Warren is the best president for our times

Elizabeth Warren has a plan to deal with the new coronavirus. The Massachusetts senator has laid out the steps a president must take now, including $400 billion in spending to contain the outbreak of the virus and cushion the damage it will do to our economy. That’s $397.5 billion more than the Trump White House proposed last week.

And just like her proposals to fight the opioid epidemic, cancel student loan debt and take on the anti-competitive dominance of tech giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon, along with her calls to end the filibuster in order to get things done in the Senate, it’s a thoughtful solution to a pressing problem.

Again and again, Warren has risen to the challenges we face, clearly describing each one and laying out a path to meet it. There has been no candidate in my lifetime who has better matched her country’s needs.

The woman who warned us about the coming of the Great Recession doesn’t separate President Donald Trump from the Wall Street collapse that took trillions out of our economy and cost us millions of jobs. She knows he personifies the greed and corruption at the heart of our tangled crises of inequality and climate change.

There’s no question that Warren is the best candidate to take on both Trump and the entitled perversion of a system that has already given us two overgrown rich kids who lost the popular vote, delivered massive tax giveaways to the rich and risked financial mayhem for the vast majority of Americans.

The question is whether she’s best for her party. The answer is hell, yes.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has said that if Trump is booted from the White House, “you will see an epiphany occur among many of my Republican friends.” But Warren knows that the politics that got us here won’t be the politics that save us. The obstructive obstinacy of the Republican Party, and the gutting of the middle class, while distracting voters with convenient scapegoats, predates Trump. And it will outlast him, if the republic manages to survive this presidency.

The 2020 election marks the 100th year of women voting. Republicans, who are in the midst of an unprecedented attack on women’s reproductive rights, will renominate a known misogynist. Elizabeth Warren also has the right plan for that. It looks like nominating a woman, or two, for the top of the Democratic ticket.

Jason Sattler, Michigan-based political analyst