1932, rode the rails out of his small Midwestern town after an argument with his conservative Republican dad over Social Security; he was pro, his Dad was con.
He then went on to become a union organizer, among many other useful things and, with the rest of his generation, worked to make capitalism work more broadly than it had ever done before. He understood it was a dynamic force based in risk -- that would never on its own deliver the continuity and necessary protections from body and soul, family and community, destroying forms of risk, and criminality, societies are vreated to protect their members from.
Conservatives have now spent more than 80 years with only one goal in mind; destroying the New Deal and everything my father's generation built.
And what happened while they did so?
They destroyed their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren's futures.
Now those young people are all grown up and voting.
I'm not worried about what they are going to do to this country. With Warren or with some other necessary progressive ready to represent their interests.
What I worry about is how much destruction is still left in the movement you have foolishly devoted your life to.
6
Equivalents of Medicare for All (with private options), free public college education and progressive taxation, including on the wealth, are common practice in advanced democracies. Countries still thrive while providing their populations a safety net and the ability to receive a better education. They can do all that within the framework of a capitalistic economy. They are smart enough to realize that a healthy educated society can be happier and more efficient because their basic needs are fulfilled.
4
This fictional tale, a sort of left wing happy version of the HBO show "Years and Years," made me laugh because of David Brooks' obvious biases. God forbid the progressive left is actually right about some of its policy objectives, like medicare for all or the wealth tax. Better to go back to the time of neo-liberalism ("pro-capitalism moderate liberals" as he calls them) so that we can start this left wing populism/right wing populism cycle all over again.
Capitalism is broken. It is too often conflated with democracy, even as China perfectly demonstrates how capitalism thrives in a dictatorship. Until America has some accepted forms of socialism closer to Europe's welfare state, (i.e. universal health care, free college, a guaranteed income) I don't see how we come out of this mess that unfettered free market capitalism started.
2
You lost me at Amy Klobuchar.
2
David, did it ever cross your mind that Warren is a weaver?
Please consider it. She is closer to the politics that you yearn for than you are willing to admit in this column.
4
Was this supposed to be a fairy tale?
3
Boy, do you not get Elizabeth warren!
8
It scares me when I'm more like David Brooks (or maybe he's more like me) every day.........
And David: Don't forget to mention the 30% stock market crash and severe recession that hit in October 2021 eight months into President Warren's first term, two months after President Warren declared an executive order as a national emergency to nationalize the nation's banks citing Harry Truman doing the same during the 1950 Railroad Strike. Liberals and vestigial Republicans blamed Warren. Loyal Progressive Democrats of course claimed the nationalization had nothing to do with it; rather, it was all due to the residual effect of Trump's policies including of note Paul Krugman who had been predicting a market meltdown and severe recession from the moment Trump took office and throughout his four years in the White House, only to see the economy stay reasonably strong ... until finally it did happen.
Also of note, don't forget how the Progressive movement fractured due to its own internal contradictions as different factions within each bitterly condemned the other for lacking ideological purity, not being woke enough or lacking sufficient consciousness of race and gender identity.
Most of us remember the famous bloody intra-communal Progressive riots of 2023 in San Francisco and Portland, the immediate cause being a transgender woman entered the safe space of a slavery reparations collector, pitting factions who believed the Progressive movement had been taken over by Russian agents against rival factions who accused Israel and the Zionist conspiracy for having done so.
1
Now if we could just cut out the middlewoman and elect Sen. Klobuchar...
excellent
From your lips to the Lord's ear.......I think of Warren or Sanders sitting across a table from Putin and my stomach churns....
And, this "lib" believes in the innovative energy of capitalism.
1
@Margot LeRoy
As does Warren. Do some research. Also, I would be delighted to see Warren against Putin.
The Republican Party, as an institution, is a danger to the rule of law and the integrity of our democracy.
The problem is not just Donald Trump, it’s Republicans conscious decision to collaborate with him.
The best hope of defending the country from Trump’s Republican enablers is to vote against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes.
3
Does Brooks really believe that Warren is dumb enough to refuse to compromise with moderates? She is brilliant, but she is also realistic. Of course, she will. The country will begin the process of shifting toward Medicare for all. It will occur in increments. B 2050, we will be there and it will have been relatively painless. We will go back to caring about the climate and doing something about it. Sure, the stock market might go down, but why would it stay down? People would spend far less money on health care. And energy stocks would soar. Plus, the military budget won't be siphoned off to build a wall that won't work. Warren will be a phenomenal and transformative president. We just have to get her there.
4
At least Brooks acknowledges the obvious: Wall St.'s latest neoliberal candidate of, by, and for the rich, Biden, is dead meat. The only reason he ever had the illusion of such "strength" was older black voters, controlled from the pulpit by the rich exactly like white Evangelicals. Smearing the left with older black voters worked with Hillary, but Biden is so ludicrously past it that it's not going to work this time. So, yeah, Warren's going to take it all, chopping Trump into mincemeat in the process, and getting the Senate back for the Dems. In the process, she will have started Bernie's "revolution," meaning she will have created a Millennial base in the largest generation of voters in history that will function somewhat like Trump's, but with an intelligence matching hers, instead of a stupidity matching his. Like any good Boomer, Brooks conveniently neglects the fact that his horribly destructive generation is simply in the process of passing from the scene, literally and figuratively, to be replaced by Millennials as committed to the left and the general good as Boomers have been to narcissistic selfishness. And the Millennials are not going anywhere for decades. So the pressure will be on the whole triumphant Democratic Party to keep moving further and further in the progressive direction for many years to come. Progressives, not right-wingers, are just the ones to change priorities and deal with Trump's recession, better than neoliberal Obama did with Bush's.
2
Pure projection of David Brooks' worldview.
Yes, Warren is likely to be the first woman president. But I think Brooks underestimates the extent to which Americans are sick of the legalized corruption that has gutted our democracy, the tilting of the playing field toward the wealthy, and the despoiling of the planet for profit.
5
Warren is not a Democrat. She's a Socialist. I'm a Liberal and a Democrat and neither I nor any of my Liberal friends will vote for her. Her whole philosophy of everyone as victims is corrosive to American values and insulting to those of us who have pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps.
I will not vote to pay off other peoples student loans nor to pay for free college for wealthy people's children. It's ridiculous to throw another bone to the wealthy after the recent tax cuts.
Warren talks a good game but she knows nothing about real business, economics or how the real world functions. Trump will win by double digits when her policies are exposed and talked about.
All I see is wishful thinking on the part of progressives. They talk about the black vote, women, young people and how a dynamic candidate will bring out the vote. The facts are plain and simple- to beat Trump the Dems are going to have to win the Midwest. They don't vote for Socialists in the Midwest. Warren is a loser candidate. Let's back someone who has realistic ideas and can actually win.
1
Trump, his administration and the Republicans are evil. Warren is not. Warren is still likely to draw into her administration many Clinton and Obama staffers. Finally, the House and the Senate, the Democrats in them, are not going to be enacting too many populist reforms as most Americans want Trump and those who put him in office gone not a wholesale change.
1
Brooks seems to have an intellectual problem distinguishing between Sanders and Warren. He thinks Warren is as "left" as Sanders, but she's not. Sanders is an ideologue, while Warren is a proven pragmatic.
She declares herself to be a capitalist, and that she wants a strong change to our current, skewed-to-the-rich system of gross inequalities, so that capitalism isn't toppled by some large movement of the have-nots.
Don't be afraid, Mr. Brooks. You know that our country cannot survive more Trump authoritarianism, and that ANY of the Democratic candidates will be better than a man who blithely betrays his country out of ignorance, narcissism and greed.
5
I really wish you would have lunch with me, Mr. Brooks. I have a lot to say to you (and I would be happy to convey messages from others). You have offered a veneer of reasonableness to cover the rapaciousness of the Republican party for years. The idea that anyone trying to oust Trump should listen to you is galling -- Trump is simply an exaggerated version of the party you've promoted -- same philosophy, same lack of decency, same party over country, worse manners. Seriously. Lunch.
2
Yeah, but for Warren to have won she would have had to have adroitly abandoned her "Medicaid for All" nostarter as soon as nomination was clinched. Further, if she's had the flexibility and skill to do that she have had to have prepared folks for the next challenge --GOP obstructionism via the Filibuster -- and a focus on overcoming it via the great victory of 2022.
1
Capitalism is economic model not a political one. Capitalism can exist in Fascist, Communist or Democratic Socialist nations. Capitalism has no stake in Democracy or Human Rights. It cares nothing about woman’s right to choose, or the right worship, or the right to vote, or the right to health care or the right to a fair trial, etc., etc., etc. It only cares about profit and growth.
Freedom is much more than the right to become a billionaire. FDR’s Four Freedoms understood that it depends on the same rights that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders and others are talking about. She has the right ideas and the skill to convey them to the American people. Get off her back Mr. Brooks and just applaud her courage.
2
Brooks's scenario should be heartening to those Dems who fear having a healthcare plan they like replaced by Medicare For All.
Don't fear Warren. Fear Trump.
1
In 2015 and 2016, I was for Bernie Sanders but he lost to Hillary Clinton. So I voted for her, seeing in Trump the dangerous fascist demagogue that he has proven himself to be. I support a progressive politics, but Sanders and Warren go too far too fast into changes. Their Medicare for All, eliminating all private insurance, is not right for this time. I fear Warren is going to snatch the nomination from Biden as well as younger, more moderate liberals and progressives, who otherwise would shine: Klobuchar, Harris, Booker. I really fear that in a race between Warren and Trump, Trump will win! The Democrats have a history lesson we mustn't forget! Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern lost!
This column epitomizes making a "straw man" argument. You paint Warren as an unrealistic ideologue, and then explain how that will make her fail. Had you portrayed her as the intelligent, principled, pragmatist she is, then maybe your predictions would be worth considering.
2
This is typical of Brooks'. I still remember his prediction that the ACA would be a failure. It seems like he predicts what he hopes will happen. I have enough confidence in Elizabeth Warren to think that that she has the political acumen of FDR.
2
David, I wish this were true. Wish it would come to pass. When I was covering the 2016 campaign I was alarmed to see the same "lets blow it all up" attitude in the Bernie Sanders camp as I did in the Donald Trump camp. They wanted polar opposite things, but they both wanted to tear down the "system". I would love for cooler heads to prevail, but I fear the radicals on both sides are the loudest voices, and will demand the most attention, sucking the oxygen out of the room, and the country.
I appreciate Mr. Brooks' humor in speculating about the short reign of Elizabeth the Senator as President of the United States.
But for Ms. Warren to be elected, she will need to overthrow the propensity for the national electorate to punish the true liberal...
One needs only look at the candidacies of Adlai Stevenson Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Fritz Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton...
Progressive politics hasn't played well on the national stage in more than seventy years.
1
You are a fatalist. You exaggerate the effect that Warren will have on our country. You inflate the so-called ills of progressive politics, and you inflate the virtues of moderate politics. Have you ever given a thought to the possible benefits of policies that set as their goals a universal healthcare system, a government-subsidized college education for those who haven't the means, a livable, carbon-reduced environment, and so forth? Tell me what's so bad about these kinds of policies. Your position on so many things are so depressing.
4
Unfortunately, David, I will have gone on to my greater reward by 2050. But I do not think your view holds a lot of water.
Historically, we are at a point in our history where income inequality - which drives miserable lives for the bottom three quartiles of our population, climate change and nascent fascism will at some point create either a "soft" or "hard" revolution. Look to the early 20th century more as your model because historical movements are more macro than an aberration like Trump represents. Remember, Roosevelt saved capitalism from itself although your ilk never forgave him for it.
The US is one of the lowest taxed countries as a percent of GDP even controlling for pensions and health care differences. Tax increases on the wealthy, wealth taxes, treating all income as ordinary will not ruin our country, It will save it. Essentially, people are beginning to understand that once you have a half a billion dollars, you really don't need anymore do you?
Just no. A willful misunderstanding of who Warren is.
4
Mr. Brooks why do you paint Ms. Warren in such a pessimistic color?
Ms. Warren is a thoughtful and sensible politician.
She works carefully and does her homework. She is not going to make the mistakes that you outline.
Mr. Brooks you have some power, please be thoughtful.
The party that you support has led us to a very dark place. No one is perfect. Ms. Warren has always worked to help people. Can you say the same for the people and party that you have supported?
5
I think Brooks' vision is, on the whole, very feasible and not at all a critique of "leftism" in any of its forms, despite much negative commentary here that appears little more than knee-jerk reactions to the letters B-r-o-o-k-s. I think it very likely there will be both an internal and external backlash against a Democratic President, making major policy revolutions impossible in the near term. But, as suggested by Brooks, backward looking, negative-based, change-averse oppositions eventually will die from their own poisons. To me, Brooks' punch-line is "The left prevails! Hurray for us!"
Cut to the chase. Brooks is scared, very scared of what his Trumpublcian party has become. So much so he has to disparage the Democratic party because he just can't handle it. I've been reading him for years in the NYT as well as watching him on the PBS Newshour with Judy Woodruff on Friday when he and Mark Shields discuss the week in politics. I find his predictions rarely come to pass and his contradictions always come to light.
Brooks also forgets by 2050 the earth will be in much more horrible shape from climate change than it is now, which he so conveniently forgets to mention in his column. So much for predicitions. He left out the most important one! But we all know which party to blame for that and it's not the Democrats.
2
I am one of those Democrat moderates at whom everyone is angry. I support candidates such as Biden, Klobuchar, Buttigieg and Bennett and I agree that the Sanders agenda, which Warren seems to have adopted, will not pass Congress, ANY Congress, even a Democratic Congress and I believe that a Warren nomination is likely to result in a second term for the thief and lunatic in chief. I would hope however that, should Warren become President, the Sanders agenda would become an opening negotiating position, not a hardened battleship willing to go down in flames.
Mr Brooks just described California from 1987 to 2019. It will be interesting to see the if next decade proves him correct in his analysis.
David Brooks – the last of the thoughtful conservatives – joins the fear mongers and shows his true colors.
1
Interestingly, Brooks starts by talking about how, "Warren triumphed over the other progressive populist, Bernie Sanders, because she had what he lacked — self-awareness." Yet, he implies that once in office she becomes a progressive zealot... Sorry David, she won't be a left a wing Trump....
1
Those of us who have been alive before the Beginning Of The End (aka, 11/2016) remember that anti-Trumpers could also be Republicans, like the author. I'm sure economic and climate regulations against Big Oil and corporations must terrify him. But we must learn the biggest lesson from the last election and it is this: As much as we loved President Obama, his administration left too many Americans behind. And that is why many of his voters did not support his successor. A Biden candidacy vows to return to 2015 and little else. We can either relitigate the Trump election or move towards an America where everyone feels they have something to work (and vote) for. It is time for radical regulation on guns, climate denial, economic disparity and the absolute nadir of human character. It is time to restore dignity and protections for the vulnerable (and newly imperiled): women, minorities, refugees, children, Mother Nature. And it is time to restore our place in the world. It is time - as we saw in Italy and at the time of this coment, hopefully Israel - to see Bannonism soundly defeated. We are poised at this moment. And may I add - it is also well past the time for a woman president. This is our truth and it seems to be frightening a lot of people the same way major surgery to remove cancerous tumors is also scary. It's a big solution to something far more terrible and potentially fatal.
3
David, if you yell something and provide no evidence, many of your ilk will believe you. The rest of us would like it if occasionally you threw us a bone or two in the form of a fact.
I have wanted EW to be our President since she skewered the lame howls over "You didn't build that." She pointed out, politely but firmly, that the swaggering entrepreneurs who asserted that their liberty was more important than others' freedom relied on publicly built roads, on police forces and fire brigades, on the magnificent if crumbling public works infrastructure.
When you claim that even with a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress she could not get Medicare for all passed, you shout it and move on. Polls have showed that even self-proclaimed Republicans report that our health care system is canted unfairly against those who pay in and can, on a private sector bureaucrat's whim, be denied care. Sure, the heirs of Koch could put together a multi-million dollar ad campaign vilifying "socialist" health care, but after suffering through meretricious campaigns to undermine the ACA, many Americans might just see through this transparent attempt to get them once again to vote against their own economic health.
Perhaps, David, you and Joe Biden should go spin some LPs and reminisce about how great it was when the segregationist Democrats and the corporate Democrats could have a Fresca together and celebrate how a free citizenry could vote to keep itself in economic bondage.
5
"...the failure of two consecutive presidencies."
Even in this scenario with a Warren victory, the count would more accurately be... Well, let's see. Since the Kennedy assassination, we have had Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Jr. (Via Supreme Court), Obama and now Trump. Need we scan for the success among these presidencies to be reminded that since Kennedy was killed, we have had--in succession--two resignations and then with Ford and Carter playing relief, two presidents who should have been impeached for their role in Iran-Contra, another impeachment, a man who got us into two illegal, disastrous wars and tore up the constitution in the process, and then yet another "healer" president who elicited so much frustration and disappointment for a people thirsty for redemption that they elected a confidence artist from New York to express their displeasure with what the last forty years had wrought upon the land?
Enough Americans were so weary of what a moribund two-party system had wrought upon the land that they actually came close--much to the consternation of the elite ruling class and the institutional drones they employ--to placing a Jewish socialist in the White House. All those years and all those resources expended to keep so dreadful an outcome from occurring had gone for nothing. Our saving grace as a nation? Push us too hard and we will rise.
1
The idea the conservatism is on the way out is just incorrect. A USA Today survey back in June showed a third year of falling support for the LGBT community among Millennial's. the success of Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA has not faltered - and its Student Action Summit is expected to outpace CPAC within the next couple years. Even with the media doting on Elizabeth Warren she will be viewed exactly the same as Hillary Clinton. The idea of American conservatism rests in the local community, it is the idea that the person to best fix the pothole in the street is those who drive on it. Not Washington. And our country is far too large, and far to local, for conservatism to die out. Looking to 2020 the American people will again say that the media and the woke scolds just don't get it. You do not win by calling us deplorables.
2
This piece reads like it was written from a place of fear. On the right, that's the same place that got Trump elected. It's too bad that on the left, there are those who no longer dare to dream.
2
A similar piece of speculative fiction might contain the lines "With his deep connections to the financial industry, President Biden was unable to deal either with the 2021 recession, or the worsening climate disaster."
For a more substantive idea about how Warren might govern see this: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/9/20/20867899/elizabeth-warren-cfpb-founding-plans-obama-president
The column makes for an interesting read. Unfortunately, it ends rather abruptly, as if Mr. Brooks ran into a limit of space the column was allotted.
.
It's like some of those early 1930s movies where the end comes so precipitously because the time limit for the movie was reached.
But, I agree with Brooks' thesis and predictions.
Finally, someone who included the early goals of the progressives: to disregard the constitution.
1
Thank you for capturing the essence of our problem. Your essentially optimistic view ignores the fact that our nation's media pour oil on flames, in their quest for eyeballs, ears and revenue.
CNN elected Donald Trump (and the NY Times still gives him huge coverage); they will elect Senator Warren, and the tail will continue to wag the dog.
Guess what, David? You have to "fight" to bring unity and coalition-building. It doesn't just happen.
2
I have issues with this column the first being that Mr. Brook you are making a lot of assumptions, and you know what happens when people make assumptions. Second as if socialism now would ever be the same as in the past. Wow what a thought! considering we are talking about Democratic Socialism. When you consider that capitalism and greed have in effect destroyed the planet, but why try something different.
As for Wall Street and their pals all they care is about making more money.
In addition the Republican Party is bankrupt, corrupt, with not ethic or morals, but again why try something different.
2
Elizabeth Warren is the oxygen America needs after 4 years of destructive Trump presidency. Otherwise the patient will be in coma soon. She is the only candidate with solid plans for the structural changes that US desperately needs.
4
I hope you are correct in the end of your piece and wrong at the beginning! Biden makes sense in every sense!
By 2050 the world will have run out of resources for 10 Billion People to live like Americans.
One way or an other, US living standards will fall towards the global average - how to handle this will set politics
1
Why am I not surprised that even today Brooks does not even mention the impact of climate change when he envisions the future?
2
Lost me completely when he aligned Douglass with the “moderate liberal” crowd.
2
Mr. Brooks offers a pinched and narrow "view" of what a future may bring under a Warren presidency. His seething righteousness is detectable just under the surface of what he thinks, and wants us to believe, is his reasonableness. I'm not buying.
1
I sure hope these straw president articles don't catch on and become a regular thing. Pretty easy to moralize about the future when you can make any given factor whatever you want to fit your narrative and vision.
2
The only word to describe this article is "dumb."
A much better article would have been centered on the narrative of how a dark cloud descended on America and destroyed our democracy with the re-election of Donald Trump.
Mr. Brooks wants to have it both ways. Be against Trump and also against Democrats. Those days are gone and won't come back in his lifetime. He might want to look into booking a flight onto a Mars shuttle. Maybe things will be better there.
3
Moderate liberals didn't end slavery, achieve suffrage for women, or attempt to end school segregation and educational inequality. The work is far from complete. American Slavery persists in state for-profit prisons, millions of Americans remain disenfrachised from voting, and schools have again become more segragated and access to quality education less even. Based on our history, "moderate liberal" can be a polite name for those who collaborate with a cruel and unjust regime out of a combination of naivety and moral disengenuity.
1
“A Brief History of The Warren Presidency”
An American Plutocrat’s Fantasy by David Brooks
“Conservatives” hate change. They killed any positive ( for most citizens) changes for 8 years under Obama. Never, since the civil war, has this Country needed such serious, critical changes.
2
The country must move forward from here. It's neither up or down but forward.
Your assumption that Elizabeth Warren is so far left she is not a coalition builder is your opinion without much evidence. So I'm not entirely sure why you felt compelled to write this fairy tale column. With only a few remaining moderate Republicans I have really appreciated you columns in the past and learned from your viewpoint. this column does not meet that standard and adds ammunition to the hard line Trump Republicans. What in the heck are you thinking! Have you run out of good ideas for columns!
2
Shorter Brooks: Democrats become Reagan Republicans so he can feel better about himself.
2
...and when the full force of climate change finally hit any columnist who did not predict their impact on the future of politics was left outside to slowly desiccate.
1
I could think of (many) worse outcomes than David Brooks' scenario.
My question for you, Mr. Brooks, is if you don't like the scenario you posited, what do you suggest instead?
2
"One by one, her proposals failed in the Senate..."
*Eye roll*
If President Warren had the House and a 52-48 majority in the Senate, you better believe Dems would nuke the Senate filibuster.
2
She won't win if nominated. A rich white woman doesn't motivate key Democratic demographics to get to the polls.
An alarmist fairytale. Please stick to your opinions on actual reality. A "self aware" politician should be able to reach a reasonable compromise. Keep fearmongering and we will have a second Trump victory.
3
Warren sweeps into the presidency, turning the Senate in a massive blue wave. The day after the election, the stock market falls 12%. Controlling both Congress and the White House, the Democrats pass much of their agenda, increasing federal marginal tax rates on the wealthy to 65% and taxing capital gains as ordinary income. With each piece of anti-capitalist legislation (each propagandized as "preserving capitalism for the middle class"), the stock market falls another 5-8%. Finally, Warren passes a transaction tax on stock trades. The high-frequency traders immediately close shop, volatility spikes as market-makers disappear, and stocks fall 90% from their 2019 peak. The dollar plunges, interest rates spike, the US defaults on its bonds, and unemployment rises to 25%. Wealthy people and professionals emigrate to Australia while patent applications plunge 95% and new business creation halts entirely. Wealth inequality, however, decreases immensely, just like in the 1930s. Warren declares victory and coasts to an easy re-election on promises of a universal basic income and another increase in Social Security payments.
2
Was there affordable, comprehensive healthcare???
1
I like David Brooks. I can't believe he wrote this. No matter which side of the divide you're on, this article fails by picking just one of myriad possible outcomes, describes it in highly selective "detail" and leaves the reader with...what? Something else to be depressed about? Why? There are so many other ways a Warren presidency could go, many of them dependent on factors and events beyond anyone's control. Isn't it enough that we'd be replacing a corrupt, infantile pseudo-businessman with an intelligent, caring student of the workings of government? Wouldn't that be something to celebrate? Is Brooks wishing for a Biden presidency? Why not write an optimistic article about how that would turn out instead of slinging bleakness at a woman who is doing her best to save us?
2
An even briefer history: Warren bankrupts America.
2
OK, David, so you don't like Elizabeth Warren. Neither do I. But you owe it to us all to write a fantasy that has some element of being believable. This has none. More likely is that enough centrists get driven to vote next time for... well, you know: Him-who-shall-not-be-named. And Voldemort becomes a two-term POTUS. And after that, who knows? A return to some mythic Golden Age, as you suppose? Yeah, sure - it could happen. But Warren 2020? Nope. No way, no how.
I guess David doesn't like Elizabeth Warren's dubbing herself a "fighter."
1
the world population grew to 10 billion in 2050.
Black gold as a most valued commodity was replaced by water as the most valuable commodity.
Hundreds of millions sought to leave Africa and head to Europe and the US as overpopulation, ravaged the continent, leaving utter waste and desolation.
Waves and more waves of people sought to flee the overpopulation in Central America and move into the US.
In the US the increasingly colored majority voted to do away with merit based scholarships and programs for the gifted as it was deemed prejudicial and non reflective of the prejudice they had experienced.
Whites moved in droves to the heartland of the country, and the west and east coast moved to break away from the US.
Spanish became the official language of Florida and Texas.
Marriage as an institution was ended. All drugs were legalized. Designer babies led to the most narcissistic of people cloning themselves with injected tailored genes.
Artificial intelligent machines achieved a seemingly higher level of consciousness , and warned that all life was sacred and so attempted to intervene on behalf of life itself but were ultimately brought down by the sabotaging of the indignant people.
3
It's time we Democrats stopped worrying about losing the Republican vote. We've already lost it. If a Republican as rational and nuanced as David Brooks cannot be won over, none if the Republicans are coming over. We just have to defeat them, Brooks included.
1
Even if David Brook's Quija Board predictions were right, which they aren't, Warren would be able to revoke all of Trump's injurious executive orders, would be able to reverse the damages Trump has produced with our foreign allies, and probably would be able to reverse much of the debt Trump has created with his draconian tax relief for the rich.
Great fantasy. I especially loved the part where Warren takes Iowa and New Hampshire. And the part where the Dems kept the house and got the senate was great! The best part is the notion that anyone will be around in 2050. I'll take great comfort in reading this during Trump's second term
1
What David gets right is the recession in 2021. Trump has hollowed out our economy to boost stock prices and keep the perception of health. What goes up does come down and the next president will have fewer resources to deal with a recession.
2
Mr. Brooks is correct on some points: Warren has a viable path to the presidency and it runs through Iowa. He is off-base on the rest -- Warren is a self-professed capitalist who looks to save it from itself, much like FDR. But if she doesn't get a Democratic Senate majority, she will be able to accomplish little.
3
Of Warren progressives David writes: “Fired by their sense of moral superiority, they were good at condemnation, not coalition-building.”
Strikes me it’s a whole lot easier to build coalitions when you’re not shredding the social safety net, eviscerating the middle class, celebrating freedom and the expense of fairness and only paying lip service to American competitiveness.
2
I love Liz, but I also love your optimism, David. If she's just the on-ramp that gets Trump out, I'll be happy. I do believe in structural change because our system is a mess; the Constitution is being shredded, as are our laws. But I still believe strongly in the Constitution, though as a document that needs continual re-interpretation in a dialectic between precedent and changing conditions. If moderate liberals can somehow make the current system work the way it could, I'm in. I do think Liz is shaping up as the one who can beat Boss Trump. I also think in a perfect world we'd have a Constitutional Convention. But obviously this is nothing like a perfect world, and a Convention would be a death-blow (as would a second Trump term). If your dream comes true, sign me up.
1
This is perhaps the most inane opinion piece I've seen about the current race, and I've seen a lot in this publication. First, you completely underestimate Warren's ability to build a coalition--I suppose only "moderates" can get progressives to join them, not the other way around? But more importantly, please explain how great things were under moderate Democrats? Our wage gap keeps widening under Obama, and Obama care was only a band aid. Millions remained uninsured or couldn't afford insurance, so we continued to have a higher infant mortality rate and lower life expectancy than Cuba. We're the richest nation in the World, and there is no excuse for this, for widespread homelessness, for drug prices 50 times higher than they are in Canada, etc. Even environmental protection was capitalized by allowing polluters to buy carbon credits. Our minimally checked capitalism is failing and destroying our country by placing too much in the hands of too few. If you don't think structural change is needed, you're living in an even more impervious bubble than I imagined.
5
It all sounds plausible, except for the happy ending. Moderates are not exciting. Who has ever yelled out loud: "I want to be moderate."? Who is excited about the middle of the road? Moderates do not capture the imagination, nor do they instill fervent followings.
I hope a Democrat wins, and brings the Senate with it. Politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the impossible.
3
Looking back from 2050, we know that the most significant change President Warren was able to make was enactment of the her election reform plan.
From the 2022 midterm election onward, voter suppression.was blocked and all eligible voters were registered. Election were made a national holiday and voter participation rates soared.
The Warren plan used the Constitution’s provision that allows the Federal Government to set standards for election of the President and Members of Congress. With that, partisan gerrymandering ended. Forced to compete in fair elections, the Republican Party quickly collapsed as a political force.
And Russia was harshly punished for its involvement in the 2016 and 2020 elections.
Warren, who recently celebrated her 100th birthday, was honored widely as the President who had brought integrity to American democracy, indeed who saved it. She dreamed big, fought hard and is revered by the American people.
976
@Pat Choate
Well said!
36
@Pat Choate Darn it, Pat. My eyes are tearing!! Well said, indeed.
35
@Pat Choate And her willingness to compromise on the most controversial specifics of her agenda achieved universal access to affordable health insurance and an aggressive position leading the world on climate change and saving our planet from becoming a burning cinder.
61
Expect President Warren to be more moderate than Brooks predicts.
Richard Nixon created the EPA. Barack Obama not only kept Gitmo open, but advanced war by executive action assisted greatly by unforeseen new technology. In both cases, no one predicted those developments.
Progressive gains will be incremental and just barely able to clear the high bar set by the rural states' political advantage put in place in the late 1800s and maintained to this day. The ACA is one example. Unless the Senate and Electoral College are reformed—unlikely, as the bar for Constitutional changes is even higher—we will continue to see compromised programs that barely make it across the line and then come under immediate attack from the don't-tread-on-me crowd in the hinterlands.
I appreciate Brooks going out on a limb and setting some expectations for the future. I can't believe I'm about to quote Individual-1 here, but "we'll see what happens."
2
I am a pre-Trump Republican now supporting Joe Biden’s campaign. If things proceed as Brooks theorizes, I am fine with that. At least Warren is educated, ethical and will make well-considered decisions even if I don’t agree with them. Trump is in the process of destroying our democracy. I just hope the Republican Party goes up in flames as Brooks projects - like in an enormous bonfire.
8
This narrative clearly underestimates Elizabeth Warren. I believe that she is both incredibly smart and pragmatic. I love Bernie Sanders, but I also believe Elizabeth Warren will be more willing to compromise when and where it makes sense to do so. She is absolutely the smartest person running.
3
Mr. Brooks shows his conservative colors today, and as noted by others here, forgets the expected wide ranging impacts of climate change on politics ,natural resources and the economy . I'm not impressed, I seldom have good words for the author.
1
FAITHFUL READERS OF A NEWSPAPER, TAKE HEED. BROOKS SUFFERS FROM INSTITUTIONAL IDEOLOGICAL BLINDNESS ON MANY LEVELS AS EVIDENCED IN THIS ARTICLE WHICH MASQUERADES AS INTELIGENT PRESCIENT ANALYSIS.
THIS IS A LONG TERM STRUGGLE AND AT THIS POINT OUR FIRST LINE OF SUCCESS WILL BE ESTABLISHING A SET OF VALUES BASED ON SUSTAINABLITY AND RESPECT OF ALL LIFE. WE MUST TAKE ALL NEYSAYERS AND DENIERS TO TASK AS LACKING MORALS AND RESPECT OF LIFE.WARREN MAY NOT BE TOTALLY SUCCESSFUL, BUT SHE WILL HELP LAY THE GROUNDWORK FOR OUR FUTURE EFFORTS.
2
Conservatives in their worship of free markets, ignore that free markets are inherently unstable. The 'winners' in a free market system accumulate wealth and power enabling them to maximize their profits often by suppressing competition (swallowing competitors and forming monopolies) or influencing societal rules through lobbying and political contributions. Thus free-markets left to their own devices don't remain free. Although Warren is classified as a progressive, her "plans" aim to protect free market capitalism by protecting it from the corrupting influences of big money and special interests.
In a democratic system, long term stability requires the system work in the interests of the vast majority of the people. Warren understands that. Thus, those with the most power and influence need to be protected from their own narrow, short-term self interest maximizing their personal wealth at the expense of others. Thus a minimum wage needs to be a living wage (as it used to be); we need to protect against environmental degradation; all Americans have a right to medical care which requires reducing total national health costs by eliminating unnecessary 'middlemen' (i.e. for-profit insurance companies) and replacing it with a much more efficient medicare system; etc. etc.
While visiting Iowa City yesterday to visit with my grandkids, I attended a Sen Warren rally. I suggest Mr Brooks actually listen to her so he can appreciate her positions.
2
@Elliot Rosen "Thus a minimum wage needs to be a living wage (as it used to be)." With respect, I don't think the minimum wage was really ever a liveable wage, though it's true that earlier minimum wages, adjusted for inflation, are higher than today's. The 1968 minimum wage of $1.60, which apparently is the best/highest US minimum wage, translates into buying power of just over $11 per hour today, My own experience of working a variety of minimum wage jobs as a teenager was to hop over to waitressing and factory work, since both paid significantly more than minimum wage (the unionized factory has long since been moved to China). I definitely support an increase in the minimum but even at $15.00/ hour I don't see it as liveable in urban areas or the coasts.
1
The big city blue bubble is obvious in everything printed in the NYT. From suburban/rural Houston things look a little different.
We have powered our Navy for decades with nuclear. We will soon have the ability to factory produce small reactors that will fit on an 18 wheeler, and that are safer than any other method of generating electricity This technology will come into widespread use in the next decade. Things are actually changing that will make the climate hysteria look like the Mueller investigation in a few years.
IMO a very well positioned but fairly small cohort of white boomer Democrats and their equivalents in other parts of the Anglosphere are driving the current narrative. They are completely unable to see anything outside their bubble.
Trump will obliterate the Boomer Democrats in 2020, but the GOP will also self-destruct in 2022.
Pro-life single issue zealots have taken over the GOP from the precinct level to all state party positions. Trump will save them in 2020 but they will run nothing but strong social conservatives in 2022, which will probably also be a recession period,.
They will make an intense push in 2022 to finally get rid of Roe, and fail.
A new Yang - Dan McCready style Democrat Party will take both houses. It is very likely that Trump will work well with them.
I roundly reject this opinion piece in the NYTimes because it is in bad faith.
David Brooks continuously uses his platform to finger-wag the progressives, while offering no thorough assessments or criticisms of his own wheelhouse, conservatism. It's starting to look a lot like subterfuge.
This fear-mongering "what-if" about a possible progressive president is a new low. And it's sad that he as a person is truly failing to see the true condition of this country. But we the people have to muster the courage to persevere, and leave people like him in our dust if we have to.
5
Thank you Mr Brooks, for putting into words the twisted fantasy that is the basis for so much of white wealthy Baby-boomers' rejection of the sensible (and necessary) progressive policies favored by a majority of the American people. You have done us a great service.
5
I don’t know how many times Mr. Brooks needs it explained to him, Warren’s platform is designed to save capitalism from itself. With the exception of Medicare-for-all, which is based on the simple fact that every country in the world has discovered profit-taking on essential health coverage is inefficient, all her reforms are market reforms. I am not saying she won’t have a difficult time passing bills through the Senate, but Mr. Brooks joining the large disinformation campaign against some of the only reforms that will allow our economy to grow equitably is not helpful. I know this sort of column is easier, but try to engage with the substance Mr. Brooks.
3
Please, let me add on our strategic relations with China - if you haven't been, go. Go not to the fabulous Hong Kong, Shanghai or Beijing; go to the 2nd and 3rd tier-size cities to see the power, conviction and capacity of the Chinese people and government. They are playing a long game of chess; Trump is playing checkers, miniature checkers at that - a losing game. The Chinese are strong, cunning, patient and resilient. We are strong, cunning, resilient and perhaps overly confident. Know well your adversary. For me, I advocate more wise and careful partnership, the opposite is wasteful and full of pain for all.
1
Mr. Brooks, you assume that President Warren will be incapable of negotiation, compromise, and good old fashioned log rolling. You assume that President Warren will stick with her current plans even if doing so prevents any measure of progress towards the aspirational goals she has defined. I think your analysis is mistaken, but I want to thank you for the opportunity to write about President Elizabeth Warren. Unlike the current Republican occupant, President Warren reveres the Constitution and will govern within its constraints. In her public life President Warren will continue to represent the interests of working people and it is long past time for the interests of working Americans to come before the interests of corporations and the wealthy.
2
Mr. Brooks, as the center-right opinion writer, takes the positional the moderation will win out. The pendulum swings too far one way with Trump, too far the other with Warren, but always returns through the center. This misses two major points: (1) the center moves; and (2) America is strong enough to survive one disastrous polar politician, maybe two, but not endless pendulum swings away from the center.
It disappoints me more that another Warren critique does not mention the CFPB. Despite my position on the left, the CFPB is a disaster. Regulation is about quality, not quantity -- we don't need to cut regulations, we need to refine and improve. But there are too many regulators.
1
David Brooks is completely clueless, as is Joe Biden.
I like Warren, but I trust Sanders more, particularly on foreign policy.
While Sanders' passion for forty years has been improving the lives of ALL working people, he has always cared about foreign policy. Sanders gut instinct is a demilitarized, diplomacy oriented foreign policy. Only Sanders has the vision and courage to stand up to the extraordinarily powerful, Washington foreign policy establishment and the military industrial complex.
The US desperately needs a foreign policy that enables a more stable and sustainable world.
As President, Sanders will have a hard slog, but the conversation about real change will be lively and honest.
David Brooks just doesn't see the need for serious change.
He does not see how the US worship of money and profit has rotted much of the social fabric.
He doesn't see violent, glitter-topped cesspool the US has become, with colossal income/wealth inequality, where the richest.1 percent take in in over 188 times the income of the bottom 90 percent. And the US has the world's highest rate of incarceration. And the life expectancy is going down.
For a Future To Believe In, President Bernie Sanders!
2
I suppose this might be interpreted as an ideal fantasy. I find the possibility of a one party state very scary. But it seems unlikely. Modern democracies with direct representation tend to become two party systems. One can therefore hope for other, much better, outcomes: a reformation within the Republican party that returns it to the center, under a more liberal leadership. Or a split of the Democratic party across the lines suggested in this essay, with one half absorbing voters from a now withering Republican party.
One possible and probably likely scenario. The left is wrong in their theory of the election. Americans by and large--and polling clearly shows this to be true--want a realignment to the center. They want problems solved and governance run efficiently and with fairness. Massive spending programs that are far too large for the problems they seek to address--especially forced Medicare--are not on their agenda. And the trade offs in taxes and losing their employer provided health insurance look like a threat to them and their families.
There is a lot of evidence supporting this as true, but the most profound is how the left--the very people who assured us that Obama would make their dreams come true--has turned on Obama and now call him a Republican neocon or traitor to the party while they are the owners and holders of the legacy of FDR.
"One by one, her proposals failed in the Senate: Medicare for all, free college, decriminalizing undocumented border crossing, even the wealth tax." I've been listening to Elizabeth Warren, and it seems to me that while she has lots of specific proposals to solve our nation's problems, her primary focus (like Pete Buttigieg's) is on corruption -- the corruption of our system by politicians and by wealthy individuals and corporations with excessive power. She seems to recognize that no progressive solutions can get enacted without addressing that corruption. Brooks simply suggests that her progressive solutions cannot get enacted without acknowledging her additional focus on the reasons why they cannot get enacted.
Coalitions are built by telling the truth. If telling the truth is taken as condemnation then that is more a sign of how dysfunctional and rotten the system is. The people in power act shocked at the judgement and use that to shutdown and shame momentum toward true and healthy change. But true leaders keep fighting to build their coalition on a foundation of truth -- and they do not compromise into trickle down, or corrupted healthcare, or hawkish foreign policy. They beat that stuff back with grace and truth, and the coalition built on truth, justice, equality rises up and up. It can't be stopped by lies and greed.
Thanks, David - I've been thinking the last two or three years (probably even longer) that American politics is ready for a period of moderation.
The Left dominated during the Obama years (though he governed as a moderate IMHO), then swung to the Right with Trump. Voters will get sick of the pendulum-like swings, fueled by the echo-chambers of Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN, and usher in a moderate candidate.
There's no shame in working across the aisle. It's needed.
1
This is a brillant analysis. We need more like this in the US press.
Very intelligent scenario.
1
Mr. Brooks. First I thought this was just a "hit piece" on liberals, Warren and the whole Bernie gang. It is, to be sure, but it is more. You spell out a 10 year path back to normalcy. After all the damage Trump has done, this may be quite acceptable to the alternative. And I would ask, it Biden and the moderates were to dethrone Trump in 2020, would this, in your mind, accelerate your scenario? I fear it would not. It might be a "fizzle" leaving half a loaf in 10 years, and worse might allow the far far right to maintain and launch a take over in the era of return to moderacy. Maybe we need this jolt that Warren is going for, the big break, the shock to system, for your 10 year fantasy to really become the seeming reality you seek. Can climate change be held at bay? Will world war break out due to Trump's collateral damage? Will China become so dominant as to overshadow and curtail what the USA may become? I guess we can dream.
I guess it is possible scenario. As possible as any of hundred others. There is no point to argue about what may or may not happen in 30 years. All what we can do just wait and see.
2
Somehow, Mr. Brooks has forgotten about the Consumer Protection Agency which Warren more or less created. Certainly, she will not get the Democratic primary positions into law, but she will create the change that America needs and wants if elected.
Unfortunately, contributing to America's decline, it is very likely that Trump will win reelection. His base is steady and motivated, while few Americans are invested in the ideas driving the Democratic primary.
2
An optimistic, well written column. Unfortunately, it left out the part about when Warren won the electoral college in the election of 2020, Trump declared that the results were fraudulent and refused to leave the white house. His minions rallied to his side and the second US civil war began.
5
Although I think Mr. Brooks is a bit too pessimistic about Elizabeth Warren's "failed" presidency, I agree that not much of her campaign platform will ever be enacted into law. However, the prospect of Warren being in charge of all the regulatory agencies is a great reason to vote for her. Congress may provide some help in her effort to restructure the economy, but even if that help is spotty I'm sure Warren will advance her agenda through other means. Even limited success at reform will reduce inequality and benefit the nation.
2
Thanks for making me laugh. I don't mean that sarcastically. I mean it seriously. This column made me chuckle. The problem with it is that I think you are mischaracterizing Warren. If she gets the nomination, which is a not unreasonable possibility, she will move toward the middle, just as Barack Obama did, and as every successful Democratic candidate has done since Franklin Roosevelt. Like Roosevelt, she will keep the rhetoric, but become a successful, pragmatic politician. The Bernie types, and many of her supporters, will reject her as a sell-out, just as they did Obama, but she will successfully carry out a series of incremental changes that will move the ball in a moderately progressive direction. That's how American politics works, she knows it, and she will not defy the laws of political gravity. She is too smart and savvy for that.
12
I fail to see how red state Democrats would not go along with the wealth tax. After all, their constituents would surely benefit handsomely from the programs it would fund. Starting with West Virginia (Joe Manchin).
1
Democrats should focus on who makes up the electorate. In the last congressional elections the Democrats were able to flip 40 seats and of those only two were progressives. That alone should speak volumes to all of us. Here in the Midwest (which is needed to win) there are many that voted for Trump (specially farmers) that are unhappy with his shenanigans but I don't believe they will vote for anybody that they perceive as a socialist.
Of course, there's also this alternative reality:
"In a completely foreseeable turn of events, President Trump won reelection handily in 2020. Many observers cited his condescending dismissal of Senator Warren's policy agenda as the reason, noting how the Senator's polling among African Americans and Latinos declined substantially after President Trump coined the term "couch potato subsidies."
"However, others blamed the President's complete refusal to use the Senator's name. Throughout the campaign, including the face-to-face debates, President Trump referred to Senator Warren exclusively as "Pocahontas," and was undeterred by the near-universal criticism that the nickname initially engendered. Among Senator Warren's multiple humiliations leading to the eventual electoral college landslide, a low point had to be moderator Rachel Maddow's accidental use of the nickname during the second debate.
Maddow blamed the "insidious power of repetition" for the gaffe."
1
Hmmm. One wonders whose campaign David Brooks is covertly supporting in this dystopian melodrama about an Elizabeth Warren presidency. One of those moderate democratic candidates, who haven't been able to gain the attention Brooks thinks they deserve? He's become a conflicted conservative-turned-culture-seer, our own Teiresias, prophet of the apocalypse. You have to love his sincere belief that he can predict the future of the Democratic party as a kind of Republican-lite version of his own conservatism.
2
Oh, what a treat, we get to see a person who's been fundamentally wrong in almost all of his predictions polish up his crystal ball to provide us with yet another round of fortune-telling. In this future, has the third-way, Clinton-Obama style centrism that Mr. Brooks predicts will again reign supreme addressed any of the systemic inequality and fundamental unfairness that has left a generation of working people worse off than their parents? According to Brooks, the policies that helped bring us into our current political crisis will somehow magically bring us out of it. It's a very peculiar argument, and one that can only be made by a man who is comically out of touch.
4
More likely: proposals like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal that are described by many in the MSM as "radical" now will come to pass and be seen as moderate by 2050, and many of its former critics will claim that they always supported it.
4
If any of you think this is cynical, you should see what Bret Stephens wrote last year: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/opinion/trump-re-election-2020.html
As for me, I’ve seen too many of my moderate and conservative friends repelled by Warren’s progressive policies to believe she could win the election. What’s more important, running a progressive agenda or dethroning Trump? The former is pointless if you can’t pull off the latter.
The bar is set so ridiculously low. Let’s not try to jump so high that we stumble.
3
Bar was set low in 2016, but even then the moderates could not win. Now the bar is higher (Trump is incumbent), why should we believe the moderate candidate will win?
1
@yulia I'd say the biggest problem in 2016 wasn't having a moderate candidate, it was underestimating the size of Trump's base and running a candidate who was already the favorite punching bag of the Republican party. If Biden had run back then, I suspect he'd have cleaned up.
That's not to say that I think he's the right choice this time around. But I'm absolutely certain that the Democrats should absolutely keep its arms open to anyone ready to defect from the Republican party. Any capable centrist candidate would mop the floor with Trump.
1
@Jeff Karren Trump was also the favorite punching bag for Reps in primaries, didn't hurt him. Also he was an extremists, so clearly not so many Reps were defecting the party because of that. He was able not only energize his base, he was able to attract new voters (defection from Dem Party). Hillary was pursuing the centrist positions trying to catch elusive Reps who are supposed to defect the party. It didn't happen, but she lost Dem voters who defected to extremist Trump and those who defected to the third party candidate. I think the moderate repeat this scenario again.
When I picture the future I think we may be electing corporations as Presidents - after all, they are people. Might be easier to look at their tax records or find info on a corporate report. How bad would this be?
For instance, a President Microsoft Corporation would bring a lot more to the table than just their CEO. It would bring their whole board of directors - perhaps, some in duel roles as Cabinet secretaries.
Of course there could be some bad ones - such as President NRA. But maybe they would have trouble getting elected.
3
Once again, Brooks gets history wrong.
Warren's coattails were large enough to bring in a 60 vote majority in the Senate. When Bluedog Democrats balked at signing legislation demanded by the Left and moderates alike, Warren effectively used her bully pulpit to force them to do the right thing (unlike Obama who disbanded his organization after the election, didn't use his bully pulpit at all, and gave the Blue Dog Democrats enough rope to hang themselves, with ALL of them losing reelection in the next election.)
It is centrists that have no faith in the Constitution, thinking that it is "safer" to help Republicans rip it up then to actually follow the mission in the Preamble, and the processes described in the Articles and Amendments. The ACA is under attack in the Supreme Court, for example, because instead of doing what it says to do in the Constitution, which is to Tax and Spend to promote the General (that means everyone) welfare, Obama thought he could pretend he wasn't Taxing or Spending, and used a Republican, corporate healthcare plan.
The Left and Progressives have values that are fully aligned with the Preamble of the Constitution. That is why they fight for Justice, tranquility (against militarized police), defense (not a global aggressive offense), the General Welfare (not tax cuts for billionaires), Liberty for ALL, and Posterity (not the stock market).
Democrats who let Republicans write history for them have given them control of the states and Congress.
1
Biden isn't a moderate. He's Republican Lite. His past record is very disturbing, and his current position is astride the fence, denying his record. NOT moving forward! Biden will bring on a general desire for another tRump. NO to Biden. It's no wonder that right-winger, David Brooks likes him. Blech to both.
5
Good try, David.
But I don't think that's how President Warren will be remembered or the political legacy she will leave behind.
People will have realized that progressive means clean air and water, green energy, education as a right not a product and universal health care as something their willing to pay a bit higher taxes to achieve.
5
David, put down the talking points memo from your Republican leaders, quite pretending that the evils of your Republican Party are practiced equally by Democrats and join us out here in reality land. Trump is not actually an aberration, he is the face of Republicanism with its inadequacy,fear, hate, anger and general disregard for laws, the Constitution, decency and morals. Warren is not the flip side of Trump, she is reasoning and reasonable and, unlike Trump and your other fellow Republicans, wants what is best for America and Americans. Get some grief counseling to help you cope with the well-deserved loss of the Republican Party's power. You, too, can move beyond the denial stage and into acceptance and inner peace.
8
or.....
Trump is elected again as the economy is relatively good- no recession- and no war. Iran has been quiet as Israel has let them know to calm tings down or else.
The Democrats have imploded- too many "FREE" programs that no-one can figure out how to pay for without a tax increase. Electing a woman ( very critical and argumentative sort), an inexperienced gay, a strident sarcastic brown skinned woman, or very old white men does not work in the present climate.
President Nance wins the next election as the Democrats have lost the middle class ( taxes ) and have no viable vision for realistic change, The Republican base has held steady and disaffected Democrats have their retirement plans in good shape and see no reason to change the flow of their investments with a spending type of Democratic party.party .
Minorities are finding plenty of work and they are not becoming Democrats.
Republicans continue to gain strength as the Democrats decline- they have few alliances in Congress and argue among themselves to a point of irrelevance .
There are no LIONS to lead the Democrats ....no cause that will ignite young people or convince the others to make a change.
Everybody has his/her own dream
Elizabeth Warren is a snakeoil salesman (saleswomen) who while smarter than Trump is actually more dangerous.
They have actually found the document where she claims to be Native American, allowing her career to skyrocket from Oklahoma to Harvard (where their website boasted she was the first Native American Harvard Law Professor). If you believe in white privilege, than you have to acknowledge there is no special sub-group more privileged that a blue-eyed blond woman. Also while millions were fighting off homelessness and foreclosure after 2008, Elizabeth Warren was making money flipping houses.
Most worrisome is the Warren Agenda. The US government spends close to one trillion a year total, which includes education, defense, postal service, national parks, medicare/medicaid etc. The politically neutral GAO has estimated one year of Medicare for All to be over 3 trillion dollars a year This does not include the usual goodies of climate change, loan forgiveness etc. The numbers don't even begin to add up. To put this in perspective, if the total assets (not income) of every single billionaire were instantly confiscated, it would not be enough to fund the first year of Medicare for All.
Be weary of the candidate in the quest for power who will promise you everything knowing full well they can never deliver. We the public, always get stuck with the bill, while they live in luxury and get a $60 million dollar book deal.
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3 trillion? Seems like significant improvement, considering that in 2017 the US spent 3.5 trillion on health care.
@yulia
Per the Congressional Budget Office, US Government spent $225 billion dollar on healthcare in 2018 on 1.1 trillion dollars total spending.
Do you really want taxpayers to pay more than nearly fifteen times more (3.34 trillion dollars) to pick up the tab from GM, Goldman Sachs etc.? The end result is taxpayers subsidizing business. Not very progressive.
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@nydoc you got your numbers wrong, the Government spent 1.1 trillion out of total cost 3.5 trillions. From what pockets did come 2.4 trillions? I think form pockets of the same taxpayers but just went directly to health care system outside of the Government, in form of out of pocket cost and premiums. So, I do think that people like to pay less for healthcare in taxes and in premiums. And paying 3. trillions is less than 3.5 trillions.
Your analysis is riddled with simple errors. A significant majority (70% or more) are concerned with the state of our health care, our environment particularly climate change and wealth disparity among others. In the 60s I became a "liberal" and the definition you have of liberals is wrong. We wanted fundamental change to our institutions. Now I'm labeled a progressive, however, the difference between the two is only a matter of degree. Both feel some of the institutions need change, neither wants an overhaul towards communism, which you imply. Both want more European style socialism, where the people are placed first, and corporations second, which is the way it should be.
Your vision of the future is a complete mess. As a retired climate scientist I can tell you with certainty the next 30 years will be more than a wake-up call demanding change. That wake up call will be accompanied by mass death and nothing works better than thousands upon thousands dying to stir people to action. Witness World War II.
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I would love for this wonderful retrospective to be written about each one of our current feckless Republican congressional leaders who stand by this ‘soon to be universally reviled’ President. These individuals who attach themselves to a person like Trump could see how history will not only treat their beloved Party but their own personal legacy - with with state, their country, with their families and friends.
Great piece David, and probably spot on. Except you’re missing the climate change bomb underneath it all, which won’t distinguish between Republican and Democrat in the destruction sure to come by 2050. Old school American institutions won’t be much good for any of us then.
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Another op-ed in the NYT today, Why Republicans Play Dirty, explains why Brooks’ little fantasy will never come to pass. It simply does not matter how unpopular Trump and the GOP are. They will do whatever is necessary to rig, or destroy, the system to stay in power. The GOP is at war. The Dems still think they are at a garden party. The consequences for 2020 are, frankly, obvious.
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@Victor James
I support Warren and wish that I did not have to agree with you. The previous illegitimate election of Trump was a seminal event and no amount of hope will change that.
The American people are going to have to demonstrate the gumption they had in the 40's to make me wrong. Warren is the person who could elicit it. But the question is does it still exist in our country.
There's merit to a liberal unity Democratic Party. The impediment is that "Democratic" liberalism was long ago hijacked by stealth-Republican centrists who enabled and cooperated in the Reagan Restoration's robber baronism and counter-revolution of the New Deal, and their reinstitution of greed and corruption as the operating impulses of the American Experiment (such that is remaining, on life support).
Bidenism is the impediment. An admitted "conservative," Biden's yet another Rockefeller-Republican-in-drag in the Carter-Clinton-Obama-Clinton mold established after the McGovern debacle when Party poobahs went hat in hand to Wall Street. Presto, antitrust enforcement largely vanished from the land. Union strength dropped precipitously. Almost all of the real gains in income and wealth went to the top 10% and rose astronomically for the 1% and even more for the .1%; the middle class struggled to maintain par, and the lower-middle class and poor lost ground, while healthcare and education costs rose dramatically. The centrist Democrats in power co-presided over a shocking rise in inequality and job insecurity. The deregulation/globalization con game was accepted - it pays big donors well. "Law and order" became a path to power. The Democratic Party, aside from SCOTUS appointments, became at best Nixonian.
And now you want "unity?" Only a relatively conservative Republican would want that sort of unity for the Democratic Party. How about some democracy and integrity first?
I love reading David Brooks stories. Trouble with this is Elizabeth Warren Cannot beat Trump. The workers in Ohio, Pa and Michigan who voted for Trump will again vote for him after being scared to death of losing their health care under Warren. Biden is still the only candidate who can beat Trump.
Progressives have little faith in American institutions and the Constitution? We certainly have more respect for both than the Republicans Mr. Brooks has slavishly worshipped over the years. Nixon's despicable actions including derailing Viet Nam peace talks in the run-up to the '68 election, Reagan's Iran-Contra, Bush II's lies that led to war in Iraq and the loss of thousands of American lives, and now Trump who abuses the rule of law and ignores the Constitution on a daily basis.
Mr. Brooks should focus on the havoc he and his party have wrought, rather than proffer ludicrous speculation about the things Elizabeth Warren or other Democrats would do to repair the damage Republicans have done and restore faith in the institutions they have systematically undermined for decades.
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Oh, David.
Please let go of this bitter Republican tendency to be a sore loser. Warren is anything but the beginning of the end of a tone deaf liberalism. All roads in politics lead back to moderation eventually. That is the American spirit at work.
Primaries always begin on the far side. And good politicians find a way to unite...Warren will have a plan for that when the time comes ;-)
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You are wrong about a lot in this column, that other writers have pointed out. But you are right that Biden needs to step out so other, better moderates can be seen.
Sounds like a short history of a Bernie Sanders presidency. The premise that EW does not see the importance of coalition building seems completely unfounded. Campaigning is not governing.
I'm a little surprised by the criticisms of the article that appear in 'comments.' I think this is one of Brook's best articles in awhile. It's not necessarily the way I would like to see things go, but it has some very interesting predictions.
One thing for sure, major change is afoot, not just here in the US but around the world. How the world will be in 2050 (if it's still here) requires a great deal of speculation, and I thank David Brooks for sharing his and starting the conversation.
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Mr. Brooks -- Here is the line I find most amusing in your prognostication..."Republican voters, mostly older, were dying out, and they weren’t making new ones." You talk about Republicans as if they are a species on the verge of extinction! I wonder what brand of crystal ball you are using. I also think you are forgetting that Elizabeth Warren worked in academia for a while and she knows how bureaucracies work -- I think she is practical and smart. I actually also think she is ethical. Your vision of the future is rosy, even if there are quite a few bumps in the road to getting there and I realize that this is really an argument for a quicker path to moderation but I don't think you are reading the tea leaves right. Also, pay heed to the other comments - climate change is a pressing problem and needs to be included in any prophecies of the future.
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Interesting read. Except you miss the true progressive in this race, Andrew Yang.
Yang is gaining voters from left and ight, from different age group, and from intellectuals and undereducated, every day.
Yang is the dark horse in 2020, because his messages / policy resonate with voters.
Picking a candidate right now is like hunting for white rabbits in a blizzard. Predicting the future beyond that is even more blinding.
Mr. Brooks' scenario has a plausibility. Some of it deniable. But Warren, if elected, will face similar and different absurd obstacles that have been and will be erected for presidents since day one. The environment, not noted here, is a massively complex global issue that right now our "president" is turning into an even more nightmarish nightmare.
We could find that Pence emerges as the default Republican contender in 2020 -- in which case, the future is a card game of 52-pick-up. And we'll all be required to attend services on Sunday mornings.
But the progressive / liberal dichotomy over the long term is misleading. How many "big structural changes" (social security, medicare, minimum wage, etc) pushed by early and mid 20th century "progressives" became mainstream liberalism, and even now have moderate support among centrist republicans? Just because something is progressive now (or conservative for that matter, as the handmaid's tale imagines) doesn't mean that it will always be labeled as fringe. None of these categories are universal or timeless.
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Mr. Brooks is on point about Warren. She only looks reasonable because Trump is just a bit more unreasonable and with a nasty edge. We shouldn't trade one set of bad ideas, albeit with mean intentions, for another set of bad ideas. Bernie and Warren followers shouldn't be asking how Trump's followers can be so easily fooled when they are in not that different of a boat.
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"Progressives had much less faith in American institutions — in capitalism, the Constitution, the founding." Regarding this, let's just say capitalism is not a form of government, and regulated to constrain more predatory aspects of its features are fine, though imperfect, as a decentralized system of wealth distribution. The Constitution should be seen as a promise that the American government, as representation, will strive toward fair-handed governance for the benefit of ALL the people, and not be used to aid persecutors on the basis of race, religion, economic status, political affiliation, or any number of hate-based bigotries to be found in the human population of its citizenry. The obsession with the "original intentions" of the founders, or the so-called orginalist perspective on Constitutional law is fundamentally flawed in the desire to reify the Constitution's shortcomings. That the original Constitution had to be modified in areas such slavery and voting rights for women is a demonstration that the original document initially failed in establishing its underlying principles, and that in fact the government that was established, including the judiciary, had roles in furthering the promise of a Liberal Democratic Republic. To say that the Judges can go no further than regurgitating the law-as-written is nonsense. The Judiciary should be challenging the basis of the laws themselves from the perspective of Liberalism as a governmental institution in America.
1. Bring it on.
2. I think you mischaracterize Warren. She's not a firebrand and she hasn't been a bomb-thrower in the Senate. She HAS learned from Obama (who was also painted as a crazy socialist!) that incrementalism isn't going to work this time, so she'll be bolder -- but she's also served in the Senate, so she's (I hope) going to pull some levers. Either way, I hope I see her take the Oath of Office in January 2021.
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Brooks wish list is predictably ambitious. President Warren couldn’t retrofit regulations into the books because the Senate and House wouldn’t go the distance. What he doesn’t say is that, dirty money and blackmail - thanks to social media companies and hackers - were able to gather enough on members that they were muzzled.
But, what if President Warren begins by asking Congress to take dirty money out of politics, what if she regulates social media, what if hacking countries: China, Russia and Israel - the top three- get pushed back by our technology and intel agencies.
With those initiatives in place, President Warren understands that she will not destroy the economy and some plans will have to move systematically, other modified to levels that advance rights without burning the system. But she gets it done, which is why she wins re-election!
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You forgot something.
By 2019, it was obvious to anyone with five senses and a brain that the climate system was going haywire, and that toxic waste was taking over everyone's water, air, and earth. Vast numbers of refugees around the planet, desperate for life and trying to help their children, were left wandering. People were losing their homes to floods and fires at an astonishing rate. Job security was at all all time low, with health care benefits disappearing for all but the fortunate who still had regular jobs or huge wealth.
Elizabeth Warren continues to be the only candidate with experience in the financial sector. Bar none (including Republicans), but the Trump inflation is promoting a devastated infrastructure and denying any kind of progress that cuts into the profits of the few. Even the Democrats won't be able to fix it this time, and the banksters aren't interested in making concessions.
With each passing year, people are dying from neglect and losing their homes.
The fortunate few who survive this decade and the much worse problems that are coming (cities flooding from accelerating sea level rise, while the new billionaire skyscrapers built for floods begin to flood past the planning stage, while the power grid collapses) may have some regret at civilization's collapse.
No one is exempt, but the less fortunate go first.
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I would echo the question about Climate Change. Yesterday this paper had an article about bird populations crashing in North America. Not surprising with the even larger reduction in insect populations world wide. I listened to a report on the issues with aquifers world wide and the affects of loss of ground water on farming.
When are we going to change the conversation from discussing how to keep capitalism going to what type of system do we need to keep the planet going?
We are on a spaceship folks and we are really messing with the atmospheric controls and the food supply.
By 2050, we will look back and declare Greta Thunberg a true prophet...
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Love it, Mr. Brooks! You warm my heart with a glimmer of promise that our National Nightmare of Trump may indeed end in 2020. Mrs. Warren will likely resume a sense of decency and commitment to a thoughtful and working federal policy agenda. She will return us to our crucial international alliances and I hope, vital focus on climate change. Nothing, nor she, will be perfect; but, Brooks forecast design of a promising turn in the road is welcomed. It's up to us - all of it.
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Oh David. Stop. If we want real change, we have to support Warren, and keep on supporting her long after the election--not predict her failure.
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"America at war with itself" Trump loses, to whoever, his supporters are galvanized into a radical, violent mob fueled by the NRA and the Cokes to establish an armed militia, and engage in an open, violent war with the government. Trump, emboldened by this turn-of-events, refuses to step down, fires his cabinet, dismisses all branches of government, and takes over law enforcement agencies, the national guard and the pentagon. Mob rule prevails, dems are shot down, and capitalism runs amok. The market skyrockets. China, North Korea and Iran join forces and shut down the internet, satellites, and the entire infrastructure collapses. They then invade the continent and establish a totalitarian regime. End of story, Mr. Brooks.
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@MyDelAwareRiverKeeper You forget a couple of things...Most of the "armed militia" don't want to die. They are not al-Qaeda martyr types. They are small in numbers, and can't and won't attempt armed takeovers of government and local, state and national law enforcement agencies who will shoot back. Not to mention that the stock markets would drop to zero if Trump tried to commandeer the Presidency and everyone would be out of a job. Even the Kochs, Scaifes, Mercers, Coors, DeVoses et al don't want that. As far as the mobs Trump attracts to his rallies...take a good look...do you think those folks are capable of inspiring, let alone organizing a revolution?... I envision the militia "organizing" scenes LOL led by the actor Paul Ford from the movie The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming. Great movie by the way.
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David, I find your faith in the future touching and quaint. I expect that catastrophic global environmental collapse will render all this moot.
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David Brooks, thanks. This is a very useful prediction.
Obama campaigned with, "Forward, not Backward."
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However, I would add more about a new democracy wave.
We might mention the "Democracy" song of Leonard Cohen.
He prophetically sang, "Democracy is coming to the USA (1992)
Democrats could use a song, like "Democracy" for 2020.
Trump is destroying democracy, and Democrats can restore it.
The NY Times could run a story about the "Democracy" song.
Even David Brooks, could write about the power of this song.
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For a new democracy and a Warren win it will take hard work.
Minds and hearts will have to change, with endless debates.
"Democracy is coming to the USA"
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Brilliant!!! this article should be laminated for preservation so that we can check it’s accuracy as time goes on. I will venture a guess that if we do that, checking it from time to time, we will find it/he was right on target.
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Brooks should stick to analyzing the present. Warren didn't get to be a hugely popular professor at Harvard by refusing to play well in the sandbox with her colleagues. She's shown herself able to work with her colleagues in the Senate and she's also proven herself committed to regular people by, for example, working to protect their economic interests.
Yes, as president she will raise taxes on the wealthy but this is long overdue and all polls suggest that the majority of Americans are on board with this.
Brooks' time would be better spent analyzing why the Republicans have sunk to kissing the boot of America's first caudillo president. He might want to read up on the history of Argentina to better understand what's happening to US politics.
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It seems to me that Mr. Brooks is invoking fear of change in order to muster support for his preferred candidate. Fear is one of the tools from Donald Trump's tool box. Need I say More?
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I love you Brooks, as the only voice of reason on the NYTimes Editorial staff, but you are so wrong that Trump will leave office being unpopular. I was a Democrat, voted for Obama twice, in my late thirties, and I think Donald Trump is not only the best president in my lifetime but for the last 100 years. And the rest of the dream you are having sounds like a nightmare. I personally think the Democrats are going to implode. There's no coalition.
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Oh Lord I hope you are right. The last three years have been a nightmare for me.
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Great, interesting article!
..."The whole tenor of American politics changed."...
Quickly, tell us what happened next!
Thanks!
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Of all of the Dems, Warren shows me that she is the one with the interests of most Americans in her mind. Let's do it.
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I'm going to save this article and check in every two years.
I hope I live long enough to see it.
Sounds good, we'll take it.
The arrogance of this set of predictions is as stunning as its cluelessness. No climate change to account for? No sense of the coalition building Warren is doing, no belief or hope in people's actual intelligence?
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And then the ice sheets melted and civilization as we knew it ended. Good night children.
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Oh, I do hope you’re correct, David.
One can only hope...
Last time I looked, David Brooks, you were a Republican and a male. So how can you play Margaret Atwood and predict the political future and get inside the head of an accomplished Woman?
Your picture is speculation, not prediction. Would you have predicted the mess we are in now, 4 years ago.? I have to say, prudently, to know one, you have to be one.
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From your keyboard to God's ears.
Love it.
The author forgot to mention that Texas turned democrat during this time.
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would that it could
Prognosticator Extrodinar!
Replace the name "Warren" with "Yang" and this column would actually make sense (nothing against Warren or Mr. Brooks).
Fashion alert! Center left is the new Conservative. Nice try David
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Is this a satire?
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David. You still haven’t said who your voting for. You revile Trump and fear Warren. Tell us please.
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I thus assume we can put you down as a Biden voter?
A conservative fantasy about Warren. He paints her as an ideologue out of her depth who will accept failure rather than compromise. She is much smarter than Mr. Brooks and she will be able to tell what is possible politically and what is not. Unlike Obama she will not negotiate with herself and make concession to the opposition before negotiations have began. A radical restructuring of the economy and political landscape cannot happen in a country as large and complex as the US in a few years. However, Warren can lay a road map for the future. Medicare and the Civil Rights Act would not have passed before WWII. Acceptance of LGBT is a fairly recent phenomena, inconceivable 30 years ago. So it will be with progressive ideas considered too radical today.
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This is fantasizing!!!! Good luck!!!
What a fancy [and devious] way of warning: elect Warren, get Venezuela!
David, you didn't talk about how the Southwest has been depopulated due to temperatures regularly rising above 130o, the US having to import food from Canada and Russia due to the loss of Midwest farmland from chronic flooding, and the abandonment of Miami due to rising sea level. President Warren embraced the Green New Deal and let all Americans in a unifying effort to salvage what we can of the environment.
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Quite the fantasy!
Fear mongering disguised as erudite analysis.
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When did David Brooks start writing a satirical column?
Futurology.
God laughs.
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Trump won the Electoral College for many reasons, including racism, misogyny, and xenophobia, but they were not the only reasons.
Obama promised "hope and change," delivered only half-hearted measures, and fought his own party more than he fought the Republicans, as when he asked the seventy-some members of the Progressive Caucus to accept a version of the ACA without a public option in order to placate the twenty-some members of the Blue Dog Caucus.
Hillary Clinton promised more of the same.
New York Times columnists saw nothing wrong with that. They were doing fine, as were the wealthiest backers of the Democratic Party.
However, out in the real world, people were suffering--and still are. Not being politically sophisticated or even particularly well-informed, a lot of ordinary people were willing to grab onto Trump's angry persona, mistaking his snarly manner for an indication that he understood their problems and was willing to change things in Washington to help them.
That was what I heard from the few Trump supporters I knew. Certainly there was some racism, misogyny, and xenophobia involved, but they all said that "things need shaking up." The current system was not working for them.
Red states may be conservative socially, but they are open to a more left-leaning economic message if they can see how they will benefit personally. Replacing the cumbersome ACA with, at the very least, a public option, would appeal to the financially strapped.
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...And then the ghost of Ronald Reagan rose from his grace to win a 3rd term and trickle down economics magically started working after 100 years of failure... but unfortunately none of us were alive to enjoy this fantasy having been boiled like a front in a pot by climate change in Mr. Brooks neo-liberal fantasy...
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It’s so weird the guy writes an entire look at the future without a mention of the Climate Crisis. Very telling.
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David, you brand yourself as a positive, civil, middle-of-the-roader, above the polarized fray. But your cynicism in this column is, dare I say, deplorable.
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“If you keep believing, the dream that you wish will come true.” Cinderella
As I was reading this column I pictured myself in footy pajamas being read this column before bedtime. Who knew David Brooks had some Mother Goose in him?
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And a 70-year old Barak Obama remarked, “I told you so: The United States of America.”
Mr. Brooks, please stop “wishing for bad luck and knocking on wood.”
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There's a war on. Choose your vague label, and prepare to get ugly.
i still wonder what this writer and others sees Warren as having lost faith in America's institutions. She hasn't. She simply wants to stop the raping of America by giant vested interests - not dissimilar to Teddy Roosevelt's trust busting.
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Poor David, stuck in the middle with Biden where he can't see what's gong on around him.
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Hahahaha.
Righhhhht.
Have you read history? Even recent history? Your paper gave Hillary a 95% chance of winning right up to election day, and you think you can see to 2050? And it goes THAT smoothly? Where does one begin?
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