It is debate night in Charleston. Warren and Sanders are yelling slogans about the banks and the billionaires. This may be good campaign strategy but their words can hurt.
Look back at the good and the bad outcomes from past televised debates. Kennedy won cuz Nixon had a beard shadow. Reagan won cuz, well acting skills. As for Trump, I guess stalking Hillary worked for him!
As a Warren supporter, I am worried. Her strident attacks on Mike Bloomberg are not very different from the slogans that still echo from the 1999 world trade demonstrations that rocked downtown Seattle. Hell, Bernie could easily have been one of the folks on the streets here. I wonder how many of those demonstrators now work for Amazon?
Unless you want to go full bore cultural warfare a la Mao, the reality is that any President of the US will need to work with good people who have money. It is nuts to pretend that Google, Microsoft or Bloomberg News just arose from the mass efforts of “the people.”
Similarly, no politician can fix American healthcare without the help of the experts and the experts are not political advisers. Warren and Sanders should look at the efforts of Haven, a non-profit think tank founded by Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon. These three have the resources any President will need to change our broken system, .. an effort now beginning within Amazon.
The same is true of reforming the banks. Look, Russia and China want to unseat the dollar as the world currency. That is in their interest but not ours. Who else has our interest? The big banks! Who on that stage is an expert on banking? Warren sure, but Bloomberg for certain. While bank reform will mean fighting with the Jamie Dimens and their peers, if the “American people” are to win a banking battle, the will of the people will need to get at least the cooperation of the banks.
Hero politicians of today should look back at FDR. He even got the pro Nazi Henry Ford to work on the side of “the people.” Read up on how FDR organized his “brain trusts!”