Both Warren and Buttigieg want to expand Social Security, get rid of private health insurance, and impose the biggest increase in the top tax rate since the 1940s. I go into these issues in my latest column.

Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren have been cast as the “wonk” candidates in the Democratic presidential primary: the cerebral number-crunchers putting out detailed and thoughtful policy proposals, with hers being ambitious and left-wing and his modest and moderate.

But both the contrast and the wonkiness are overstated. In key respects, Buttigieg is running on a Warren-lite agenda. Some of their plans also have more to do with achieving political and ideological objectives than with solving any pressing problem in American life. . . .