INDIANOLA, Iowa — “Process” is supposedly boring and obscure. Ordinary people supposedly want substance instead.
Yet Elizabeth Warren, on the campaign trail, is doing her best to talk about the process. And she may be taking her cues from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who did the same thing in 2016 with great success.
Warren’s homepage doesn’t lead with policies such as healthcare, goals such as economic equality, or even principles. It leads with talk of democracy: “We’re building a grassroots movement to fight corruption head on and put power in the hands of the people.”
The Massachusetts senator constantly brags about how democratic her campaign has been. She’s held up her tens of thousands of “selfies” as a “new measure of democracy.” Her rally Sunday morning in Indianola, like most of her late-Iowa rallies, began with a riff on all her town halls, remarking on how tough questions and voters “pushing” her has refined and influenced her views. “You have made me a better candidate, and you will make me a better president,” Warren said.
The message: Through Warren, ordinary voters are empowered.
This was the true heart of Sanders’s campaign in 2016. More than socialism, more than Medicare for All, more than student loan forgiveness, Sanders’s campaign was about the process.
“If this campaign is about anything,” Sanders said at a rally in a 2016 rally in New Hampshire, “it is about revitalizing American democracy — making sure that every American knows how powerful he or she is to determine the future of this great country.”
It worked for Sanders. Young people flocked to him because they were desperately seeking a sense of political agency.
And like Sanders, Warren tries to make the democratic process sexy by making it about corruption and undue influence. Sanders spent most of 2016 raging against Citizens United. Warren, too, talks a lot about how money corrupts politics.
“Money is choking off our Democracy,” Warren said Sunday morning. She argued that rich people “may own more shoes, they may own more cars, they may own more houses, but they’re not supposed to own a bigger piece of our democracy.”
And Warren addresses the issue in Bernie-like terms of revolution. “If we want to change” the role of money in politics, she says, “we’re not going to be able to do it with just a little nibble around the edge. One little statue over here, a couple of regulations over there. No, we want to beat back the influence of money. We want to save our democracy. We want to save our country. It’s going to take big structural change.”
When asked about climate change, Warren spent much of her answer on the meta-question of special-interest politics. “Everybody wants to talk to you about climate change; they got a lot of good plans. Yay.
“But unless you’re willing to attack the corruption head-on, and unless you’re willing to take on the oil industry, unless you’re willing to take on the big polluters unless, you’re willing to fight corruption and the influence of money and lobby,” nothing significant will happen, Warren argues.
When asked for a female role model, Warren named Frances Perkins, who became President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of labor. Warren’s talk about Perkins was heavy on how she took on powerful big businesses. When asked about big tech, Warren said the problem was the concentrated power of companies such as Amazon.
Often Warren sets aside the substance and focuses on the process. How could this be appealing? Because a big part of what people want isn’t specific policy outcomes, but the knowledge that their voices matter. Warren hopes this message will inspire enough people in Iowa and New Hampshire to nominate her.
