Democrats hijacked by ideologically extreme Elizabeth Warren
Scrutiny of the party’s most ideologically extreme candidate in memory is overdue.
At last, serious questions are being asked in the US about the radical agenda of rising Democrat presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren.
The overdue scrutiny has been prompted by a series of new polls showing the populist left-winger fast gaining on the moderate Joe Biden as the frontrunner for her party’s nomination.
This has coincided with the release of an extraordinary document from Warren which seeks to explain the magic pudding-style funding plan for her $US20.5 trillion ‘Medicare for all’ proposal to create a universal healthcare program across the US.
Don’t get me wrong, America’s health care system is diabolical and it urgently needs greater government investment to create a better safety net for ordinary people.
Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was far from perfect but it was at least a step in that direction. Even then, many Republicans opposed being forced to pay higher premiums, believing it was an infringement of their freedom.
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Moderate Democrat candidates such as former Vice President Biden and South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg are proposing a logical extension of the medical benefits offered under Obamacare while still allowing Americans to keep their private health insurance if they wish.
What Warren proposes goes even beyond the universal health care schemes in Australia and Britain by scrapping the option of private health insurance entirely, forcing the cancellation of private insurance for around 160 million Americans.
She has costed the scheme – a costing which the Wall Street Journal describes as a ‘fiscal and health-care fantasy’ – at $US20.5 trillion over ten years despite three other major US studies costing it at far more, between $US31 trillion and $US34 trillion.
Warren maintains that she can fund this entirely through massive taxes hikes on business and on the wealthy without asking middle class taxpayers for a single extra cent – a claim which her fellow Democrats Biden and even the socialist Bernie Sanders – who advocates a similar scheme – say is fantasy.
Warren is campaigning on a broad far-left agenda far more radical than anything ever proposed by the two-term Democrat presidents Obama and Bill Clinton.
She is, in effect, proposing to remake the US economy, including lifting the corporate tax rate from 21 per cent to 35 per cent, a 2 per cent wealth tax on the richest Americans and steep cuts to defence spending.
She would use these proceeds to pay for universal health and child care, a cancellation of student debt and aggressive action on climate change.
Goldman Sachs last week released an open letter saying Warren’s economic plan could slash corporate earnings by 11 per cent while others have predicted a double-digit decline in the stock market if Warren is elected.
The biggest political problem with Warren’s agenda is that it is so extreme at a time when Democrat presidential nominee must win back the votes of those moderates in the swing states who voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
If these moderates baulked at the modest health care reforms of Obamacare, they will be horrified by the sweeping revolution being proposed by Warren.
Democrat house leader Nancy Pelosi is understandably worried that the Democrats are marching towards electoral suicide if they nominate either Warren or Sanders to run against Trump.
“What works in San Francisco does not necessarily work in Michigan,” Pelosi said this week in a thinly-veiled jab at Warren and Sanders.
The US media is suddenly littered with editorials and opinion pieces warning of the dangers of Warren’s plan with headlines Tuesday (AEST) such as “Elizabeth Warren’s Health Care Albatross (NYT) and ‘Warren has a Fantasy Plan’ (WSJ).
Warren’s mantra on the campaign trail is that ‘our democracy has been hijacked by the rich and powerful.’
The danger for the Democrats is that they are being hijacked by Warren who would be the party’s most ideologically extreme candidate in memory.
I was in a room in Washington a few days ago with former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus who claimed that if Warren won the nomination, it would “gift” the election to Donald Trump because voters in the Mid-West would see her as “crazy.”
He may be right.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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