Liberals have many ways of describing presidential aspirant Elizabeth Warren. Some choose to highlight her status as a feminist and female candidate, some her supposed “wonkiness” and imaginary policy chops. Others focus on a certain historical comparison to a past president liberals adore.
“Elizabeth Warren has a plan to finish what FDR started,” reads a glowing recent headline in The Nation. Meanwhile, at Bloomberg Opinion, writer Noah Smith lauds Warren’s “coherent, unified program for transforming the U.S. economy” and praises her as “the closest thing modern American politics has to a successor to FDR.” These are just two examples, but it’s been a common theme of the Democratic primary to date for progressive commentators to draw comparisons between former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Massachusetts senator turned 2020 front-runner.
And liberals are right: There are serious comparisons to be made between Warren and FDR. What they get wrong is that this is a positive thing. In reality, Warren should be aghast at the prospect of sharing any similarity with a statist, authoritarian tyrant like FDR.
Liberals love FDR for his implementation of the New Deal, a Depression-era welfare platform that included the creation of Social Security (boy, that’s working out well), public works projects, and other big-government programs. Similarly, Warren is campaigning for president on massive big-government proposals such as a government takeover of healthcare via “Medicare for all” and the socialization of higher education. The total price tag on her agenda is a whopping $38 to $48 trillion.
Another thing that makes the two similar is their willingness to put their policy agenda over the Constitution.
FDR famously threatened and intimidated the Supreme Court with court-packing in order to bully the justices into upholding his programs despite their dubious constitutionality. Now, Warren pushes an arguably unconstitutional wealth tax as a source of funding for her proposals, an unlawful ban on fracking, gun control by executive fiat, an anti-free speech lobbying ban, and more.
As veteran lawyer David French of National Review puts it, “proposing unconstitutional laws is a bad habit for Elizabeth Warren,” and “the Democrats’ law professor-politician is making promises that the Constitution simply won’t let her keep.”
“Elizabeth Warren Channels the Real New Deal. Her plans to remake the U.S. economy are as sweeping as FDR’s.” – @Noahpinion via @business #BigStructuralChange #Warren2020 https://t.co/UacRpAT9Pm
— California for Warren (@CA_for_Warren) October 3, 2019
In an interesting twist, some Warren supporters are embracing the FDR comparison, and Warren herself keeps a bust of the former president in her Senate office. So Warren and FDR do have a lot in common. They share a blatant disdain for the Constitution and a love for big government, no matter the cost.
