{"id":1315874,"date":"2019-10-20T18:36:01","date_gmt":"2019-10-21T00:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/thiessen-column-warrens-nomination-would-turn-the-election-into-an-existential-threat-to-the-economy\/"},"modified":"2019-10-20T18:36:01","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T00:36:01","slug":"thiessen-column-warrens-nomination-would-turn-the-election-into-an-existential-threat-to-the-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/thiessen-column-warrens-nomination-would-turn-the-election-into-an-existential-threat-to-the-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Thiessen column: Warren\u2019s nomination would turn the election into an existential threat to the economy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON \u2014 With three polls showing her in the lead, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., may soon eclipse former vice president Joe Biden as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. That\u2019s great news for Republicans, because Warren has a problem: The central message of her campaign is that the economy is working for the very wealthy but it is not working for ordinary Americans. Unfortunately for her, ordinary Americans disagree.<\/p>\n

A Marist poll asked voters whether \u201cthe economy is working well for you personally.\u201d Nearly two-thirds of Americans said yes. This includes large majorities in almost every demographic group. Sixty-seven percent of college graduates and 64% of those without a college education say the economy is working for them. So do 68% of whites, and 61% of nonwhite people. So do Americans of every generation: 63% of Generation Z and millennials; 69% of Generation X; 63% of baby boomers; and 69% of Greatest Generation and Silent Generation voters. So do supermajorities in every region in the country: 60% in the West, 65% in the Northeast, 67% in the Midwest, and 68% in the South. So do most voters in every type of American community: 63% of both big and small city voters; 64% of small-town voters; 66% of rural voters; and 72% of suburban voters. Most everyone, it seems, says the economy is working for them.<\/p>\n

The only groups who disagree, Marist found, are progressives (59%), Democratic women (55%) and those who are liberal or very liberal (55%). So, when Warren declares that President Trump is \u201cpart of a corrupt, rigged system that has helped the wealthy and the well-connected and kicked dirt in the faces of everyone else,\u201d it resonates with almost no one except those on the political left.<\/p>\n

There is a good reason for that. Unemployment is near a record low, and the United States has about 1.6 million more job openings than unemployed people to fill them. Not only are jobs plentiful, but wages are rising. And the New York Times reported in May that \u201cover the past year, low-wage workers have experienced the fastest pay increases.\u201d Americans don\u2019t just think they are doing better in the Trump economy, they are doing better. Little wonder Democrats barely mentioned the economy in Tuesday\u2019s debate.<\/p>\n

This progress is bad news for Warren. Why on earth would Americans rally to her call for \u201cbig structural change\u201d to the economy when they say the economy is working for them? Especially when they learn the structural changes Warren is proposing would cost tens of trillions of dollars and \u2014 whether she admits it or not \u2014 would require them to pay more in taxes?<\/p>\n

Manhattan Institute budget expert Brian Riedl recently added up the price tag for Warren\u2019s proposals, and the numbers are staggering: $30 trillion to $40 trillion over 10 years for Medicare-for-all; $2 trillion for Social Security expansion; $3 trillion for climate change and environmental policies; $2 trillion free college and student loan forgiveness; and another $1 trillion for initiatives that include free child care and housing. \u201cTotal cost: $38 trillion to $48 trillion,\u201d Riedl says. And that\u2019s before calculating the cost of offering free government health care to illegal immigrants, which Warren supports. There\u2019s no way to pay for that miasma of spending with Warren\u2019s wealth tax; it will require massive middle-class tax increases.<\/p>\n

No wonder the so-called moderates were going after Warren so hard at Tuesday\u2019s debate; they know it would be a disaster if she were to capture the Democratic nomination. To win in 2020, Democrats need to win over voters who like Trump\u2019s policies but don\u2019t like Trump. They can\u2019t do that by telling these voters they are wrong about the economy working for them, and that they need to make peace with socialism. Instead, they need to convince voters that they can dump Trump and still keep their prosperity.<\/p>\n

If Democrats nominate Warren, they will give voters suffering from Trump exhaustion no safe harbor. Her nomination would turn the election into an existential threat to the American economy. And since Warren said Tuesday that, if she is elected, and Democrats take back the Senate, they will \u201crepeal the filibuster,\u201d she will be able to pass her radical agenda by simple majority vote. That means Trump\u2019s message \u2014 \u201cwhether you love me or hate me, you have got to vote for me\u201d \u2014 will ring true for millions of Americans whose votes might otherwise be up for grabs.<\/p>\n

Follow Marc A. Thiessen on Twitter, @marcthiessen. (c) 2019, The Washington Post Writers Group<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 With three polls showing her in the lead, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., may soon eclipse former vice president Joe Biden as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. That\u2019s great news for Republicans, because Warren has a problem: The central message of her campaign is that the economy is working for the very […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 17:23:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}