From E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s Washington Post column “Progressive Frenemies“:

Earlier this month, Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware, a proud Democratic centrist, published a thoughtful essay on the Atlantic’s Web site under a very polemical headline: “Americans Need Jobs, Not Populism.” Take that, Elizabeth Warren.
The Massachusetts Democrat is clearly unpersuaded. In a powerful speech to the California Democratic Convention last weekend, she used variations on the word “fight” 21 times. “This country isn’t working for working people,” Warren declared. “It’s working only for those at the top.” If populism is a problem, Warren has not received the message.
There’s other grist for this narrative. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was reelected this year only after a spirited battle during which his opponent, Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, labeled him “Mayor 1 Percent.” And every other day, it seems, there’s a report about Hillary Clinton being under pressure either to “move left” or to resist doing so.

Dionne acknowledges that “there are real dividing lines within the center-left” on issues such as trade, public education reform and public employee pension costs. But he sees the “us vs. them frame” as problematic:

..A post on the Democratic Strategist Web site in March argued that “slinging essentially vacuous stereotypes like ‘corporate centrists’ and ‘left wing populists’ ” inevitably leads to “a vicious downward spiral of mutual recrimination.”
The larger difficulty is that the epithets exaggerate the differences between two sides that in fact need each other. There is political energy in the populist critique because rising inequality and concentrated wealth really are an outrage. But the centrists offer remedies that, in most cases, the populists accept.
Both Markell and Warren, for example, have emphasized the importance of business growth and job creation. In her California speech, Warren described the need for policies that foster prosperity while “bending it toward more opportunity for everyone.” Her priorities were not far from those Markell outlined in his article.
There was nothing exotically left-wing about Warren’s call for “education for our kids, roads and bridges and power so businesses could grow and get their goods to market and build good jobs here in America, research so we would have a giant pipeline of ideas that would permit our children and grandchildren to build a world we could only dream about.”
For his part, Markell freely acknowledged that “the altered economic terrain is preventing new wealth from being broadly shared,” that “income inequality is growing worse,” and that “a huge number of Americans are economically insecure.” Growth is “necessary, but not sufficient,” and he made the case for “a decent minimum wage,” “affordable and quality health care,” and support for a dignified retirement.
Sen. Warren and Gov. Markell, would you kindly give each other a call?

As the populists-centrists conflict plays out, “they would do well to remember the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s observation that it’s always wise to seek the truth in our opponents’ error, and the error in our own truth,” says Dionne. Further, “to win the presidency, one of Clinton’s central tasks will be to move both sides in the progressive argument to embrace Niebuhr’s counsel.”

The following article by Democratic strategist Robert Creamer, author of “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” is cross-posted from HuffPo:

There has been a flurry of recent commentary about the “battle” between the Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren wings of the Democratic Party — a supposed contest for the party’s soul.
But by and large, the battle for control for the ideological center of the Democratic Party has been settled — and it is likely that Hilary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren were never the real protagonists.
There are still pro-Wall Street, corporatist — and even socially conservative — elements in the Democratic coalition. But the center of the Party has consolidated around progressive principles as never before with respect to economic, social and foreign policy.
There may be some differences in style and emphasis, but it’s hard to tell the difference between a Clinton speech and a Warren speech when it comes to most economic questions — and particularly when it comes to the overarching narrative.
There is increasing consensus in the Democratic Party leadership and rank and file with respect to the reasons why the incomes of ordinary Americans have flat-lined even though the economy has grown.
And there is increasing consensus in the Democratic Party with respect to the solutions.
You might summarize the emerging Democratic economic consensus something like this:
Since the disastrous Great Recession, our economy has been going in the right direction under President Obama’s leadership, but we need to make sure that average Americans benefit when it grows.
That means that we have to reform government so that it works for average Americans, not wealthy special interests.
Too many politicians have given in to the power of lobbyists for big business and the wealthy, and changed the rules to make it easier for companies to lay off workers, get rid of unions, raid pension funds, ship jobs overseas, and keep wages low.
Corporate CEOs and billionaires keep getting new tax breaks, while average Americans struggle to provide for their families. Ordinary people have seen their incomes flat-line because politicians have stacked the deck against middle class people in favor of the rich. As a result CEOs who used to make 20 times what they paid their workers and not make almost 300 times what they pay their workers. And the Wall Street bankers and speculators continue to get bigger and bigger bonuses — even though the recklessness of the big Wall Street banks wrecked the economy and caused the Great Recession.
Instead, our government we should focus on improving the incomes of average Americans, not creating loopholes and subsidies for big corporations. If you work hard and play by the rules in this country, you should be paid enough to live on and support your family, and retire securely. A thriving middle class isn’t just the result of a strong economy — it builds a strong economy. When average people have money in their pockets, we are able to support local businesses and the economy grows.
We should use tax dollars to build roads and create jobs, instead of tax breaks for millionaires.
And we should get big money out of politics — government should help level the playing field, not rig the system for the powerful.
That’s a powerful narrative and it isn’t just supported by most Democrats — it is resonant with most Americans.
The same goes for social policy. Twenty years ago issues like immigration reform, reproductive choice, gay marriage — even civil rights — were wedge issues inside the Democratic Party. No longer.
Today banners supporting immigration reform, abortion rights, gay marriage and voting rights are proudly displayed at Democratic Conventions. Instead these issues are all wedge issues inside the Republican Party.
And the same can be said for foreign policy. No serious leader of the Democratic Party supports another ground war in the Middle East. There is virtual unanimity that the Iraq War was a horrible mistake that kicked over the sectarian hornets’ nest and created the conditions leading to the problems we have today — especially the rise of ISIL.
The only area of major policy division in the Democratic Party today is trade, and even there most of the Democratic Party has united around a consensus position that is very skeptical of trade deals that increase the power of large corporations and drag down the wages of American workers.
In fact, in the last 30 years, we have rarely seen such consensus on policy inside the Democratic Party — and the progressive coalition at its core. One reason is that most Americans when asked agree with virtually all of these positions.

Read more…

There’s just no end to the “Dems in Disarray” meme, no matter how large or chaotic the GOP presidential aspirant field, nor how unified the Democrats may be at any given political moment. The latest installment comes from TheNew York Times Magazine, where Robert Draper’s “The Great Democratic Crack-up of 2016,” regurgitates a few shopworn arguments, while ignoring considerable evidence to the contrary.
TDS managing editor Ed Kilgore put Draper’s screed in adult perspective earlier this week. For another well-crafted critique, read Heather Digby Parton’s Salon.com post, “What the New York Times gets shockingly wrong about the future of the Democratic Party.” Among Parton’s observations:

The piece uses the Senate seat being vacated by the liberal Barbara Mikulski of Maryland as the example of the Party’s awful turmoil, what with liberal congressman Chris Van Hollen running against liberal congresswoman Donna Edwards for the privilege of becoming the liberal senator from a liberal state.
Why this is considered a microcosm for the foul state of the Democratic Party nationwide is explained by making Van Hollen into a “practical” sort-of centrist, fighting for the integrity of his party against a left-wing firebrand, Edwards. Unfortunately, all of that is claptrap.
Both Van Hollen and Edwards come from the liberal wing of the party, the main difference between them being that Van Hollen has been very active in the leadership and therefore had to carry water for the administration from time to time, while Edwards has been a progressive movement candidate from the very beginning of her career and has earned the loyalty of members of that movement. It is hardly surprising that progressive groups would back her over Van Hollen — she has been a model congresswoman.
…And yes, many of these progressives would like to see an African-American woman replace the elder stateswoman Barbara Mikulski. Seeing as there are still only 20 out of 100 senators who are female, and only two African-Americans, given the choice between two qualified liberal candidates is anyone surprised that progressives would choose the woman who has been responsive to them her entire career?

Parton adds, “to cast this race as one that represents a huge schism in the party between the business wing and the populist wing is a ridiculous stretch…But the day after the election, everyone will coalesce around the winner, guaranteed.”
Draper amplifies the “disarray” meme in his analysis of the 2014 midterms, and Parton responds:

..And mixing up the races of 2010, 2012 and 2014 like that is a very big mistake. Why? Because in presidential years the Democrats do a lot better and in midterms the Republicans do a lot better. Who survives in those circumstances has a lot less to do with ideology and a lot more to do with the makeup of the electorate.
Ed Kilgore, who literally wrote the book about why Republicans swept the 2014 midterms (“without once considering the argument that Democrats lost because they were in the grip of mad lefty hippies, or because they had sold their souls to Wall Street,” as he himself describes it), actually consulted the experts and looked at the numbers and discovered that such things as “turnout patterns, the economy, the electoral landscape, and the long history of second-term midterm disasters for the party controlling the White House” were more salient than this stale narrative about Democrats searching aimlessly for their misbegotten souls.

Parton acknowledges, “Yes, there are tensions within the party. It’s a very big party. But there have always been tensions within both of the parties…The political establishment calls this “disarray” and characterizes it as some kind of tearing at the fabric of our civic life. In reality, it’s just democracy.”
You want ‘disarray’? Check out the flip-floppage in the day to day pronouncements of Jeb Bush or Rand Paul.

NYT columnist Paul Krugman has a couple of instructive pieces about the importance of history and memory in politics, and Democrats who want to win in 2016 ought to read both of them.
In his ‘Conscience of a Liberal’ blog Krugman opens with a chart indicating that favorable ratings of George W. Bush have increased in Gallup Polls by 14 percent (from 35-49) for all Americans between March 2009 and June 2013. For Democrats Dubya’s approvals have increased by 14 points (from 10-24) during that time frame, with a 12 percent improvement for Republicans (from 72-84) and a 17 percent (from 29-46) uptick for self-described “Independents.”
Considering, as Krugman succinctly puts it, that “George W. Bush presided over utter disaster on all fronts,” leaving the U.S. and world economies in a horrific shambles, it is amazing that half of all respondents have a favorable impression of him.
The charitable take on all this historical denial is that Americans are a forgiving people, to a fault. An alternative perspective is that we are the most easily-distracted people on the planet. Or worse, a nation with an astoundingly gullible electorate.
To be fair Americans’ passion for historical denial started well before Bush II. And Democrats have to bear some of the blame. As Krugman explains,

…Progressives are much too willing to cede history to the other side. Legends about the past matter. Really bad economics flourishes in part because Republicans constantly extol the Reagan record, while Democrats rarely mention how shabby that record was compared with the growth in jobs and incomes under Clinton.

Krugman warns, “nonetheless, Jeb is adopting the same policies and even turning to the same advisers.” And it’s not just Jeb Bush. “It’s actually quite horrifying, if you think about it, to hear Republican contenders for president unveil their big ideas, which are to slash taxes on rich people, deregulate banks, and bomb or invade countries we don’t like. What could go wrong?”
Republican historical revisionism is essential to their hopes for 2016. As Krugman notes in his blog’s conclusion, “There’s a reason conservatives constantly publish books and articles glorifying Harding and Coolidge while sliming FDR; there’s a reason they’re still running against Jimmy Carter; and there’s a reason they’re doing their best to rehabilitate W. And progressives need to fight back.”
Krugman’s May 15 column, “Fraternity of Failure” coins a near perfect sobriquet for the GOP in light of their Dubya embrace/ambivalence/denial. First a proper pummeling for Jeb:

The big “Let’s move on” story of the past few days involved Mr. Bush’s response when asked in an interview whether, knowing what he knows now, he would have supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He answered that yes, he would. No W.M.D.? No stability after all the lives and money expended? No problem.
Then he tried to walk it back. He “interpreted the question wrong,” and isn’t interested in engaging “hypotheticals.” Anyway, “going back in time” is a “disservice” to those who served in the war.
Take a moment to savor the cowardice and vileness of that last remark. And, no, that’s not hyperbole. Mr. Bush is trying to hide behind the troops, pretending that any criticism of political leaders — especially, of course, his brother, the commander in chief — is an attack on the courage and patriotism of those who paid the price for their superiors’ mistakes. That’s sinking very low, and it tells us a lot more about the candidate’s character than any number of up-close-and-personal interviews.

Krugman then blasts Bush III for “the old passive-voice dodge, admitting only that “mistakes were made.” He notes that Jeb is getting the band back together, “a who’s-who of mistake-makers, people who played essential roles in the Iraq disaster and other debacles,” including Wolfowitz and Chertoff. “In Bushworld,” adds Krugman, “playing a central role in catastrophic policy failure doesn’t disqualify you from future influence. If anything, a record of being disastrously wrong on national security issues seems to be a required credential.”
Republicans, not just the Bushies, notes Krugman, suffer from a tribal incapacity for honest self-evaluation, characterized by a refusal to acknowledge or learn from mistakes. He recounts an extensive litany of failed GOP predictions about the consequences of policies
Krugman concludes with an astute observation and a chilling question: “It’s kind of a fraternity of failure: men and women united by a shared history of getting everything wrong, and refusing to admit it. Will they get the chance to add more chapters to their reign of error?”
Not if Democrats make sure that the Republican presidential nominees are forced to account for their records.

if you had to boil Republican electoral strategy down to just three elements, voter suppression, gerrymandering and fear-mongering white voters would do well enough. In her first installment of a two-parter at The New York Review of Books, Elizabeth Drew has a pretty good summary of the first two elements.
Drew’s review article draws from two books, “The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown” by Richard L. Hasen and “Democracy and Justice: Collected Writings,” edited by Desiree Ramos Reiner, Jim Lyons, Erik Opsal, Mikayla Terrell, and Lena Glaser.
Drew laments the horse-race obsession of the media and warns “growing dangers to a democratic election, ones that could decide the outcome, are being essentially overlooked. The three dangers are voting restrictions, redistricting, and loose rules on large amounts of money being spent to influence voters. In recent years, we’ve been moving further and further away from a truly democratic election system.” Further,

The considerable outrage in 2012 over the systematic effort in Republican-dominated states to prevent blacks, Hispanics, students, and the elderly from being able to vote–mainly aimed at limiting the votes of blacks and Hispanics–might have been expected to lead to a serious effort to fix the voting system. But quite the reverse occurred. In fact, in some of the major races in 2014, according to the highly respected Brennan Center for Justice, the difference in the number of votes between the victor and the loser closely mirrored the estimated number of people who had been deprived of the right to vote. And in the North Carolina Senate race, the number of people prevented from voting exceeded the margin between the loser and the winner.
But even if it cannot be shown that the suppression of votes made the difference in the outcome of an important race in a given state, that doesn’t exactly make voter suppression benign. Hundreds of thousands of people are being denied their constitutionally guaranteed right to vote. They have the misfortune of living in a state controlled by one party that wants to deprive the other party of as many votes as possible of the groups that tend heavily to support it. The ostensible rationale for such an effort–voter fraud–is itself a fraud.

Actually, hundreds of thousands is an understatement. Nationwide, the number runs into seven figures well before all states are tallied. Drew documents successful GOP voter suppression operations in several states. We’ll just share her report on one pivotal swing state:

In North Carolina shortly before the 2014 election, Thom Tillis, the speaker of the state House of Representatives and the Republican candidate for the US Senate against the incumbent Kay Hagan, rushed through the legislature one of the harshest voting laws in the country. It cut back the number of days for early voting, eliminated same-day registration, and prohibited people from voting outside their home precincts–all forms of voting heavily relied upon by blacks. Tillis defeated Hagan by 48,000 votes. One way to look at this is that in 2012, 700,000 people voted on those early voting days that were later cut; and 100,000 voters, almost one third of whom were black, had previously been able to register and vote on the same day. North Carolina hadn’t yet imposed a voter ID law in 2014, but one is in place for the next election.

Throw in the more than 600,000 disenfranchised voters of Texas, reported by Drew, and we are already well over a million voters unjustly denied ballot access — in just two states. The tally is in the same ballpark as those numbers in Florida, and will likely get worse with Bush or Rubio on the 2016 Republican ticket. As Drew reports, “In his book The Voting Wars, Richard Hasen, an expert on election law, writes, “Florida mainly taught political operatives the benefits of manipulating the rules…. Election law has become part of a political strategy.”
Drew chronicles the explosion of new voter i.d. laws in the wake of the Supreme Court decision eviscerating the Voting Rights Act, noting “forty new voter restrictions were introduced in seventeen states during the first few weeks of 2015 alone…as of late March of this year thirty-two such laws were in effect.”
It’s going to get worse. Drew adds, “Republicans are in total control of twenty-four states whereas the Democrats have total control of only seven. The lesson seems to be that once Republicans get total power at the state level, they find a way to rig the rules to keep the other side’s strongest constituencies from voting.” In addition,

Numerous Republican leaders understand that their party cannot win future national elections as long as it’s seen as hostile to minorities, but because of the very rightward cast of its primary and caucus voters and the early primaries in South Carolina and Florida (and even the possibility of a regional southern primary), someone seeking the Republican nomination now is not likely to support voting rights for blacks.

African Americans who are able to vote have had their ballot power diluted by Republican gerrymandering, as Drew explains:

…The most widely used way to limit the effect of black votes was to redraw voting districts. It used to be that black leaders worked with white legislators to guarantee that there would be enough blacks in a district that they could elect a black to represent them. More recently, the problem has become that in redrawing districts some states pack as many blacks as they can into a district, so they can reduce the total number of blacks elected to office and have the rest of their candidates run in safely white ones–which also reduces black political power.

As for reform prospects, “As of early April of this year, eighty-seven bills had been introduced around the country to reform redistricting practices. Twenty of them call for independent commissions; most of them try to cut back on gerrymandering. Two bipartisan bills have been introduced in the House that would encourage the establishing of independent commissions, or require the states to publish proposed redistricting plans online and give the citizens an opportunity to comment on them before they’re adopted.”
But none of these reforms are given much chance to succeed, given Republican majorities in both houses of congress. For that to change, the only hope is a broad Democratic victory in 2016. The alternative is further erosion of voting rights on an unprecedented scale. At some point it seems that voting rights must become more of a leading issue for Democrats. As Drew and others have warned, it’s not just about the domination of one political party over another. When specific groups are being locked out of the political process in massive and increasing numbers, democracy itself is very much at risk.

At In These Times Jim Naureckas has an interesting post, “Why Don’t the American People Want to Tax the Rich? Oh Wait, They Do: Despite what the New York Times would have you believe, Americans have said over and over that they want the wealthy to pay more.” Naureckas, editor of Extra!, the magazine of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), presents data which pulverizes Neil Irwin’s New York Times article “Why Americans Don’t Want to Soak the Rich“:

…When I look at polling over time on taxing the wealthy, what’s striking to me is how consistently popular it is. Gallup has asked 17 times since 1992 whether upper-income people pay too much, too little or their fair share of federal taxes, and every time a majority has said they pay too little. Only twice-in 2010 and 2011-have less than 60 percent said they thought the rich were not paying enough federal taxes.
The same series of Gallup polls found people saying that lower-income and middle-income people were paying either their fair share or too much in taxes. Corporations, like the wealthy, were seen as paying too little, by an even wider margin–only twice in 11 repetitions of the question did less than 66 percent say corporate taxes were not high enough.
And the Gallup results are no outlier. An AP/GfK poll from February found 68 percent saying that wealthy households pay too little in federal taxes. Politifact cited a handful of polls, with findings that range from 59 percent to 72 percent, in support of Paul Krugman’s claim that “large majorities support higher, not lower, taxes on the wealthy.”
And it’s not just taxes on the wealthy; on the relatively rare occasions when they’re asked to pick a side in the class conflict, the American people generally choose the left side of the field:
“The income gap between wealthy Americans and those who are less well off”: 51 percent called it “a major problem,” while 15 percent said it was “not a problem” (ABC News/Washington Post, 1/12-15/15)
“The economic system in this country unfairly favors powerful interests”: 62 percent agree (Pew, 2/18/15)
“Should the government do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor in this country?”: 55 percent say yes (CBS News, 1/9-12/15)
“The government should work to substantially reduce the income gap between the rich and the poor”: 66 percent agree (CNN/ORC, 1/31-2/2/14)
“Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country is fair, or do you feel that the money and wealth in this country should be more evenly distributed among more people?”: 62 percent called for more redistribution (CBS News, 1/17-21/14)
“How much, if anything, should the government do to reduce the gap between the rich and everyone else?”: 69 percent said “a lot” or “some”; 26 percent said “not much” or “nothing at all” (Pew, 1/15-19/14)

There are arguments about how much of a tax hike on the wealthy most Americans would like to see, and there are nuanced distinctions to be made about just who should be taxed more heavily and under what circumstances. But Irwin’s NYT piece now looks more like a pile of shreds than worthy tax policy strategy for Dems.

From Greg Sargent’s Plum Line post, “Morning Plum: Obama and the health law get some good poll numbers“:

The new Kaiser Family Foundation monthly tracking poll finds that Obamacare has edged ever so gingerly into positive territory: 43 percent of Americans approve of the law, while 42 percent disapprove of it.
That’s the first time the law has been in positive territory since the last presidential election. More to the point, it’s the first time the law has been in positive territory since implementation of the law began and it suffered hideous roll-out problems, followed by months and months of GOP hyping of every Obamacare horror story Republicans could find (or invent).

About time you say. Sargent adds, “46 percent of Americans overall want to move forward with implementation of it or expand it, versus 41 percent who want it scaled back or repealed. Independents are evenly split.” But he also cautions, “This is only one poll. The HuffPollster averages show the law is still a bit underwater.”
Yet, despite the non-stop Republican assault on Obamacare and their promises to offer a better alternative, which does away with individual mandates while providing protection for people with pre-existing conditions, “more than 50 months after first making such promises, they still have not hit on a consensus alternative that would do both of those things,” reports Sargent. It appears that the GOP is getting ossified internally by it’s own strategy of legislative paralysis.
Sargent concludes,

…if the Kaiser poll is right, only Republican voters remain fixated on doing away with the mandate as a leading priority — along with junking the law entirely. Meanwhile, the Kaiser poll shows that various improvements to consumer protections — which is to say, building on the ACA, not scrapping it — rank as the highest priorities for everyone else.

In the 2016 Republican convention, they will still be bashing away at Obamacare, calling for repeal and replacing it with nothing but vague promises about something better. It should be a revealing moment for alert swing voters, affirming that this is a political party which shows no signs of being able to unite behind anything resembling a credible health care alternative — a pathetic reality after 8 years of relentless Obamacare-bashing.

The following article by Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from HuffPo:
Elizabeth Warren has given her fair share of great speeches, and has written some outstanding legislation on reforming Wall Street, but her speech on April 15 to the Hyman P. Minsky Conference was the best Wall Street policy speech I have ever heard her, or anyone, ever give. It was comprehensive without being a laundry list of in-the-weeds wonkiness. It laid out a strong philosophical rationale for why we need to do these reforms, and it was politically compelling as well.
Her politically compelling argument laid out a strong philosophical rationale for why we need these reforms. Perhaps most importantly, she did all this while masterfully refuting the hackneyed attacks about her being anti-business, anti-growth, and anti-market forces.
Warren’s series of proposed reforms would be a major and much needed boost to an economy still held down by the Wall Street abuses that brought on the collapse of the massive housing bubble, the 2008 financial collapse, and the hardest hitting economic slowdown since the Great Depression. Here is an outline of her proposals:

• Hold financial institutions and individuals accountable for cheating customers
• Close the auto loan loophole and extend CFPB oversight to auto dealers
• Stop financial fraud recidivism by preventing any institution from entering into a non-prosecution agreement or deferred prosecution agreement if they are already operating under such an agreement
• Deter future financial fraud by imposing a mandatory minimum monetary penalty at least equal to the profits generated by the illegal conduct and strengthening judicial review of deferred prosecution and non-prosecution agreements
• Strengthen enforcement by requiring the Fed’s Board of Governors to vote on all major supervisory and regulatory matters, and giving each Governor his or her own staff
• Stop financial institutions from passing risk on to taxpayers
• Cap the size of financial institutions as originally proposed by Senators Brown and Kaufman
• Reinstate the barrier between commercial banking and investment banking as proposed in the 21th Century Glass-Steagall Act
• Improve market discipline by restricting the Fed’s emergency lending authority
• Change tax policies that encourage excessive risk-taking and financial instability
• Close the bonus loophole that allows financial institutions to write off billions in executive bonuses each year
• Limit highly leveraged financial institutions from fully deducting their interest payments
• Institute a targeted financial transactions tax
• Create simple, structural rules for regulating the shadow banking sector

There are a number of important policy goals here, of course: basic fairness to consumers, a more level playing field for everyone, ending the era of the Too Big To Fail banking system, holding cheaters in the financial system more accountable, keep taxpayers from being on the hook for the big banks’ risky speculation, and discouraging excessive risk-taking. All of those these are incredibly important things that will make the financial system in this country far more healthy. At the heart of this agenda, though, is one simple idea: making the financial markets work better. As Warren says in her speech:

“…without some basic rules and accountability, financial markets don’t work. People get ripped off, risk-taking explodes, and the markets blow up. That’s just an empirical fact – clearly observable in 1929 and again in 2008.
The point is worth repeating because, for too long, the opponents of financial reform have cast this debate as an argument between the pro-regulation camp and the pro-market camp, generally putting Democrats in the first camp and Republicans in the second. But that so-called choice gets it wrong. Rules are not the enemy of markets. Rules are a necessary ingredient for healthy markets, for markets that create competition and innovation. And rolling back the rules or firing the cops can be profoundly anti-market.
Right now the Republicans are pushing an anti-market agenda.”

Warren hits the nail on the head. To be pro-business and pro-market, you have to some rules that guarantee a level playing field, you have to have cops on the beat, and you have to have a regulatory and judicial system willing to actually prosecute the businesses who actually break the rules — no matter how big, wealthy, and powerful those businesses are in the marketplace and political system. Market competition does not work if one business is so big and powerful that it can squeeze out its competitors, and if the rules give unfair advantages only to the richest and most politically powerful.
The people who refer to Elizabeth Warren as anti-business just don’t get it. What she is in reality is anti-predator, anti-cheater, anti-monopolist, and anti-cronyism. If you have a fair system that regulates those market and competition-stifling things, then it helps the vast majority of businesses to fairly compete. What this speech reminds us is that Elizabeth Warren is a pro-business, pro-market progressive.
Here’s a link to the text of the speech, and here is the speech itself: