Warren - Vox Populi, Vox Americae Que Futurum

The Democratic senator and well-experienced lawyer from Massachusetts, progressive darling and scion of the Sanders camp, Elizabeth Warren, crowned the end of this two-year hiatus of Trumphood by announcing - well in time - her 2020 candidacy for the party's nomination, the first to sally forth to make democracy safe again for the Democrats, and rekindle the trust of the people on which it supposedly lays and whose allegiance to it has so many times been denounced, declared dead, and risen.

Empress Warren? 

The announcement is interesting, from several angles. Senator Warren, recently re-elected with a remarkable margin, while sharing the quality of (questionable) radical opposition that is womanhood with the 2016 nominee, a woman of merit, vigour, discoursive - verging on demagogic - quality as well as - this time genuine - passion, she is a stalwart progressive of the Northeastern but nonetheless decisively 2010s brand, a "Sandersista" without Sanders, as well as reassuringly (if, at 71 on election day, not remarkably) younger than his own eminence of the green mountain state. While it is true that Massachusetts may serve a poor bulwark of a nation-reaching campaign, with her background evoking a Northeastern liberal elitist bulwark only too fit not only for counter-attack but a better one than could be evoked by the Orange King's own mouth, the unification of the seemingly disparate strengths of the 2016 primary in one candidate is certainly stunning, and more importantly will seem thus to their - hopefully less managed - successors in the spring after next.

The forces rallying behind her will be just as interesting as those sure to be opposed, which may number many more still than the GOP hopefuls to emerge in the shame-lit and chaos-branded twilight days of the bleeding Obama administration. In our first taste, we see - presuming an implausible and democratically deficient smooth sally through to the convention - a confirmation fit for Bannon's prophecy (and praise) with left-wing populism, facing consolidated Trumpist protectionism and populist nationalism on the right, the argument of crony capitalism blazoned by a convinced and tested foe of some of its most ardent scions. With a flair of identitarian appeal to minorities and "(unity in?) diversity", the message is clearly in the Sanders' mold - promising wealth and a less toiling burden for working and middle class Americans, a fairness in the American promise, with more than a dash of national pride, American exceptionalism and optimist flair which, in the words of Khaled Hosseini, "that has made her [America] so great". An America yet to be considered great, one might say, to confound the businessman-prophet of doom.

A mother's glance; modest, calm and serene, back in the days of Woodstock, of Nixon and of a nation - and party - deeply and bitterly divided. Could it be that of a mother of a Mater Patriae, also?

This is, at least in the most extensive and fatigued sense of the term, quite innovative. If one foregoes the associations of the term, Senator Warren has been a maverick as much as a radical, championing regulation and justice with the same flair that she prosecuted some of its most audacious transgressors before (sadly not, one may only sigh, her presumed predecessor as the Democratic nominee). Whereas others have capitalised on typical movements, slogans and hashtags of the time, she remains as fiercely aggressive as independent, as much a preacher of a quasi-Marxist mold as schoolteacher, one who can - like her predecessor, if not adversary - say honestly she did indulge elsewhere before deciding to run for the body, despite auspicious academic achievements.

And there's the Pocahontas factor. Whereas the president was, quite justly, rebuked for rebuke of her playing the card of authentic racial residue, there can hardly be many conviction who took her rhetorical lash for anything more than opportunistic and an attempt to capitalise on that which is inherently against the concept of a state of many nations but no sectarian pride, a play of victimhood by one owning a seat in the Chambre des Pairs. But look again, and you'll notice the ethnic factor as presented in a nearly Marxist mold, subservient to the issue of class politics, of redistributing to (the story ever told) the good feelings and great expectations of the mid-20th century, possibly without treading too heavily on the embers of globalist capitalism and the price of transgressing it. This is good. This is - now I must've broken it - innovative, or would be were it the object and parcel of an administration. It is, in some sense, a reinvention of the Democratic brand for a decidedly post-Clinton age - no matter how many editors will sordidly rekindle their slogans of four years past, and call it backlash, the banker's darling avenged by the watchdog of integrity. And it is a good case for the enlightened patrician tradition of New England liberals, now reinvented and given a populist mold (again, to fit the hopes of Mr. Bannon).

The true Jackson? Andrew, then unspeakably old and disgustingly dangerous, the last born under British rule, a dangerous populist and demagogue, presumed and declared foreboder of the Trump persona. But is his legacy not more truly evoked by the populist brand of the party he helped to constitute? Sanders' and Warren's image is - as of yet - one of constitutionalism and moderation, of upholding liberal democracy rather than unhampered strongmanship. But in kindling a tempest of its own huddled masses, yearning more than being free, and in antagonising rather than cozying up to financial interests, are they not more worthy of the jackass?

Then what of the others? Well, in a crowded field it will be down to digits and unpredictable upsets on who splits which state in which manner (the ostensibly more progressive proportional system nonwithstanding, the 2016 primary left many things to be said regarding the democratic integrity of the process, whereas the "impossible" candidate out of 17 secured a neat 45 % of the vote) but it will be safe to say that Sanders, out for this reason I think more than any other, will affect it severely, should he follow the call of the throng, and stand once more. But the same is true, and thus redeeming, in the camp that - whatever its name - will not be branded progressive. Amongst a growing field of the new and the nuanced if not the best and the the bright, and a rather unsavoury (in this following the ethos of the 2016 race on the other side of the fence) emphasis on "unexperience" and being unscathed and untainted by established political process, on the new and even unelectable as the foremost, she stands out as one of the better fitted in both terms of radical message and a substantial persona of both integrity and independence, of ubiquity over the unctuous. Whereas Senator Gillibrand has a few more years of upkeep in the north wing, and several to that on the southern side, it is clear it will not be a great asset. Her voting record (you guess who) sports few drastic statements, she nevertheless blasts a record of integrity and independence, a turret against corruption, the lobbycracy and strict "unipartisanism". All this is refreshing.

The first of her gender. But she would also be, bar her presumed contender, the oldest to be first elected, and perhaps more amenable to a constituency further beyond the magic bar of 65, whose imbued privilege she would be presumed to defend... and in the end, perhaps, abandon in the name of sustainability.

With all this said Senator Warren, the first to announce - two months before the point Obama did in 2007 - has a substantial potency and a potential to be expected rather than discounted. But can she win on the real Tuesday, presuming the most beneficial competition in the spring? I am rather certain of this possibility, although there are several factors working against her. Whereas the gender issue has been mentioned - and should be held to the question of her even emerging as the nominee without it; ultimately a fair observation, I must say - the far more pressing concern is the unstated, repressed but ultimately odious brand of "Massachusetts liberal". Whereas this is unlikely to serve as a bastion of an ideally revitalised, broad Medicare-for-all, affordable college and housing, pacifict Democratic movement, it will very likely fly in the face of moderate voters. But does this matter, in light of the median voter case being sordidly torpedoed not only by Alan Lichtman but ultimately the electorate (well, where it mattered) two years ago? Yes, and no. Just as foreign borders have become more floating, domestic ones serve less the purpose they did at the time of the founding of the union, the senator herself being - infamously - a child of Okie, to little resentment for the average Massachusetts man. It will ultimately depend on the program, and whether a broad-based movement can be mustered. In this, she will serve a far more central role than any Clinton could, or Tim Kaine or Joe Biden, but stop be short before accepting Warren as better than Sherrod Brown, or - indeed - even Beto. But this brand could also be evoked by Biden, or Harris - or my unsung favourite, the Brown of the west - or anyone else of a record not in line with a brand of working-class welfare-state warfare.