Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

this is a reference to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Taping_Is_Killing_Music and In God We Trust, Inc. by Dead Kennedys.

The 2020s Has To Be the Decade We Stop the Climate Crisis, But Now We Have to Stop Another War

This is the decade we have to stop climate change. But now, thanks to the belligerent Trump administration and Democrats who laid the groundwork, we also have to stop another potential war.

To stave off the worst effects of the climate crisis, the world must slash carbon emissions in half by 2030 and—at the absolute latest—bring them to net zero by 2050. In October of 2018, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said we have 12 years to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5°C—and prevent the worst of floods, droughts, storms and resulting human deaths. “It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now,” said Debra Roberts, co-chair of an IPCC working group. For many of us, as we rang in the New Year and charted out our hopes for the coming decade, this urgent reality was front and center.

It will be no small task to do what is needed. The IPCC says that “limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” Scientists estimate that 80% of global coal reserves, half of gas reserves and a third of oil reserves need to stay in the ground. The United States shares a disproportionate responsibility to curb the climate crisis, as the number-one per-capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, with China the highest overall emitter. But this responsibility is not evenly distributed: A study released in 2017 found that just 100 companies––and the down market consumption of their products and services––are responsible for 70% of all carbon emissions in the world, with corporations like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron among the worst polluters. The key drivers of the crisis sit in corporate boardrooms and government offices; they are billionaires and CEOs and the U.S. politicians they buy off. 

We enter into this decade facing a tremendous uphill battle under a Trump administration that has rolled back former President Obama’s meager climate protections, including the Clean Power Plan. But we also face a political climate where a resurging Left is identifying capitalism as the problem—and demanding bold programs to fight the crisis, including a Green New Deal with the teeth to shut down the fossil fuel industry and guarantee jobs under a just transition for workers. And young people around the world have shown they’re willing to walk out of school and flood the streets to demand climate action. The climate crisis is heightening contradictions in our society, and this moment could not be more pivotal.

Which is why the possibility of war with Iran could do incalculable harm. We already know the U.S. military—with more than 800 bases and commandos deployed to 75% of countries—is a climate villain. A study from Brown University released in 2019 found that the U.S. military is a bigger greenhouse gas emitter than a majority of countries, and would rank 47th if it were a nation to itself. Between 2001 and 2017 alone, the study finds, “the U.S. military emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases.” In an article about their findings, the study’s authors wrote, “the U.S. military is one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries.” Another war would only intensify this pollution.

But the military’s direct carbon footprint doesn’t fully capture the climate harm wrought by the prospect of war with Iran. At exactly the moment U.S. organizers need to be building support for a climate justice program that’s bigger, more powerful and more anti-capitalist than we’ve ever seen, they are instead racing to respond to a barrage of escalations: the U.S. assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Soleimani, who was commander of Iran’s Quds Force and a ranking official of the Iranian government, Trump’s threats to target Iranian culture sites, and to his calls to unleash “very big sanctions” on Iraq. We face a media and political climate falling into the familiar right-wing tropes, with news outlets reporting Trump administration talking points  of maintaining a defensive posture at face value, and Democrats frequently endorsing the premises of Trump’s aggression, even if they hand-wring over process. The U.S. Left, just as it’s finally gaining momentum, now faces a political landscape where right-wing racist forces are emboldened.

It is difficult to quantify the role war plays in eroding political space to address environmental catastrophe, but history offers some clues. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the global justice movement made deep connections between corporate pillaging and environmental and climate destruction. Demonstrators decried the World Trade Organization's Investor-State Dispute Settlement system, a corporate tribunal that allows companies to undercut public protections, from labor rights to climate regulations. The U.S. wing of the movement mobilized in solidarity with movements in the Global South against ecosystem destruction, the plundering of indigenous communities through oil, drilling and dam projects and much more. Activists mobilized at the UN climate talks in the Hague—blockading doorways, climbing rafters, and pieing the top U.S. negotiator—all to demand stronger action against global warming. The call to action for the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle named the threat of global warming in its first line:

Increasing poverty and cuts in social services while the rich get richer; low wages, sweatshops, meaningless jobs, and more prisons; deforestation, gridlocked cities and global warming; genetic engineering, gentrification and war: Despite the apparent diversity of these social and ecological troubles, their roots are the same—a global economic system based on the exploitation of people and the planet.

But after September 11, 2001, as the Bush administration beat the drums of war and passed a series of repressive domestic laws, much of the U.S. wing of this movement—necessarily—shifted its focus to opposing war. A protest against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, slated for late September, 2001—and expected to be massive—was called off. Instead, the action was shifted to an anti-war march and teach-in that October, with crowds chanting, “Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War!” The New York Times’ headline on the protest summed up the jingoistic mood of the moment: “Marchers Oppose Waging War Against Terrorists.”

“I think 9/11 was the major turning point that dramatically shifted the energy and focus,” says Matt Leonard, an organizer with 350.org who came of age in the global justice movement. “Some of that was shifting into an anti-war movement, some of it was a social-political climate that became much more repressive, shifted the Overton Window of what ‘acceptable’ activism looked like, and left many people and more mainstream groups cautious about being associated with more radical social movement energy."

Rami El-Amine, a longtime anti-war activist, former editor of Left Turn, and a former organizer in the global justice movement, tells In These Times, “Clearly the movement was making lots of progress in terms of exposing the anti-environmental practices of institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. It definitely was a big part of the work and would have had a huge impact if 9/11 and war had not derailed things.”

According to El-Amine, “a lot of the non-profits pulled out when things turned anti-war.” Meanwhile, the global justice movement joined with millions of others to protest the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Clare Bayard, an organizer with the Catalyst Project and organizer in the global justice movement, tells In These Times, "A lot of the groups and infrastructure that was holding up the global justice movement, like the direct action network in places like the Bay Area, was used to build the Direct Action to Stop the War spokes council," referring to a decision making process for large numbers of people, often used to plan mass actions. "The same people and infrastructure and energies were going into anti-war activities." 

Protests against the Iraq War saw record numbers of people take to the streets around the world—a vital mobilization that was certainly strengthened by the infrastructure and hard work of the global justice movement, both its U.S. and international wings. The global justice movement is not responsible for—and, in fact, was targeted by—America’s dramatic rightward, repressive lurch. And no doubt many of the people who came up in the global justice movement are still organizing today against climate change, environmental destruction, capitalism and war. But we will never know what kind of global climate movement could have been built if the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan hadn’t demanded an immediate response from U.S. organizers—and hadn’t shifted the political climate dramatically rightward. In retrospect, the early 2000s would have been a far better time to aggressively tackle a climate crisis moving forward at warp speed—before we reached the brink. 

The harms perpetrated by U.S. militarism must be measured not only by its direct violence, but by its foreclosure on other possible futures. There’s the U.S. military’s role in opening global markets to capital, paving the way for resource extraction, and the exploitation of people and the Earth—when it could have been otherwise. There’s the role U.S. militarism plays in spreading the neoliberal ideology undergirding the climate crisis—that corporations should be able to run roughshod over human well-being. And there’s the role U.S. militarism has played in enabling the repression of left movements beyond U.S. borders, from Honduras to Palestine.

"The economy that is extracting natural resources and destroying this planet is the same U.S.-led racial capitalism and imperialism that drives wars on oil-rich lands," Cindy Wiesner, the executive director of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, tells In These Times. "U.S. militarism is one of the greatest threats to the climate crisis and life systems globally." 

The upside is, as Bayard puts it, that “any energy that goes into fighting the U.S. military is going to contribute to climate justice.” And Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, tells In These Times, “At this moment of time, there isn't a disconnect between the climate crisis and military-industrial complex. Tackling militarism is in favor of a different world order—one that advances environmental justice and climate justice.” Trying to stop a war doesn’t have to distract from fighting climate change—especially if movements are able to build from broader left momentum, and look long and hard at the challenges.

U.S.-run global capitalism and militarism is not, of course, the only responsible party for the climate crisis––but it plays a key role in driving it. We must not only tie together U.S. imperialism and climate, but use both as an entry point to combat the other. The jingoism and fervor of war has always been used by those in power to attack other elements of the Left: World War I was used as a blunt instrument against radical unionism, the red scare was used to discredit the civil rights movement, post 9/11 terror laws were used to go after environmental activists, and Trump’s frantic militarism will no doubt make combating the most urgent issue of our time––pending climate disaster––that much more difficult. 

It’s no accident the same fossil fuel companies that stand to lose the most in the event of a mass movement to stop climate change—Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil—back right-wing, pro-war politians and fundthink tankspushinggreaterU.S.militarism. They know very well the connection between U.S. empire and their own bottom line––the Left should as well. Indeed, for organizers like Wiesner, the best hope lies in doing what the polluters are already doing: connecting these dots. “People may think that we need to choose between mobilizing to stop the war or stopping climate change,” she says, “but that is a false dichotomy. We are in a fight for the livelihood of people and the planet.”

Media have published disturbing reports of increased scrutiny of people of Iranian descent at U.S. borders. EFF strongly opposes any digital surveillance based on religion or nationality, and reminds everyone to practice surveillance self-defense.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/01/no-digital-surveillance-iranians-us-border-or-within-us

We have computed the very first chosen-prefix collision for SHA-1. To put it in another way: all attacks that are practical on MD5 are now also practical on SHA-1.

We have reduced the cost of a collision attack from 2^64.7 to 2^61.2, and the cost of a chosen-prefix collision attack from 2^67.1 to 2^63.4.

Demo: The legacy branch of GnuPG (version 1.4) is vulnerable. We have created two PGP keys with different UserIDs and colliding certificates.

https://sha-mbles.github.io/

What a Bernie Sanders Presidency Would Look Like

We have a decade to transform the U.S. economy to stave off climate catastrophe, and Bernie Sanders has the only agenda to do so and the only mobilization strategy to get it done. No plan for a better future is worthwhile if environmental crisis renders our future unimaginably bleak.

As Naomi Klein notes, this planetary emergency “entered mainstream consciousness” in the 1980s as the Right and big business launched an “ideological war … on the very idea of the collective sphere.” To take the collective action needed to phase out fossil fuels, our next president must build a foreign policy of radical cooperation alongside a new domestic politics of inclusion—or else witness a racist, nationalist, far-right politics expand its divisive power.

Sanders is the only presidential candidate who has put forward a genuine Green New Deal, a plan to radically remake the economy to serve ordinary people rather than just “greening” the economic system that threatens to end human society as we know it. His Green New Deal would dismantle the fossil fuel industry and put a renewable energy system under democratic control, working with governments around the world to achieve what the science demands.

Sanders’ proposals go beyond piecemeal liberal solutions by targeting the unjust economic system that fuels climate change and pushing an agenda that simultaneously empowers workers and saves the planet. This agenda would help millions of workers join unions, give workers an ownership stake in major corporations, provide universal healthcare and tuition-free higher education, build millions of affordable homes and protect (rather than target) immigrants.

Though President Sanders could execute parts of this agenda on his own, much of it would require Congress. How could it pass, given Republican extremism and likely pushback from even a Democrat-controlled House and Senate? The question poses a serious problem for any program that meets our challenge. And it is one Sanders is uniquely positioned to solve.

Sanders understands that change at this scale will require mass movements to pressure Congress and every level of government—and to change their composition. Americans isolated and atomized by cutthroat capitalism must engage in massive collective action. His political program isn’t just about policy, then, but about the capacity of ordinary people to participate in democracy. This disruption includes, critically, his plans to facilitate direct participation in decisions from our workplaces to our energy systems, shifting the balance of power in our society. No one contends that Sanders alone will spark, let alone be, a mass movement. The Sanders campaign slogan, “Not Me. Us.,” conveys precisely that. Sanders, as he puts it, is “gonna be organizer-in-chief.”

Sanders’ Green New Deal plan, which builds on the resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), will take massive organization to make a reality. His plan alone among Democratic candidates takes seriously the massive public spending ($16.3 trillion, to be exact, much more than Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposes) needed to reach 100% renewable electricity and transportation by 2030 with full decarbonization by 2050, a reorientation of public priorities (diverting $1.215 trillion from “military spending on protecting the global oil supply”), the creation of 20 million jobs, and unprecedented levels of public-sector coordination and social mobilization. Sanders is the only candidate who identifies the private ownership of energy as a core problem, calling out the “greed” in our for-profit system, from investor-owned utilities like California’s Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to the fossil fuel companies that collect billions in federal subsidies while contaminating the planet. Saving the planet is impossible without heightening class conflict.

Sanders’ critics who say he would never be able to get much done simply haven’t been paying attention: Sanders’ record of connecting to mass mobilizations and dramatically reshaping public debates sets him apart. Before he ran in 2016, for example, Medicare for All was deemed a pipe dream; now, it’s a center of attention. Unlike Warren, who in her constant equivocation has managed to elicit criticism from all directions, Sanders pledges to introduce Medicare for All legislation during his first week in office. And he has responded to the mainstreaming of Medicare for All by pushing politics in yet more radical directions.

The fight of this generation depends not only on putting forth good policies but on a powerful revival of collective politics. With control of the White House, Sanders and the movements rallied around him could do huge things. 

Since the 1970s, American politics has been stunted by neoliberal governance, which invokes “free markets” to protect capital from democratic control and grind down the unions that once checked corporate power. Many came to believe change is impossible, even as capitalism’s costs shifted onto ordinary people and exploited their social bonds to keep the broken system from going off the rails. Young people must borrow for education against their future and their parents’ assets; women can be trapped in abusive relationships because of expensive childcare, low wages and high rents.

Sanders takes neoliberalism’s atomizing points of domination and transforms them into a set of demands for collective freedom, with policies like Medicare for All, free public higher education, universal childcare and pre-K, and the abolition of student and medical debt. These policies would help break the cycle of privatized financial burden and, in doing so, free people to engage in more radicalized struggle.

Sanders’ homes guarantee and Green New Deal for Public Housing, introduced with Ocasio-Cortez, would deliver direct economic benefits while empowering the working class and cutting carbon emissions. Real estate assets, as of 2017, were worth an estimated $228 trillion, “a more valuable asset class than all stocks, shares and securitized debt combined,” according to Savills World Research. As such, they have been a key driver of inequality and household indebtedness. Real estate speculation also, of course, helped spark the global financial crash of 2008.

Building 10 million permanently affordable homes, investing in shared equity homeownership models like community land trusts, enacting nationwide rent control, and upgrading and expanding public housing with local renewable energy would be revolutionary in a country where more than 500,000 people are homeless on any given night, tens of millions pay more than a third or even half their income in rent, and poor people live under the continual threat of eviction. Making housing affordable would make people less urgently dependent on their paychecks. Sanders also pledges to attack the residential segregation and gentrification that consign poor, racialized communities to second-class schools, insecure housing and subpar public services.

Our economic system is protected by racist repression, which divides ordinary people and scapegoats people of color, foreigners and, increasingly since the 9/11 attacks, Muslims. Sanders’ programs break down these barriers and defend immigrant labor rights against boss abuses. His core universal social programs, Medicare for All and College for All, are truly universal, available regardless of immigration status.

“Bernie’s immigration plan is revolutionary,” Sanders’ Latino Press Secretary Belén Sisa says, because it identifies undocumented immigrants as us rather than them. Sanders denounces exploitative corporations as enemies of all workers, foreign and U.S.-born alike, a rejection of nativist politics long organized around the demonization of immigrants as a threat to jobs and welfare benefits.

Sanders’ legislative priorities include expanding immigration visas to reunite families and providing citizenship to the overwhelming majority of undocumented Americans. Critically, Sanders rejects the immigration reform model of the George W. Bush and Obama years, in which establishment politicians increased deportations and militarized the border in a bid to garner right-wing support for a path to citizenship that never passed.

In fact, Sanders has said he would use executive actions to reverse this trend, no congressional approval necessary—by placing a moratorium on deportations, offering permanent protection to many undocumented immigrants and raising the refugee cap—ending the long-standing bipartisan war on “illegal immigrants” that mainstreamed nativism. Notably, his legislative agenda includes a bold new program for climate refugees.

Sanders’ immigration politics reflects his movement’s maximally expansive definition of the American people. His pledge to finally protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, the workplace and public accommodations does the same. Another example is his pledge to not only support abortion as a legal right but make it freely available through Medicare for All.

Sanders’ universalism extends to the fight against the mass social death imposed by mass incarceration. Policing and prisons have been used to discipline, control and warehouse poor people, especially communities of color, pushed to the margins under neoliberalism. The majority of prisoners are incarcerated at the state level, so what a president can do is limited. But Sanders can still make change, including by reforming the federal system. While Sanders should do better and shift his position to support sex work decriminalization, his plans are solid: He seeks to end mandatory minimum sentences, withhold money from states that refuse to end cash bail (which incarcerates people for being poor), grant voting rights to prisoners and triple spending on indigent defense. Importantly, he pledges to end programs like 287(g) and Secure Communities that have turned local law enforcement into proxy ICE agents. Sanders’ agenda is comprehensively about our freedom from bosses, debt, landlords, ICE and prisons—and from fossil-fueled catastrophe, which is the freedom that guarantees all others.

Unions remain the unrivaled vehicle for building worker power, but Democrats have long failed to deliver for organized labor. Sanders’ commitment would be without precedent: He pledges to double the number of union members during his first term.

Sanders backs neglected Democratic goals like card check—the ability to form unions with a simple majority of workers’ signatures—as well as measures to make labor actions more powerful, like banning the permanent replacement of strikers and allowing “secondary boycotts,” in which workers in a labor dispute pressure other companies to stop doing business with their employer. What makes Sanders unique is his track record and our trust he will actually fight for workers.

Sanders’ labor plan also stands out with measures to bolster worker power broadly. Ending at-will employment would mean that workers could only be fired for just cause, universalizing a cornerstone of union contracts. Instituting wage boards would allow unions to work together to push wages up across an industry, rather than fighting out contracts with individual companies.

Imposing additional taxes on corporations corresponding to their CEO-to-worker pay gap would progressively raise tax revenue while curbing inequality. Giving workers the right to buy a company if it closes, moves abroad or goes up for sale would tame hyper-mobile capital. Ending stock buybacks would redirect capital from investors and CEOs to workers and productive investments. Allocating workers at large companies control of 45% of board seats and 20% of shares would provide labor with new levers over corporate governance and check one of the key drivers of wealth inequality.

In addition to these legislative goals, Sanders pledges to sign an executive order placing a moratorium on all pension cuts and another ending government contracts to companies that take a variety of anti-worker actions. As Sanders told a crowd of union members in Warren, Ohio, near the recently shuttered Lordstown factory that produced the Chevy Cruze: “If entities like General Motors think that they can throw workers out on the street while they’re making billions of profit, and then move to Mexico and pay starvation wages and then line up for federal contracts, they’ve got another thing coming.”

Transformative change often depends on disruptive mass movements: Worker strikes in the 1930s created massive unions and forced the federal government to protect them, the 20th-century Black freedom struggle broke racist Southern politicians’ stranglehold, the gay liberation movement eroded oppressive mores and defended the lives of HIV-positive people, and the immigrant rights movement successfully curbed Obama’s deportations. 

Today, young people are coming of age at a moment when neoliberalism’s legitimacy is in tatters from the 2008 crisis. The Great Recession revealed the status quo as fragile and intolerable, and Occupy Wall Street, radical immigrant rights activists and Black Lives Matter demanded a new politics in its place.

One of the most unusual aspects of Sanders’ rhetoric is his willingness to speak about how broken America is for so many: the bills that never end, the debt that accumulates, the corporate intrusion into every facet of life. As Briahna Joy Gray, Sanders’ national press secretary, said on her podcast Hear the Bern, Bernie rallies are so passionate because “Bernie articulates more clearly than any other candidate that the problems facing everyday Americans are not the result of laziness or failure to work hard; it’s because systems have been rigged to benefit the rich at our expense.” Speaking that truth is a prerequisite for transformation.

Generational experience is the motor of this new class politics: With little chance of upward mobility, many young people are hell-bent on something new and better, evidenced by the Democratic Socialists of America becoming the largest and most consequential socialist organization in over half a century. The Left is winning electoral victories, from radical district attorneys in Philadelphia and San Francisco to six socialists on Chicago’s city council. Teachers strikes have soared, and healthcare and hotel workers have walked out in large numbers, too.

“People are always befuddled in the early stages of a movement,” says Frances Fox-Piven, co-author of the classic Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail. “They don’t recognize that it’s there. But it is here … teachers, nurses, service workers generally are in strike mode. Whenever there’s a major movement, it, in a sense, is contagious.” Fox-Piven emphasizes how radical movements and politicians need one another:

[BLOCK QUOTE] Disruption doesn’t work unless there is a kind of electoral resonance. A bloc of elected politicians [can] inspire the protesters because it’s scary to be disruptive, dangerous. And it really helps if you have political leaders who are echoing and enlarging the demands of the protesters. That gives morale to the protest movement. They think they can win. It’s also true that the existence of an electoral bloc like that is important in restraining repression. And finally, if the protesters actually win something as a result of the disruption that they cause, they have to have people in positions in government to fashion the concessions. So there’s a constant feedback between the protest movement and their electoral bloc.  [END BLOCK QUOTE]

The congressional bloc we need is emerging in embryonic form with leaders like Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), all of whom have endorsed Sanders. Ocasio-Cortez exemplifies how movements can win electoral power and, in turn, strengthen movements: She came to political consciousness because of her experience working in the service industry, volunteering on the 2016 Sanders campaign and supporting indigenous anti-pipeline water protectors at Standing Rock.

“While we have a plan and while we have an agenda to pass a Green New Deal, to pass Medicare for All, to make public colleges tuition-free … the thing is that these policies are not self-enacting,” Ocasio-Cortez told a Sanders rally in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “The only way that we achieve and become an advanced society is not through a technocratic policy proposal, but through a political revolution of working people.”

I asked Fox-Piven if this wouldn’t be rather hard to achieve. “Very difficult,” she confirmed. “The movements have to take on the fossil fuel industry and the financial sector. This should make you gulp because they’re both powerful—and in the case of fossil fuels, desperate—industries. But that’s our only path out of extinction, isn’t it?”

It’s clear that a radical president can shift a party’s center of gravity: Republican public opinion— on immigration, Russia, the FBI—has rapidly moved to align with Trump’s views, and Republican politicians have largely done the same. A Sanders presidency would polarize the national debate in a similar way, pressuring Democratic legislators to side with their leader over the inevitably fanatical Republican opposition.

In fact, Sanders’ movement is already doing just that: No single figure or force aside from Trump has done more to reframe the terms of American politics over the past four years.

Sanders’ political rise emerged from (and accelerated) a crisis of the centrist liberal establishment. Witness the elite panic and personal arrogance that has sent Deval Patrick and Michael Bloomberg rushing in to relieve and replace Joe Biden, their tottering standard-bearer. Still, while the old world is dying, its replacement with something better is not inevitable. A growing number of college-educated white voters, for instance, are turning to Mayor Pete Buttigieg, a former McKinsey consultant whose only consistent belief is in his own greatness. When Sanders insists that “we need to not only defeat Donald Trump, but to take back our democracy from the corporate elite,” he is drawing a line in the sand and indicting the status quo: If Democrats aren’t with the people, then they’re standing against them.

Effective left populism requires a vision of the people and their enemy. This movement’s enemies are the few: a greedy and pathologically destructive billionaire class; the fossil fuel, pharmaceutical, insurance and financial industries. By contrast, the people contains multitudes: a diverse coalition of the working and precarious middle classes. Though powered at present by mass youth appeal, a Sanders victory could rapidly energize skeptical Gen X and Boomer voters whose political horizons have shrunk under the decades-long neoliberal onslaught.

Sanders’ program unifies the interests of working-class people without erasing their differences. His deep support in the Latino community and the remarkable enthusiasm he’s generated among Muslims illuminate the contours of a potential realignment that puts those most demonized by the xenophobic Right at the core of a powerful Left. His October 2019 Queens, N.Y., rally with Ocasio-Cortez emphasized the ethical basis of a political coalition rooted in love and solidarity: “Take a look around you, and find someone you don’t know,” Bernie told the crowd. “Maybe somebody who doesn’t look kind of like you. Are you willing to fight for that person as much as you’re willing to fight for yourself?”

Sanders’ plan to win the general election in red states like West Virginia likewise holds out the possibility that a multiracial working-class coalition can subvert the social divide. When Sanders was asked whether West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin or Montana Sen. Jon Tester, both centrist Democrats, would vote for his programs, his response was blunt. “Damn right they will. You know why? We’re going to go to West Virginia,” Sanders told CNBC. “Your average politician sits around and he or she thinks: ‘Let’s see. If I do this, I’m going to have the big money interests putting 30-second ads against me. So I’d better not do it.’ But now they’re going to have to think, ‘If I don’t support an agenda that works for working people, I’m going to have President Sanders coming to my state and rallying working-class people.’” That’s not fantastical. The working class in West Virginia is restless, with a wildcat teachers strike shaking the state in 2018 and sparking further walkouts in Arizona and Oklahoma. A recent poll shows that a full 69% of West Virginia voters continue to support teachers striking for higher pay. The legislative agenda of any Democratic president depends on a seismic political shift in enough red and purple states that Democrats capture both the House and Senate, and remaking the electoral map requires deepening these movements’ power. Sanders has already used his campaign database to push supporters to the picket lines and could lead a far more massive mobilization from the Oval Office. As sociologist Barry Eidlin notes, FDR’s signing of a 1933 law protecting unions helped spark mass labor organizing in the 1930s, even though the law had no practical enforcement mechanism. Imagine the power of a president using a primetime address to offer his solidarity to a strike wave. It would be historic—and transformative.

Sanders promises to reshape the global order by exercising U.S. power in pursuit of negotiated geopolitical settlements—above all, on the environment. And nowhere does an American president have more concrete power than in the realm of foreign policy and national security.

Unlike Elizabeth Warren, who has no substantive critique of American empire, Sanders has straightforwardly denounced the military-industrial complex, has long voted no on defense budgets, and stands alone in his consistent support for making the United States a partner to Global South struggles. In the 1980s, Sanders stood in solidarity with Central American revolutionaries against the Reagan administration’s bloody support of oligarchs. Recently, Sanders cheered the release from prison of Lula da Silva, Brazil’s former Workers’ Party president, and quickly denounced the November 2019 coup in Bolivia for what it was.

The potential a president has to unilaterally reorder the global power system has been demonstrated by none other than our current president. His behavior has been so erratic that Saudi Arabia is reported to have quietly reached out to Iran, hedging against the possibility that they might one day be unable to rely on U.S. military protection. Imagine what might be possible if Sanders, a relentless critic of the Saudi royal family and the war it leads against Yemen, pushed for a negotiated settlement among rival regional powers.

Sanders could likewise provide unprecedented hope for tipping the balance in favor of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Though imperfect on the issue, Sanders has broken with the pro-Israel bipartisan consensus more than almost any member of Congress.

U.S. foreign policy has long been driven by national security concerns that in reality reflect not any “national interest” but rather the interests of major corporations and the national security state’s conventional wisdom. In 2015, Obama adviser David Axelrod called Sanders “tin-eared” for his repeated assertion that climate change was the greatest threat to national security. The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan called him “slightly daffy.” “Some people laughed in 2015 when Bernie said climate change is the most serious national security challenge we face,” says Matt Duss, Sanders’ top foreign policy advisor. “No one’s laughing now.”

As Sanders has stated, “Our endless entanglements in the Middle East have diverted crucial resources and attention” away from addressing climate change. Instead of more war, Sanders pledges $200 billion for the Green Climate Fund to help the Global South adapt to the climate emergency.

U.S. willingness to commit to deep emissions cuts is a prerequisite for convincing other nations to do the same, as international climate negotiations are governed by a logic akin to that of nuclear disarmament: No one wants to go first and be left vulnerable. China must be convinced that a rapid transition will not undermine its economy. Poor countries across the Global South must be assured they will not simply be denied the fruits of fossil-fueled development already enjoyed by the Global North.

Sanders was clear about that at the September 2019 climate town hall: “I think we need a president, hopefully Bernie Sanders, that reaches out to the world—to Russia and China and India, Pakistan, all the countries of the world—and says, ‘Guess what, whether you like it or not, we are all in this together, and if you are concerned about the children in your country and future generations, we’re gonna have to work together. And maybe, just maybe, instead of spending a trillion and a half dollars every single year on weapons of destruction designed to kill each other, maybe we pool those resources, and we work together against our common enemy, which is climate change.”

Neoliberalism has divided us across borders and atomized our personal lives, leading us to blame ourselves for problems caused by a rigged system. This moment demands a new politics that unites us to confront our shared enemies and transform our society. Sanders consistently argues, “Beating Trump is not good enough.” This is an understatement. The world quite literally depends upon a political revolution. And only Sanders has a plan for that.

This story was produced in collaboration withJacobin.

This was one of two cover stories of In These Times' dual-sided January issue. For a complementary perspective, read the alternate cover feature, "What an Elizabeth Warren Presidency Would Look Like," by Kathleen Geier. [<--CHRIS INSERT LINK]

The views expressed in this piece are the author's own. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, In These Times does not oppose or endorse candidates for political office.

What an Elizabeth Warren Presidency Would Look Like

If Elizabeth Warren wins the Democratic presidential nomination, she will have prevailed against daunting odds. She will have overcome a potentially career-ending scandal (the DNA test debacle) and defeated not only the runner-up in the 2016 Democratic presidential contest, but a popular two-term former vice president. If she defeats President Donald Trump, it would mean an economic populist defeated a corrupt plutocrat, that the most leftwing Democratic presidential nominee in history defeated a racist reactionary, that a woman defeated America’s most famous misogynist. It would be an extraordinarily powerful moment.

Her ambitions for the presidency are not small. Warren proposes to rewrite the rules of the economy by reining in capital, empowering labor and significantly expanding the welfare state.

To understand how Warren would create big structural changes as president, it’s helpful to look at how she has made change in the past.

The standard advice to freshmen senators is this: Keep a low profile and suck up to your senior colleagues. As a newly elected senator in 2013, Elizabeth Warren did neither.

Instead, Warren used her perch on the Senate Banking Committee to excoriate ineffectual regulators, duplicitous CEOs, profiteering student lenders and other financial industry ne’er-dowells (interrogations made famous in videos that went viral). She publicly clashed with establishment Democrats such as Sens. Max Baucus (Mont.) and Joe Manchin (W.V.). She even took on President Barack Obama, leading the fight against several administration priorities, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and a pharmaceutical bill she described as “a bunch of special giveaways” to Big Pharma. Warren succeeded in getting under Obama’s skin to such an extent that he took the rare step of criticizing her repeatedly by name.

Progressive strategist and Warren supporter Murshed Zaheed says Warren was able to buck the Democratic establishment because she “came to the Senate with a movement behind her.” As a member of various federal and congressional advisory committees over the previous two decades—on issues like bankruptcy and the 2008 bank bailout—Warren had developed close ties to labor, consumer and netroots activist groups, including the AFL-CIO, Americans for Financial Reform and MoveOn.org. During her 2012 Senate race, her campaign built a massive email list and a grassroots army of small donors. So when Warren broke ranks, outside groups and the grassroots “had her back,” says Zaheed.

The critique from some on the Left paints Warren as a technocrat who doesn’t understand movements as the driving force of social change. But Warren’s signature policy accomplishments—including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), loan forgiveness for students ripped off by for-profit colleges, and the Federal Reserve decision to punish Wells Fargo for its crooked financial practices—have all paired a skillful strategy from inside the system with strong coordination with outside grassroots groups.

In speeches and comments on the campaign trail, Warren frequently credits movements and the grassroots. At her campaign launch in Lawrence, Mass., Warren paid tribute to the workers there who organized a historic strike in 1912. “The story of Lawrence is a story about how real change happens in America,” she said.

One prominent feature of Warren’s theory of change is the importance of planning and strategy. For some on the Left, the unofficial Warren campaign slogan, “She’s got a plan for that,” grates. It contains a whiff of “let the politician handle it,” rather than the movement on the ground. But Nicole Carty, an activist who supports Warren and has worked with Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter, notes successful movements “have plans. They have strategies.” Carty says movements that force political change often don’t know how to implement transformative policies, which is why Warren’s talent for proposing “ways things can get done and how they will be implemented is a critical and unique skill.”

Warren’s campaign has released more than 50 plans on nearly every public policy under the sun, revealing a specific and highly visible agenda—in marked contrast with vague promises offered by other candidates. Carty says that while other campaigns are focused only on “what’s politically possible and feasible” in this moment, Warren’s plans “are about having a vision and fighting for it.”

Carty cites the wealth tax as one example, which “visionary implementer” Warren was the first in the race to propose and three other candidates picked up. Warren’s wealth tax—a two-cents-on-the-dollar tax on assets over $50 million—is so easy to understand that “two cents!” is chanted at Warren events. If you’re a homeowner, Warren says, you have “been paying a wealth tax for years. They just call it a property tax. I just want their tax to include the diamonds, the yachts and the Rembrandts.” The proposal is straightforward while being, Carty says, a “visionary idea that actually gets to the heart of wealth injustice and righting that in a reparative way.”

While the wealth tax is popular with voters, it’s unclear whether Democrats will command a big enough majority in Congress to pass it, or if centrist Democrats would support it. But legislation won’t be her only tool. The president controls an enormous bureaucracy and has a vast array of administrative, regulatory and enforcement powers at her disposal. An activist president could enact policies to cancel student debt, lower prescription drug prices, put a moratorium on drilling on public lands, require all federal contractors to pay a $15 minimum wage, break up the banks and Big Tech, and much, much more—all with the stroke of a pen.

Warren would be well positioned to kick the enforcement and regulatory powers of the executive branch into high gear. She helped build the CFPB from the ground up and, as a senator, has overseen a broad swath of similar federal regulatory agencies.

Appointments will be key to implementing her vision. Warren, who has often said that “personnel is policy,” led successful fights to quash the appointments of Wall Street-friendly Obama nominees, including Larry Summers’ bid to chair the Federal Reserve. Her office was also involved in a behind-the-scenes effort to identify progressive candidates for posts in a Hillary Clinton administration.

No one inside or outside of the Warren campaign was able or willing to name specific individuals under consideration for high-level White House posts, but Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a nonprofit organization unaffiliated with Warren’s campaign, said the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Rohit Chopra is the kind of appointee Warren might seek. Chopra, whom Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) recommended for the post, was widely seen as a Warren pick. At the FTC, Chopra has been a strong advocate for consumer rights and pushed for tougher regulation of the Big Tech monopolies. He strenuously objected to the FTC’s recent settlement with Facebook over its privacy breach, arguing that the $5 billion penalty was too weak to be a deterrent. Hauser also expects Warren will search beyond the Beltway for those who have a track record of success, including state and municipal officials who take an aggressive approach toward regulation and enforcement.

Executive orders get more press than other tools at the president’s disposal, but, says Hauser, they tend to move more slowly and are subject to being overturned by the courts. Enforcement priorities, however, are immediately effective. Imagine the difference it would make if the president ordered the Justice Department to stop persecuting immigrants and start aggressively pursuing crooked bankers, polluters and other white-collar criminals instead.

Then there are regulations. In the bowels of every federal agency are countless regulations from the New Deal or the Great Society that sit gathering dust. These regulations protect workers and consumers, enforce civil rights law, promote food safety and clean air and water, enable the feds to bust up monopolies, close tax loopholes, and more. But many such regulations have gone unenforced, beginning with the Reagan revolution and continuing through the neoliberal presidential administrations since.

A Warren administration threatens to resurrect those laws with a vengeance. As a senator, for example, Warren cited an obscure federal law to successfully lobby the Obama administration to provide debt relief for thousands of students ripped off by Corinthian, a for-profit college.

A president’s final tool is the bully pulpit, which Warren can use to educate, persuade and inspire voters to take action. Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), which has endorsed Warren, says, “[Warren’s] mentality when she entered the race, at only 3% to 5% in the polls, was, ‘I’m gonna go around the country and educate people about issues like systemic corruption and anti-monopoly. If I lose, at least millions more people are primed to want the right solution to these things. And if I win, we can do stuff.’” A gifted communicator, Warren can explain complex policies in clear, simple language and connect them to voters’ everyday concerns and struggles.

At the heart of Warren’s vision for America is a drive to end policies that benefit corporations and the rich at the expense of working families. She has said her first legislative priority as president would be an anti-corruption package that, once adopted, would facilitate passage of the rest of her agenda by removing the financial incentive for legislators to oppose it. Warren told Ezra Klein that the purpose of banning the revolving door between Congress and lobbying jobs is to say to members of Congress, “Hey, this is your job … so don’t be looking over the horizon at your next job and adjusting your behavior accordingly.”

Next on Warren’s agenda is the wealth tax, which would reduce economic inequality while providing a funding mechanism for other high-priority measures. Warren says her wealth tax would generate enough revenue to cancel 95% of all student debt and fund universal childcare, universal pre-K and free public college.

Some critics point to European countries that have tried and failed to implement a wealth tax, but the economists who advised Warren, Gabriel Zucman and Emmanuel Saez, say Warren’s version would be more feasible: It would fall on a smaller share of the population, contain fewer loop holes and come with more aggressive enforcement mechanisms. Economist Max Sawicky suggests Warren could wield the wealth tax as “a political weapon to get other changes,” including more progressive tax enforcement policies, regardless of whether it ends up being enacted.

Warren’s economic agenda includes antitrust policies to break up the banks and Big Tech, stricter executive compensation rules, a crackdown on private equity, higher corporate taxes, and trade policies that meet human rights standards. On the spending side, Warren’s proposals include free two- and four-year public college, the cancellation of 95% of student debt, universal childcare and the expansion of Social Security. The spending items would require legislation, but much of the rest of her economic program could be implemented by the executive branch alone. A president has considerable latitude over trade negotiations and can enforce existing consumer and antitrust laws, thereby cracking down on other corporate abuses. Warren could also use executive orders and existing regulations to ensure more wealthy people are paying their fair share.

Action on climate change is another top priority for Warren. She is a strong supporter of Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) Green New Deal proposal, but goes beyond that. Warren has released 11 climate plans on issues ranging from environmental justice to clean air and water to protecting public lands. The most significant initiative may be her green manufacturing plan, a $2 trillion, 10-year research, development and deployment plan to create new, cheaper technology for clean energy. Warren also adopted Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D-Wash.) plan to achieve 100% clean energy by 2035.

Warren has released healthcare proposals to expand access in rural areas, reduce maternal mortality and end the opioid crisis, but the main item on Warren’s healthcare agenda is Medicare for All—which, of all the items on the progressive agenda, is probably the most difficult to enact.

For one thing, Medicare for All is many times more expensive than any of Warren’s other proposals, with an estimated cost of more than $2 trillion in additional annual spending (her universal childcare and free public college proposals would cost about $70 billion and $60 billion, respectively). It will also require, among other things, liquidating an entire sector of the economy (the health insurance industry); slashing the profits of hospitals and pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies; and reducing the salaries of doctors in highly paid specialties. Taking on all those vested interests will be tough. Indeed, Democratic presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill has only 15 Senate cosponsors, some of whom have already begun to back away from it.

Warren’s Medicare for All proposal is a maximalist plan that would make comprehensive healthcare virtually free for everyone, including prescriptions, long-term care, mental health care, dental care and vision care. She would pay for the plan partly through cost savings (by reducing prescription drug and administrative costs and lowering reimbursement rates to hospitals and specialists) and partly through raising revenue (with a wealth tax and an employer tax roughly equal to the current employer contribution to employee health insurance). The purpose of this financing scheme is to make the plan more politically palatable by avoiding big new taxes on working people.

To transition to Medicare for All, Warren proposes a two-stage process. First, she would sign executive orders lowering prices on prescription drugs and strengthening the Affordable Care Act. Then, within the first 100 days of her administration, Congress would pass a bill enacting a robust public healthcare option and expanding Medicare benefits to minors, low-income households and people age 50 and older. In the second stage, in the third year of a Warren administration, the full Medicare for All bill would be enacted.

Warren supporters argue the Senate map for Democrats is more favorable in 2022, and enacting the initial public healthcare option would weaken the insurance industry, making the full bill easier to enact. On the other hand, it could also be the case that starting with a maximalist demand like Medicare for All would make smaller steps, such as a public option, more likely, whereas starting with a demand for only a public option might result in nothing at all.

Immigration reform is another Warren priority and, yes, she has a plan for that. Warren has proposed executive actions to eliminate abusive immigration enforcement, reduce immigrant detention while increasing due process, and admit more refugees. She also backs legislation to create new paths to citizenship.

On labor, Warren supports back-burnered items on the Democratic legislative agenda, such as a $15 minimum wage, “card check” legislation to make unionizing easier and a ban on the permanent replacement of strikers, as well as her own more far-reaching measure that would let workers control 40% of corporate board seats. Through executive actions, Warren also proposes to strengthen enforcement of anti-discrimination and worker safety laws, expand overtime rules, and strengthen the National Labor Relations Board.

On foreign policy, Warren’s record is disappointing. She voted for Trump’s 2018 defense budget, defended Israel when it bombed Palestinian schools, and supported sanctions against Venezuela, Iran and other countries. Despite these missteps, her foreign policy has been improving. She’s become more critical of Israel, voted to end U.S. participation in the Saudi war in Yemen, introduced a no-first-use nuclear weapons bill, and said she would immediately start withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan. If we as leftists want to make sure she continues to evolve on these issues, it’s critical that we demand accountability and push for progressive foreign policy appointments. She would be well advised to staff her White House with appointees from Bernie Sanders’ excellent foreign policy team.

Warren has a strong record of enlisting bipartisan sponsors for her Senate bills, but it’s likely Republicans would oppose her presidential agenda en masse. Trump is popular with the Republican base, and even out of office he would undoubtedly remain a thorn in her side with a steady stream of insults, smears and conspiracy theories.

Democrats, too, could be a problem. Warren’s support of Medicare for All, her soak-the-rich tax policies, and her plans to break up monopolies and heavily regulate corporations have won her the enmity of neoliberal Democrats in Congress and the billionaires who love them.

Warren’s style has been to fight hard and in a highly visible way and to create public support for her goals and political consequences for those who thwart her. As she said when she was fighting to create the CFPB, “My first choice is a strong consumer agency. My second choice is no agency at all and plenty of blood and teeth left on the floor.”

To enact her agenda, Warren could also do what presidents have always done with carrots (such as favors from a federal agency) and sticks (such as supporting primary challengers). But the sources I spoke to believe she would support primarying recalcitrant Democrats only as a last resort, and only against legislators who consistently opposed her policies. In addition, Warren is already working to create the kind of Congress that would support her priorities. She has endorsed a slew of progressive candidates in Democratic primaries, including challengers to two centrist Democratic incumbents, Rep. Dan Lipinski in Illinois and Rep. Henry Cuellar in Texas. Her campaign has also been pouring money into down-ballot races in an effort to elect more progressive Democrats to statehouses and to Congress.

Democratic strategist and Warren supporter Mike Lux predicts Warren “would be as aggressive as any president has ever been at rallying organizations and rallying the netroots. She would come into the White House with a huge email list that I think she would operationalize aggressively to work on Democrats to support bills.”

Meanwhile, institutions like the filibuster, a Senate that disproportionately represents white and rural voters, and the Electoral College all make progressive, transformative change difficult. Warren is supportive of statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, steps that may be doable if the Democrats take control of Congress. She has proposed abolishing the filibuster and the Electoral College, but those reforms would likely be a much heavier lift.

But the most serious procedural threat to a Warren agenda may well be a Supreme Court and federal courts dominated by right-wing appointees who have been consistently hostile to the kind of progressive economic policies Warren champions. Warren has said she is open to such reforms as adding justices to the Supreme Court.

Political backlash poses another major threat. There’s a lively debate among Democrats about whether a midterm backlash is an inevitable, naturally recurring feature of American politics. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama faced a ferocious backlash at the polls in the midterm elections of their first terms, giving an obstructionist GOP control of the House and stalling Democratic agendas for six years.

But Stephanie Taylor, cofounder of the PCCC, says electoral backlash is not a given. “The best way for Democrats to win is to fight for systemic change, not incremental change. And this is what Elizabeth Warren does.” People will vote for Democrats, she says, “if they believe that it will do something about the rigged system, it will do something to put more money in their pockets, do something about their crushing medical debt, foreclosures, student debt.”

A hostile media environment will pose another obstacle for Warren. The mainstream media has repeatedly subjected Warren to sexist slurs (like "schoolmarm"), judged her by sexist double standards (have you heard that she's not likable?), and cast doubts about her candidacy by making sexist electability arguments. Besides sexist bias, Warren also has to contend with the media’s powerful bias against the Left. Her standing in the polls began to suffer when centrist pundits started directing their fire against Warren. In the debates, she has faced harsh “How will you pay for that?” questions about her Medicare for All plan, yet none of the moderators asked her centrist rivals how they plan to deal with the crisis of some 28 million uninsured Americans. Media coverage of her wealth tax has been largely negative, with the media repeatedly elevating the voices of random billionaires who oppose the tax while ignoring the millions of Americans—parents who desperately need child care, students who can't afford to go college, graduates burdened by crushing debt—who would benefit from it.

An aggressive, proactive communications strategy by a Warren administration could blunt the impact of negative media coverage. Hauser says that to the extent Warren’s agenda focuses on executive action rather than legislation, “It will give her an opportunity to potentially control the conversation.” A president whose primary focus is getting legislation passed on Capitol Hill will “necessarily provide Congressional Republicans an enormous microphone.” But, says Hauser, if Warren’s agenda is focused on unleashing the regulatory powers of the executive branch, “the only people who have the microphone will be the various corporate interests getting rolled over by Warren appointees across the government. And I think that those are communications battles the president's much more capable of winning.” 

Our country lacks a well-organized Left, perhaps the biggest obstacle of all to progressive, transformative change. Left-wing parties in Europe have an institutional base in strong labor unions, but in the United States, union density is low and the labor movement is weak and not uniformly progressive. Nevertheless, transformative change is, perhaps, possible. In the wake of the Great Recession, we’ve seen a huge upsurge in progressive activism, including Occupy Wall Street, Fight for 15, Black Lives Matter, the immigration and climate justice movements, the revival of the Democratic Socialists of America, #MeToo and waves of teacher strikes.

Warren laid out her theory of change most clearly at a September 2019 campaign event in New York. In her speech, Warren referenced the tragic 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory to tell a story of change in America: how the fire led to a dramatic upsurge in activism with some half a million people taking to the streets in a union-organized funeral march for the workers. Warren said that “the women of the trade unions kept pushing from the outside” and Frances Perkins, then a labor activist, “pushed from the inside.” Together, they rewrote New York state labor law from top to bottom to protect workers. When she became FDR’s labor secretary, Perkins followed the same model for change. The result, Warren said, was the “big structural change” of the New Deal: “Social Security, unemployment insurance, abolition of child labor, minimum wage, the right to join a union and even the very existence of the weekend.”

Warren sees a clear distinction between social movements pressing for change from the outside and the elected officials (like herself) working the system from within. Warren’s progressive rival, Bernie Sanders, sees the role of the president differently, saying he would act as “organizer-in-chief” to lead a mass movement for change.

But Sanders’ position fails to understand the structural reality of how politics works and what presidents do. Presidents are inside actors; movements are outside actors. Movements exist independently from parties and candidates and draw their power from their ability to extend or withdraw their support at will. The American presidents who have brought about fundamental change (take FDR and the labor movement, or LBJ and the civil rights movement) worked closely with movements, listened to movements, set a tone that encouraged movements, coordinated politically with movements—but did not lead or organize movements.

Sanders, like Warren, clearly appreciates that movements are the motor that drives change, and a Sanders administration, like a Warren administration, would partner with movements to achieve change. Both candidates offer a compelling vision that can inspire people, and both share the goal of orienting America closer to social democracy. While Sanders is to the left of Warren on most issues, that difference is unlikely to matter much in practice (with the important exception of foreign policy) because both would be seriously constrained by a political environment significantly to the right of their proposed agendas.

Warren holds two important advantages over Sanders. The first is her gender. By itself, gender should not be a determining factor. But in two candidates that are as closely matched as Sanders and Warren, gender does come into play. Electing our first female president may be symbolic, but symbols matter. Research suggests that when women run for office, they inspire more women to do the same. Our government is currently ranked 76th in the world on the share of women elected to our national legislature. Studies show that women who are elected to higher office are more likely than men to champion women’s issues such as childcare, reproductive justice, family-friendly labor policies, women’s health and the minimum wage.

Warren’s chief advantage over Sanders, however, is that she is more likely to deliver on the implementation of her proposals. According to the most recent report cards compiled by the independent organization GovTrack, Warren has been more successful than Sanders in introducing legislation, getting cosponsors, getting her bills out of committee and writing bills that became law. Warren also dreamed up, designed and implemented a government agency: the CFPB, which, to date, has provided more than $13 billion in relief to distressed consumers. Sanders has a record he can be deeply proud of, but no comparable legislative achievements. Warren combines a strong strategic sense with an unparalleled understanding of the possibilities of the executive branch. Her skill set is a better match for the job.

Ultimately, of course, one person—even with all the powers of the presidency at her command—can only do so much. Warren would need movements that pressure her to do the right thing and hold her accountable when she falls short. But movements on the Left have been gaining strength. In many ways, Trump’s presidency has been about suppressing an America that is trying to be born. Warren would very much like to midwife the birth of that new America. But only if Americans create social disruption on a mass scale will she have the opportunity to do so.

This was one of two cover stories of In These Times' dual-sided January issue. For a complementary perspective, read the alternate cover feature, "What a Bernie Sanders Presidency Would Look Like," by Daniel Denvir. [<--CHRIS INSERT LINK]

The views expressed in this piece are the author's own. As a 501(c)3 nonprofit, In These Times does not oppose or endorse candidates for political office.

Imagine Elizabeth Warren as President. Now Imagine Bernie Sanders.

When we first conceived this dual-cover issue of In These Times, early in fall 2019, die-hard supporters of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren already seemed caught in an endless loop.

Frustrated Sanders fans criticized Warren for jumping in after she sat out 2016, standing a little to Sanders’ right and pulling progressive support. Defensive Warren fans, worried Sanders had plateaued, had high hopes for a female candidate who seemed fresh and full of momentum. Attacks and parries followed: She’s a capitalist; no, they’re both social democrats. He’s a class reductionist; no, he’s building a multi-racial coalition. Wall Street secretly likes her; no, Wall Street definitely hates her. He’s bad on reparations and makes nativist comments; she’s terrible on foreign policy. She’s cynically copying Sanders; no, she’s been like this for a decade. Nobody seemed to convince anyone, and a lot of people remained quietly torn as the primaries approached. How to break the loop? In These Times decided to approach the debate in a new way. Policies had been compared ad nauseam, but what did Sanders and Warren supporters imagine these presidencies would actually look like? How would each overcome all the forces arrayed against them—Republicans, establishment Democrats, the Supreme Court, corporations? We asked two prominent progressive journalists and thinkers, Daniel Denvir and Kathleen Geier—Sanders and Warren supporters, respectively—to lay out the likely course of each presidency. Then we invited two activists and scholars, Brian Tokar and Rachel Gilmer, to rebut their cases. The arguments in all four pieces surprised, engaged and challenged me. Whether or not anything here changes your thinking, I hope it feels new. Just as this political moment does.

"What a Bernie Sanders Presidency Would Look Like" by Daniel Denvir

A rebuttal by Brian Tokar: "Why Bernie Can't Be Organizer-In-Chief": (coming soon)

"What an Elizabeth Warren Presidency Would Look Like," by Kathleen Geier

A rebuttal by Rachel Gilmer: "Warren's an Ally. We Need a Leader." (coming soon)

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/25/tory-nhs-shake-up-blamed-for-fall-in-child-vaccination-rates

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Windows Subsystem for Linux is a horrible, pointless initiative... unless you're Microsoft.

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Ring claims its primary business is the security of its customers. Yet the company has failed to follow even basic data security best practices, opting instead to put the burden on its customers. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/12/ring-throws-customers-under-bus-after-data-breach

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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jan/04/cambridge-analytica-data-leak-global-election-manipulation

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