In Making A Case For Herself, Elizabeth Warren Is Also Making A Case For A Progressive Future

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is up for reelection in November, so she’s out making the case for herself. But the case isn’t actually just for herself. She’s very aware she’s also making the case for progressive policymaking and goals at a time when moderates are hoping to wrest some power away from the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Part of the pitch for Warren (and for progressives) is a 72-page report her Senate office is releasing Thursday outlining her major accomplishments during her 12 years in office. It covers most of Warren’s major victories, from ideological ones like pushing for student debt relief (a cause Harris has also championed) and passing legislation dramatically lowering the cost of hearing aids to more parochial ones, including securing $50 billion for infrastructure projects in Massachusetts.

It also highlights her good government work: increasing ethics standards for various officeholders, her aggressive questioning of bank company CEOs, and even bipartisan efforts like cracking down on junk fees alongside Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

The report’s immediate point is to remind voters back home she’s as much of a policymaking workhorse as she is an occasional rhetorical bomb thrower. But if it also serves as a reminder to the people staffing a potential Harris administration how Warren’s wing of the party generates politically useful and popular ideas, the Massachusetts senator would not mind.

“This report shows that progressives get important things done,” Warren told HuffPost in a brief phone interview on Wednesday. “It’s an optimistic report, because it both includes those proof points for what we have done but also shows the way for the things we can do next.”

Warren, in her standard mile-a-minute fashion, laid out another example of how her ideas manifested into major accomplishments. She first proposed a corporate minimum tax, to much derision, when she was running for president in 2020. A few years later, she teamed up with the more moderate Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) to craft a new version, which eventually became a key fundraising mechanism for the Inflation Reduction Act.

“That was how we closed the deal to get a climate package and healthcare package that we needed,” Warren said.

November’s election has Warren facing Republican John Deaton, a cryptocurrency lawyer who has occasionally suggested the Democrat has accomplished relatively little in the Senate and is heavily favored to win. While Thursday’s report is meant to slap aside his critiques, it’s also aimed at least partially at more moderate, business-friendly Democrats who hope to use the transition from President Joe Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris to seize intraparty power.

While most top-level officials in the Biden administration were longtime allies of Biden who shared his center-left politics, progressives managed to secure key spots within the bureaucracy. Moderates have pledged to better organize for a potential transition in 2024 to create a White House with an open-door policy toward business.

Moderates have argued Harris’ victory, if it ultimately happens, will come after she ran to the center on key issues like immigration, with some also arguing the increased progressive influence over policymaking coincided with Biden’s long-standing political struggles on the strength of the economy — a potentially potent argument.

The number-one target of those moderate Democrats, so far, has been Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, whose more robust vision of antitrust enforcement has led tech moguls like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Harris allies like former Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban to call for Khan’s ouster.

Warren, predictably, was not having it, joining Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) in backing Khan.

“Lina Khan is enforcing the law, and I understand there are some billionaires who chafe at that. They have enjoyed decades of flaccid enforcement of the rules that might crimp their profits. But Lina Khan doesn’t work for the billionaires. I can’t imagine why any president would want to replace her,” Warren said before adding, “I’ll stop right there.”

This gets to the core of Warren’s argument for why progressives are in a good place to influence Harris on personnel and agenda setting. The ideas she and her allies have pushed are popular, which is the best form of protection in politics.

“I think we’re in a strong position,” she said of progressives heading into a potential Harris administration. “Look at what Democrats are out there bragging about: $35 insulin and getting rid of junk fees and increasing taxes on billionaire corporations come straight out of the progressive playbook.”