michelle goldberg

I’m Michelle Goldberg.

ross douthat

I’m Ross Douthat.

david leonhardt

I’m David Leonhardt and this is “The Argument.” This week Senator Elizabeth Warren sits down with me to talk about her plan for the economy.

senator elizabeth warren

The progressive agenda is America’s agenda.

david leonhardt

On economics.

senator elizabeth warren

On economics.

david leonhardt

Then Ross, Michelle and I debate: is Warren’s agenda the future of the Democratic Party?

michelle goldberg

This is when I start wondering, like, how much policy actually matters at all.

david leonhardt

And finally, a recommendation.

ross douthat

I bought the Perrier fruit-flavored seltzer and it’s awful!

david leonhardt

Senator Elizabeth Warren has been setting the terms of the conversation about policy in the 2020 presidential campaign. She’s come out with a series of ideas that are big, bold and some would say radical: an annual tax on the holdings of the very wealthy, universal child care, a breakup of big tech companies, a requirement that corporate boards include workers. Whether or not Warren wins the nomination, she’s influencing the future of the Democratic Party. So we wanted to sit down with her and give a proper hearing to her ideas. She invited me and our producer Alex Laughlin to her apartment in Washington, D.C. where we recorded this conversation — fittingly enough — at her kitchen table. Senator Warren, welcome to “The Argument.”

senator elizabeth warren

Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

david leonhardt

So you know a lot of the people who are also running for president. Some of them are your friends.

senator elizabeth warren

I do.

david leonhardt

So why you?

senator elizabeth warren

This is my life’s work. And look, I think 2020 will be about economics. What’s happened to working families, what’s happening to middle class families, why is it that the path has gotten so much steeper, so much rockier for hard-working people? And even steeper and even rockier for people of color? This is a moment when we can tackle that one head on. When we can run straight up the middle and say we’re going to make a change here.

david leonhardt

So you’ve been alive for previous presidential campaigns. You know how Republicans will paint a Democratic nominee and you in particular if you’re the nominee, right? If we were going to make a Democratic nominee in a lab, right, it probably wouldn’t be a former Harvard professor. So how do you fight back when they say there is this Massachusetts liberal.

senator elizabeth warren

I’m going to push back on just the whole notion of how this should work. Look, I was born and raised in Oklahoma. I’m the baby. I have three older brothers.

david leonhardt

Significantly older, right?

senator elizabeth warren

Yes, significantly older brothers.They all three joined the military. That was their chance to make it into the middle class. My daddy ended up as a janitor. My big chance in life was a commuter college that cost $50 a semester. And ultimately I got to be a public school teacher, worked with special-needs kids.

david leonhardt

And you were let go in part because you were pregnant.

senator elizabeth warren

I know! Got pushed out the door. But that turned me around to law school, a public law school that cost $450 a semester. The way I see it is I have lived opportunity. I don’t just in the abstract think opportunity is great. I’ve lived it. And I’ve lived the kind of opportunity that comes from a government that invests a little in its kids. A government that tries to keep the playing field a little bit level for folks like my family. I believe that is the America of our best values.

david leonhardt

So your campaign is a direct extension of your life’s work.

senator elizabeth warren

Yes.

david leonhardt

It’s this idea that our country, our society, doesn’t work for most people anymore and that you want to fix that. And so I thought we should talk a little bit about what caused the problem and then how you want to fix it. And I actually want to start with a historical anecdote that involves another presidential candidate and maybe not the one you would expect: George Romney. Mitt’s dad, who before he ran for president in 1968 was an auto executive. And he had a habit of saying no to annual bonuses that his board wanted to give him because he said to his board of directors, “I do not believe anyone should make more than $225,000 a year, which adjusted for inflation is about $2 million. I mean can you imagine that today? And I think that that highlights how our culture and our society used to be different. That top corporate executives didn’t try to maximize their own pay. They viewed themselves as leaders of society. And sure they fought for things that help their profits but they also built the Interstate Highway System. And I guess I just wonder if you could look back and offer some thoughts about what was it that created that old culture that seemed to work so well for our country.

senator elizabeth warren

So I’d say the roots were in the Great Depression and the notion that we had lived through a period of extraordinary inequality. Right? The very, very wealthy. And then it had all come crashing down around our ears in the Great Depression. And those who had been at the top were really kind of fingered as the guys who caused the crash and brought it down on everyone. So the idea was, we’re in this together. Now, you always have to take a deep breath on this and say, together is a relative term. Together among white people, and together among men. But still you can actually see it in the data, can’t you, that as the country got richer, as GDP goes up, income goes up for everybody. You can read things about how when the company does well, how excited all the workers are. Because that means this year their raises are going to be a little bit bigger. In other words, the sense of shared enterprise is not only the CEO who says, “I’m part of leading this team and we’re gonna do this together.” And living it — not just the rhetoric. But also at the other end, all the workers being proud of what they put out because they know when the company does well they will do well.

david leonhardt

Can you see any way to recapture that old ethos today?

senator elizabeth warren

So how did the companies at that point describe themselves and how did the law align with it? Because it wasn’t just a cultural thing. It was actually reinforced by by legal incentives, by rules. They all worked together. Let me give you a couple of examples. So you look back at the Business Roundtable, you know these are the ginormous businesses that all get together and the CEOs get together and talk about how business is.

david leonhardt

And I think a formally only CEOs can be members of the Business Roundtable?

senator elizabeth warren

That’s right, I think that’s right. And only ginormous companies can be members. So they get together for the Business Roundtable and how do they describe themselves into the early 1980s? Now this is formally described themselves, not just over, you know, cigars and fine port but how do they actually describe themselves.

david leonhardt

In their documents.

senator elizabeth warren

Yeah, in their documents. And they say a corporation owes a duty to its shareholders, to its workers, to its customers, to the community in which it is located. That all of those entities are stakeholders in this company. By the end of the 1980s you see the Business Roundtable describe the obligation of these ginormous corporations as, we have an obligation our shareholders and nobody else.

david leonhardt

Full stop.

senator elizabeth warren

Full stop. Our job is to pump out the greatest number of dollars of profits to increase the wealth of our shareholders, and if that means mashing our workers into the dirt, not our problem. So a powerful difference. And then you’re watching the law — the incentives in the law — shift at the same time. So Roosevelt comes in and — first Roosevelt, gonna be a trust buster. That works for a while. Then it kind of dies off and then we see the Gilded Age. Second Roosevelt comes in, Franklin Roosevelt, and he says I’m gonna pick up these anti-trust tools and I’m gonna use them. So throughout the ‘30s, the ‘40s, the ‘50s, the ‘60s, into the ‘70s you see really strong antitrust enforcement. In other words you get too big and there’s a government that balances you out and says whoa! No more swallowing up your rivals. No more eating the little businesses so that they don’t pose any threat to you. And you watch that all the way through in the government. The places where the government supports the idea that corporations are not just there to maximize their profits. We’ve gotta make sure that competition is protected. That the S.E.C. is strong and is a cop walking the beat to make sure that giant companies are not cheating either their investors or their customers. That’s the idea.

david leonhardt

And you can sort of see how the government and companies reinforce each other. That if companies feel like, hey there’s a cop on the beat, we better behave. And if they feel like you know what, they’re not going to stop us. It sort of gives them incentive and permission to be much more aggressive about everything.

senator elizabeth warren

You are so right to focus on the incentive. In fact I’ll just add to it. It actually starts to work the other way. So if there’s a cop on the beat, I better mind my P’s and Q’s but I know my competitors will be too.

david leonhardt

Oh, that’s interesting.

senator elizabeth warren

If there’s no cop on the beat, holy —. Wait, I know I’m a good guy but man, that corporation or corporations I’m competing against? They’re not, and if no one’s going to enforce and they’re going to cheat, boy I better get out there and start cutting corners too. So the role of government, it’s not just either good or benign. It’s actually good or bad, in terms of how these incentives get adjusted.

david leonhardt

One of the themes that we talk about on our show is, the American people are quite progressive on economics, right? You look at the polling on your wealth tax, you look at the polling on other tax increases on the rich, tax increases on corporations, minimum wage, expanding Medicare — down the line.

senator elizabeth warren

The Progressive agenda is America’s agenda.

david leonhardt

On economics.

senator elizabeth warren

On economics.

david leonhardt

I think it’s different on social issues and cultural issues where I think we are more fundamentally divided. I think there are even some issues where you could say we are a center-right country, but we are much more of a center country than a left-leaning country. And I think that there are a lot of people out there who, even though they may support a wealth tax or expanded Medicare, continue to vote Republican or don’t vote because of some of these other issues. And it’s interesting. You’re a former registered Republican earlier in your life, right? Can you talk about how you make the case to people who are with you on economics but who for deeply held reasons — they may be pro-life, they may want immigration restrictions — they’re not going to agree with you on those issues. How do you win those people over?

senator elizabeth warren

So I’m gonna make the pitch slightly differently and that is I think a lot of people don’t believe you will actually make any change on economics. That most politicians will stand up and talk about, “Oh I’m here for working people,” and then they’re not. And then they don’t make any real change. I think that right now people are told over and over and over there’s not a nickel’s worth of difference between the folks in Washington. Democrat, Republican — in fact the only differences are on social issues because none of them are doing anything to help anyone except giant drug companies, giant financial companies, giant oil companies, right?

david leonhardt

That helped Trump win, that attitude.

senator elizabeth warren

That’s right. And so it’s not as if people have been asked to weigh real economic change versus social issues on which we, just as a country, we just, we disagree. Instead it’s been a Washington that doesn’t work for them and that’s what they see. So the way I see this is coming really hard at this fundamental question of what’s broken. Why it is that Washington doesn’t work in a democracy for the majority of the people, and that we can see where the economic problems are we can truly make a commitment that’s credible that we’re gonna fight it and fight it together and make these changes. You know here’s the example: So start with the wealth tax, and people get interested. And they say, “Wow, you really would be willing to push back on the billionaires? On the multi- multi- multimillionaires? On people who’ve amassed these great fortunes?” And the answer to that is, yeah I would, but here’s part two: If we did that, let’s talk about what kind of difference that could make in your life because the wealth tax would produce enough money to pay for universal child care and early education pre-K and pre- pre-K and still have $2 trillion leftover. Think about what we could do on student loans or the work we need to do on infrastructure. And you know, it all starts to feel real now. Something that’s not just handwaving and pie-in-the-sky but feels like real change.

david leonhardt

An outside budget experts said to me, “You know I can’t decide how I feel about the Warren wealth tax but I’ll tell you this: She never has to answer the question again during the campaign of how will you pay for something. The answer is the wealth tax”

senator elizabeth warren

Yes. It’s right there. You start with how you’re going to pay for it but that’s actually the heart of the point.

david leonhardt

So there are a whole bunch of silly criticisms of a couple of your policy proposals.

senator elizabeth warren

Oh well let’s do the silly ones.

david leonhardt

Well let’s skip the silly ones. Let me tell you the ones that weigh on me a little bit. Which is, in the literal sense of the word radical, meaning to get at the root of the problem, you have some radical proposals. They’re new, they’re innovative. So One is the wealth tax. We do not currently have a tax on large wealth. We have a property tax which is sort of a tax on middle class —

senator elizabeth warren

I was just going to say, actually, I’d like to point out that every homeowner in America, every owner of a small family farm, they are paying a wealth tax. It’s just called a property tax and they pay usually a lot more.

david leonhardt

Which is, I think, probably the best argument for it. You also have this proposal to put workers on corporate boards.

senator elizabeth warren

Yes!

david leonhardt

With the idea of re-instilling the notion that companies exist for shareholders, yes, but also for workers and communities. So it seems to me that the more substantive criticisms of this is that you are asking government to do a lot of new things. Given the amount of distrust that people have in government, what gives you the confidence that government can actually take on all these new roles and do these things that it hasn’t been doing?

senator elizabeth warren

I built one.

david leonhardt

Built?

senator elizabeth warren

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. That went from zero to 60, right? We didn’t have a consumer agency, within a year it was actually out there stopping the frauds, forcing the big banks to pay people back, managing a consumer complaint hotline. We made it work. And I’ll tell you about setting that up because this is like, this was amazing. Building that agency was an amazing experience. But probably the best part of it was the fact that people from all over the country showed up and said, “Let me be part of this. I want to do something bigger than myself, something more important than what I’ve been doing.” And people applied who’d been in the banking industry. People applied who were straight out of college. People applied who had just retired. Oh, I had a cowboy who applied. It’s true, it’s a true story. He described himself as a cowboy banker. But people applied who’d been prosecutors and had prosecuted other kinds of criminal behavior and wanted a chance to go after those who cheat people for their money. And then the challenge was to build an agency that had a structure so the mission really would carry out over time, not just while I was there and able to walk up and down the halls and say, “Who are we fighting for? Families across this country!” But that would truly be built into the structure. And so, proof is in the pudding. That little agency has forced the biggest financial institutions in this country to return about $12 billion directly to people they cheated. Now take a deep breath there. If they actually had to write checks for $12 billion, how much other cheating didn’t go on because they said this is just not worth —

david leonhardt

The cop on the beat idea.

senator elizabeth warren

The cop on the beat.

david leonhardt

I think a lot of people have the impression that Trump is just totally neutered it. But you think this agency is still doing good today?

senator elizabeth warren

I do. Now look, not as much as it could be doing. Mick Mulvaney did everything he could to take the legs out from underneath it. But the agency may have paused in some of its more aggressive work but the structure is right.

david leonhardt

It’s still there.

senator elizabeth warren

And it’s still handling those complaints. It’s still making a difference in the marketplace.

david leonhardt

It seems to me, the bigger point there in terms looking forward is, you actually think sometimes bigger ideas are more possible to accomplish because you can inspire people.

senator elizabeth warren

Oh I do!

david leonhardt

One of the ways that we know the campaign playbook particularly for President Trump will go: it’ll involve racism. You’ve obviously experienced this more than most people because of the racist insults that he used. After the whole controversy about the Native American history, you said that you’re open to the idea of reparations not only for African-Americans from slavery but reparations for Native Americans. How do you make that case, in particular to white workers, that the Democrats are the party of white people too?

senator elizabeth warren

So I’ll make the argument two ways. One is I think we just have to address it and talk about it head on. We cannot pretend there is no racial implication to anything that happens. We live in an America where for every $100 of wealth that the middle white family owns the median black family owns about $5 of wealth. Generation after generation of systematic discrimination — for example on housing, which was still legal into the 1960s, a federal government that subsidized the purchase of homes in all the neighborhoods except African-American neighborhoods — has had implications that reverberate through today. And we just got to be willing to address it and talk about it head on. There’s no sweeping it under the rug. There’s no pretending it’s not there. So I think that’s part one. We just talk about it. Part two is — look, Donald Trump gets the basic idea and that is, let’s set working people against working people.

david leonhardt

Yep.

senator elizabeth warren

Let’s treat value in our country, wealth in our country, as absolutely limited. And a dollar to him it’s not a dollar to you, working person against working person. Martin Luther King Jr. called this out back in the 1960s. He talked about setting working people against working people so nobody would notice that it was the really rich people who were picking their pockets. So I think part of it is we just have to say, is that who are going to be? Are we going to turn on each other or are we done to try to work this out?

david leonhardt

Let me actually ask you a quick question on universal child care. It was a subject of a recent episode of “The Argument” and there’s a lot that I really like about the universal child care program. I like the idea that it builds up a system of better preschools. I like the idea that you’re going to raise the wages of childcare workers. I have one concern. And it’s not the majority of the program but it’s a real concern. There are working class and middle class people who want to stay home with their kids. Your mom did that. And this program doesn’t help them.

senator elizabeth warren

Oh wrong. Oh, so wrong.

david leonhardt

Tell me how I’m wrong.

senator elizabeth warren

So this program puts all this money into early learning programs. So understand, rich people whether they’re home or not they’ve got their kids in top notch programs when they’re four years old, when they’re three years old. Lot of them when they’re still two years old because they know that those educational opportunities — and they are educational opportunities, I mean it looks like, to you and me, they’re playing with blocks and they’re bumping into each other and knocking each other down — but these are important educational opportunities. Those are open to everybody. Have at it. You don’t have to go in pocket to make sure that your children get the same opportunities as the children of somebody who’s rich.

david leonhardt

Could you imagine adding some kind of tax credit that says if your income is below a certain level and you stay home with your kid for the first year or two that you get a boost as well?

senator elizabeth warren

So I think it’s an interesting idea. I want to see how the numbers play out, of course, and exactly who’d be affected. But it is true — and this is a core part of it — this is about parents being able to have a range of decisions open to them. That’s really the heart of this. And the fact that all our babies zero to five will be well taken care of no matter what. You think about what’s going to make a great America a generation from now, two generations from now. The best investment we can make is in those zero to fives. The data show us every nickel we invest there pays off not only individually for that child throughout their lives, but also collectively for all of us. Investments in our kids, those are the investments that really pay off.

david leonhardt

Yeah it reduces future welfare spending and you probably might create a few more billionaires who then pay some of the wealth tax.

senator elizabeth warren

Exactly, and I’m all for that. You know more people to pay the wealth tax. There you go.

david leonhardt

One more question on it that actually extends to K-12 and through higher education. One of my differences with a lot of other progressives is that I think progressives haven’t been tough enough about the quality of public schools. How do you think the federal government can do a better job of — or disagree with the premise if you want — of getting tough on poor performers and raising the quality, not just the funding, but the quality of education?

senator elizabeth warren

So I’m going to do two pitches here. The first one is you can’t raise the quality of education if you won’t pay your teachers. You can’t raise the quality of education if you do, like I did, I went back to my high school and there are ceiling tiles falling down in the school cafeteria.

david leonhardt

In Oklahoma City?

senator elizabeth warren

Yeah. Because the roof leaks and nobody has the money to fix it. So partly you can’t stand around and say, “Do more! Do more! Do more!” and not give them some more money to be able to do it with. But the second one I particularly want to focus on higher ed, because there’s a lot of work here. This is a place where your tax dollars have been put at risk through the student loan program. And yet right now the Department of Education is letting for profit colleges, for example, just siphon those dollars off into, at best, substandard educational experiences for many, many, many students. And the consequence of that is that people get saddled with huge debt and very little increase in their income potential and their lives are destroyed because those debts are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. So right off the top, this fight is right on the table about how much the federal government should insist on higher standards for anyone to be able to get access — for any school to be able to get access to the federal student loan program. And understand for most of these for profit colleges, they can’t operate without federal student loan money. They target principally two groups: young people who went straight from high school to the military and now have good benefits as they come out and are ready, after maybe having served four years or six years. They want to come out. They want to get a college degree. They pounce on those kids and they pounce on single moms working two jobs. Read the ads in the subway. And they pitch them on the idea that their children, the children of college graduates do better than the children of non-college graduates. So people sign up who are not always very sophisticated about the colleges and they get deep in debt for very substandard educational programs. This is a place where right now Betsy DeVos, your secretary of education, is lowering the standards day by day so that for profit colleges can rip off more students. That is outrageous.

david leonhardt

I agree. And for profit colleges are clearly worse than public colleges on this. The only thing I’d add is, there are public colleges that also have horrifically high dropout rates.

senator elizabeth warren

Now I would add to your point. I’ve actually been pushing for a long time something called “skin in the game,” and that is for all of the colleges, that they should have some skin in the game that the amount of debt their students take out is actually repayable. In other words, I just use the default rate as the measure. If you have a whole lot of students who are defaulting either you’re charging too much or you’re not helping prepare them for a life where they’ll be able to pay this debt back. And the idea that the colleges, once they get their certification that they are an accredited college — and by the way that’s not done by the government. That’s done by these private accrediting agencies — I want to pause for a minute — who get their money from the colleges they accredit. Anything might be wrong in that system? Have we ever tried something like that before? But once they get their accreditation they can set their prices for their tuition wherever they want. And if it turns out to sink their own students the college pays no penalty for that. So if young people are going to have to borrow money to come to your school then you should have some downside risk if they’re leaving your school in great numbers. I get that there will always be some but in great numbers. And here’s here’s what I predict, there’s going to be a distribution of schools. Some are going to have high repayment rates and some are going to have much lower repayment rates and I think the ones with much lower repayment rates are worth a look at what’s going on.

david leonhardt

And that’s the kind of accountability I was talking about.

senator elizabeth warren

That’s accountability.

david leonhardt

Very last couple quick things. So we asked our listeners what they would want to ask you. And one question was about what kind of cabinet you would want to form. And I don’t mean individual names but one of your critiques you’ve made of the Obama cabinet is you thought it was skewed on sort of one side of the Democratic coalition. Would you want a cabinet that mostly reflected your views or would you want a cabinet that included a range of views including some Democrats who are more conservative than you?

senator elizabeth warren

I would want a cabinet that believes in change. I would want a cabinet that believes that we can make this government in this economy work not just for the rich and the powerful but for everyone else. I am not interested in having a cabinet full of former lobbyists, executives who have made their fortunes off lobbying Washington because that’s how many of these executives — that’s what’s made them so successful at what they’ve done. So in that sense I want people who feel the urgency of the need for change and have a vision that we can do it. I’d add one more I’d want some risk takers. Not just people who want to kind of preside over — you know it’s really nice to dress up in the outfit and have everyone call you Mr. Secretary or Madam Secretary. But people who pitch me on what their vision is, what they’d like to accomplish and they’d be willing to get out there and take some risk to do it.

david leonhardt

Mitch McConnell famously said about you, “Nevertheless, she persisted.” So people now, some people have tattoos that say “Nevertheless.” Do you have any “Nevertheless, she persisted” gear of your own?

senator elizabeth warren

Yes I do.

david leonhardt

What is it?

senator elizabeth warren

Oh I have multiple necklaces, bracelets. I have multiple artistic renderings, in all kinds of different forms, in paintings — because people have given them all to me as gifts. So I got a lot of good stuff.

david leonhardt

And running for president is hard, so what do you do to unwind? F.D.R. had cocktail parties, Ike played bridge, Obama watched ESPN after a day of meeting people in Iowa. What do you do to take your mind off the game?

senator elizabeth warren

I play with Bailey.

david leonhardt

Your dog.

senator elizabeth warren

The dog. Bruce and I walk him around Fresh Pond.

david leonhardt

What kind of dog?

senator elizabeth warren

He’s a golden retriever. A big boy. He’s 10-months-old now and never met anybody he didn’t love. He kind of grounds me in the world. He reminds you of the priorities and the most important priority is: scratch me right there, right there, right behind my ear. When you start scratching him on his ear, he starts leaning until he falls over. Who could ask for something better?

david leonhardt

Well thank you for having us in your home and thank you for coming on the show.

senator elizabeth warren

Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.

david leonhardt

Now we’re gonna take a quick break and when we return Michelle and Ross will join me to debrief. Michelle and Ross are back now and we are going to talk about my conversation with Senator Warren. Hello, Michelle and Ross.

michelle goldberg

Hey David.

ross douthat

Hey David.

david leonhardt

So Ross, did we get you to sign up for the new agenda of Warren populism?

ross douthat

I mean I think she’s always interesting, in the sense that she has a well-thought-out theory of what is wrong with American capitalism. And she has an account of how to fix it that is clearly distinct, I think, from what a lot of the other Democrats in the field are doing, at least so far. Right? I mean we have this sort of general sense that there is a kind of race to the left in the Democratic field where everybody is trying to come out with the most ambitious, sweeping proposal etc. But there is a difference between what Warren is emphasizing and what the others are emphasizing often. And the others tend to be saying, here’s how we’re going to spend a lot of money on program X or Y or Z. And she’s doing that to some extent with the childcare stuff. But you can tell that what she’s most interested in is this sort of how do we encourage slash force the American business class, the big corporations, the American capitalists to behave in some kind of more communitarian slash patriotic way. And I have a lot of doubts about the specific plan for how she’s going to do that but it is, I think, really distinct from just like, you know, we’re gonna do Medicare for all and free college and you know, free childcare and so on.

david leonhardt

What I would add to that is that a lot of her stuff — let’s set aside her personally for a minute — a lot of her agenda is actually popular. I mean look at the polling on the wealth tax. It is much more popular than some of the signaling that candidates are trying to do to the left on things like taking away people’s private health insurance. And that’s why I think it might be influential.

michelle goldberg

This is when I start wondering how much policy actually matters at all. So you know again, when I talk about Elizabeth Warren I’m going to have to repeat this full disclosure, which is that my husband has been consulting for her campaign. He designed her logo. But to me in terms of policy — and it’s not just that I think her policies are close to ideal — I speak to powerful Democrats all the time who say, “Well obviously on policy, Elizabeth Warren is the best, but...” And I think that we can sort of see that reflected in the polling, right? That her ideas are extremely popular. She has by far the most comprehensive policy vision, you know, with the sort of very clear understanding of what went wrong and sort of what sort of mechanisms you could summon to fix it. And yet you’ll hear from people that she sort of reminds them of Hillary which they mean in a purely stylistic sense. And it leads me to wonder what is the salience of policy in a Democratic primary or in our politics at all.

ross douthat

I think voters don’t care greatly about the rigorous details of a policy plan and in that sense it doesn’t help Warren that much that she’s being more rigorous than the other candidates. I think policy, though, is really useful for signaling a general world view and a general commitment, and there I think the challenge for her is that she is signaling the same general kind of thing as Bernie Sanders, especially but also some of the other candidates who are running to the left and she’s trying to figure out a way to sort of distinguish her signaling from the others, right?

michelle goldberg

Right. So the way she’s trying to distinguish herself is by saying “I have a plan and I know how to do these things.” And you know what sort of fills me with despair about our politics is that I don’t know how much that matters.

ross douthat

Well but maybe what matters is she’s signaling that she’s the candidate who wants to change the balance of power in the American economy, while other Democrats may be signaling more that they’re the candidate of new programs and redistribution. And obviously she has redistributionary plans but her distinctive pitch is we need to deal with monopolies. We need to tax, you know, deep deposits of wealth. We need to do a lot of regulatory stuff to change how corporations operate. And so I think in a sense the primary is a test of do Democratic voters want more just redistribution primarily? Do they want free college and Medicare for all primarily and they don’t really care how you pay for it? Or do they buy into Warren’s more, you know, we’re going to restructure things so corporations behave differently approach? I think that’s that’s the distinction she’s trying to draw.

david leonhardt

But Ross you’re framing it as a choice, do Democratic voters want A or do they want B. And Michelle, I think your point is a lot of voters don’t even make this decision at all. They make the decision instead based on how well someone is at giving speeches, their age, their general profile, what their past jobs have been.

michelle goldberg

Well you know, to me it’s kind of like the “What’s the Matter With Kansas” problem in action. There’s been this debate on the left forever which is do socially conservative, lower-middle-class white voters and working class white voters vote against not just what condescending liberals like me see to be their economic interests, but what they say is their economic interests. You know what their own kind of economic policy preferences are at least in polls and focus groups. But consistently willing to set those aside because of cultural issues. If you really do believe that something has gone fundamentally wrong in the American economy, here’s somebody who is identifying that problem, who’s been looking at the way people’s lives go off the rails because of health care costs or credit card debt, and has a much more holistic understanding of what has gone wrong since around 1980. And instead she’s trying kind of so valiantly to say look let’s make this a debate about policy and I’m just not sure if she is maybe kind of overestimating all of this.

ross douthat

Well I mean I think there is a sense in which if you ask typical Americans — to use an overused phrase — what’s gone wrong with the economy, they would say that wages haven’t risen fast enough and the cost of certain goods has gone up. Right? And so there is a simplicity in responding to those concerns by saying O.K., we’re going to make college education free and we’re going to guarantee health care and maybe we’re going to cut middle class taxes as Kamala Harris has proposed a middle class tax cut. And Warren on the other hand, what is she talking about in the last week or two? She’s talking about doing a big antitrust crackdown on Internet companies. And I agree with you that there’s sort of a maybe more sophisticated left-wing vision in which antitrust looms large. But I think you can understand why voters might be more responsive to the message that says, “O.K., you know, your wages seem stagnant. Here’s some more money,” than the message that says “Oh this company, that is by the way really popular, that you use to buy cheap goods and bring them to your doorstep all the time, this company is actually the problem and we’re going to go after them.”

michelle goldberg

Right. But her argument is your wages seem stagnant because companies have become too responsive to their shareholders and they’re paying too much to their chief executives and they don’t have this sense of social responsibility. I mean I think that most people probably intuitively feel that.

david leonhardt

I guess the other thing I would that is it’s really early. I mean Obama was getting crushed by Clinton at this point. So I don’t think we should draw too many firm conclusions based on what the polls are currently saying. But if we’re still going to ask why she’s not doing better, I don’t think it’s a referendum on her policy agenda, which polling suggests is very popular. I think it’s much more about who she is personally. I think there are voters out there who aren’t comfortable with the fact that she identified herself as a Native American in the past. And I think it doesn’t help her that she’s an intellectual and spent years as a Harvard professor.

michelle goldberg

It’s so crazy she has the most sort of genuine, Horatio Alger story of any candidate in this race and has roots in the Midwestern working class in a way that I can’t think of any other politician of her stature who has sort of a similar backstory.

david leonhardt

Yep. All that’s true. And then I guess the final thing is I do think we need to — again it’s early — but I do think we need to think about sexism here. I mean who’s leading the polls? Men, right? Bernie, Biden, Harris is back there but but so far it does look like potentially that even in the democratic primary — maybe Ross would say especially in the Democratic primary — sexism remains a significant issue.

michelle goldberg

Well and one of the things that’s so interesting is that you see how many people will say that like, Biden is their first choice and Bernie is their second. And you know part of that is just maybe that those the two names that they know. I think you can’t underestimate the impact of name recognition this far out. But part of me is like, “Hmm. What do Bernie and Biden have in common?” You know? Like nothing policy wise but they’ve got something important in common.

ross douthat

I will I will stand up for the non-sexism, at least for right now, of the Democratic primary voter. Bernie Sanders ran for president and did extremely well relative to expectations. He was the runner up in the last primary and in the sort of historical way the Republican Party worked, which it doesn’t obviously work anymore, he would have been considered the natural frontrunner going in. Joe Biden was vice president for eight years under a President who remains extremely popular with the Democratic base. And Elizabeth Warren has existed as a prominent intellectual which means that she is sort of on the radar screen of people like us. And then as a senator from the bluest state in the union, arguably, whose chief accomplishment the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is — it’s a small thing. And it’s not sort of something that the median primary voter is going to have front and center the way Bernie’s identity and Biden’s identity would be front and center. I mean I think in many ways Warren looks like a sort of classic Paul Tsongas-type, you know, Northeastern liberal academic figure who have, whether they’re men or women, have always had a challenging road. And I don’t think we should be surprised that she isn’t running away with the nomination at this point. I think the real story here is that people in our line of work have for different reasons underestimated both Bernie and Biden all along.

david leonhardt

And we’ll get to Biden in a future episode soon. Let’s end on the policy stuff. If whoever the Democratic nominee is were going to adopt one part of the Warren agenda, which one would you each rank number one?

michelle goldberg

Universal childcare.

david leonhardt

What about you, Ross?

ross douthat

I mean we just did the episode where I explain why I was against or skeptical of universal healthcare. [DOUTHAT AND GOLDBERG LAUGH] And I think it’s vulnerable to precisely the issues that you raised in the interview, David. And so I’m skeptical of that one. I think Warren is making a mistake by trying to go after Silicon Valley in full. I think the smart version of what Warren is doing would separate Google and especially Facebook from Amazon and Apple and sort of make a bigger issue of Facebook and Google’s stronger monopolies and their control over the flow of information, which is something that Apple and Amazon don’t exercise and say look we’re not going after all of Silicon Valley. We’re going after these specific bad actors who have a different kind of monopoly than what Amazon is trying to build. So there is a longer argument there but basically that’s the piece I think Warren is right to go after Silicon Valley. But I think she and all other anti-Silicon Valley crusaders need to do a better job of basically dividing and conquering rather than trying to take on the full tech panoply as it stands.

david leonhardt

Well Ross, whenever you go populist I like to end the segment so we’ll end it here and we’ll be right back with our weekly recommendations. Now it’s time for our weekly recommendation when we give you a suggestion of something to take your mind off of politics. Ross, this week is your turn. What do you have for us?

ross douthat

All right. So this is a little embarrassing but I’m gonna do it anyway. So many many episodes ago, David, you recommended seltzer.

david leonhardt

I did indeed.

ross douthat

And I enthusiastically seconded it. I’m a seltzer drinker from like the age of seven but one of the seltzers I drink is the most like bobo, yuppie form of seltzer imaginable. It’s called Spindrift and I think they now sell it in Starbucks. So it’s sort of like, it’s gone big, it’s gone national but it’s still like this ridiculous boutique kind of seltzer and I’m recommending it mostly because one of the stores where we shop at stopped stocking it and I started buying some of the other fruit-flavored seltzer. So Spindrift is like, it’s selling “a hint of lemon,” “a twist of orange,” “a touch of raspberry,” of real fruit flavor and I would drink it and I would think well this is good. But you know, I mean, everybody’s selling real fruit flavor. I hadn’t drunk fruit-flavored seltzers from other brands for a while and I’ve been doing it for the last couple of weeks and they’re terrible. They all taste horribly artificial and whatever magic Spindrift works really does taste like real fruit compared to like all — not just like the Stop and Shop alternatives but like the Perrier. I bought the Perrier fruit-flavored seltzer and it’s awful. Spindrift is amazing. It’s a great achievement. So within the world of selzer obsessives I’m recommending Spindrift including to whoever decided to stop stocking it at the Elm City Market in New Haven. [LEONHARDT AND GOLDBERG LAUGH]

david leonhardt

So I have to admit I’m against flavored seltzer personally.

ross douthat

Yes.

david leonhardt

But I’m in favor of it as a societal phenomenon because most people prefer flavored seltzer to unflavored. And that means that the rise of flavored seltzer has caused seltzer to be available in many more stores. So I can more often find my beloved seltzer, but I will always choose an unfavorable over a flavored. My personal favorite is Boylan because of how bubbly it is. So to me it’s not about the flavor. It is about the carbonation and I like a lot of it. Michelle have you tried Spindrift?

michelle goldberg

No, I’m like not a seltzer aficionado. I mean I drink it because my kids drink a ton of it and they call it bubble water, and sometimes when I’m like really addled I will order bubble water in a restaurant and then feel ridiculous.

ross douthat

David, I just want you to get a Spindrift and get the same flavor from LaCroix or wherever and just drink them together. I’m not trying to convert you to Spindrift. I just want to know that I’m not crazy, because I might be crazy.

david leonhardt

You want me to experience the difference?

ross douthat

I want you to tell me if I’m right about the difference and we can we can reconvene in a future episode and discuss.

david leonhardt

I will do it as a blind taste test and I will let you know which I prefer.

ross douthat

Fantastic.

david leonhardt

That’s our show for this week. Thank you for listening. We would love to hear your feedback. If you have thoughts leave us a voicemail at 347-915-4324. That’s 347-915-4324. You can also email us at argument@nytimes.com and please leave us a rating or review in Apple podcasts. This week’s show is produced by Alex Laughlin for Transmitter Media and edited by Lacy Roberts. Our executive producer is Gretta Cohn. We had help from Tyson Evans, Phoebe Lett, Ian Prasad Philbrick and Francis Ying. Special thanks to Kaiser Health News for use of their studio in Washington. Our theme was composed by Allison Leyton-Brown. We’ll see you right back here next week.

producer alex laughlin

Do you have a flavor that you like in particular, Ross?

ross douthat

Uh...Yeah.

michelle goldberg

Is that private?

ross douthat