Why I Support Sanders Over Warren (And Think You Should, Too)

Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters via Newsweek)

Elizabeth Warren, the liberal senator from Massachusetts and Democratic candidate for president, seems to be enjoying something of a surge at the moment; indeed, one recent Economist/YouGov poll put her in second place nationally to Joe Biden, ahead of Bernie Sanders by more than the margin of error for the first time. While it's still quite early and too soon to say anything very definitely, a number of media outlets have begun to promote the idea Warren may be taking over as Biden's main opponent from the left and knocking Sanders out of the spot he's held for months. Although this framing is ultimately questionable, as Matt Taibbi argues in Rolling Stone, I thought it might still be worth offering up my reasons for continuing to support Bernie Sanders even in the face of Warren's newfound popularity.

Don't get me wrong: if Warren's surging in the polls, that a good thing from my perspective as long as she's not simply converting Sanders supporters to her side—and based on RealClearPolitics' polling average, it looks like her rise is, indeed, larger than any decline Sanders has seen in the meantime; both Warren and Sanders are, on average, polling better than they had been in the middle of last month, after Biden entered the race officially and enjoyed an impressive increase in his support (which has now mostly faded). And if Warren does end up being the nominee, I'll ultimately be very heartened by that; she would be, in terms of policy, easily the best nominee the Democratic Party has had in my lifetime (in fact, the best in close to half a century at least). Not to mention that my main concern really is that the nomination doesn't go to Biden or some other centrist-y establishment candidate (which is to say pretty much every candidate, aside from Warren and Sanders, that's currently polling above one percent). The difference between Warren and Biden is much greater—and more frightening—than that between Sanders and Warren. But still, between Sanders and Warren the choice is pretty clear from my perspective, and I want to lay out why.

My answer, in short, is that I think Sanders is more consistently left-wing—or "progressive" if you prefer a more innocuous label—than Warren. There have, of course, been plenty of attempts to deny this, but all the counterarguments fall flat, in my opinion. Let's start out just on a rhetorical level: Sanders openly calls himself a (democratic) socialist; Warren has described herself as "capitalist to my bones." It's pretty clear which of those labels is more leftist. Now, Sanders' platform is hardly anti-capitalist—or even all that much to the left of Warren's—but words do matter, to an extent. The fact is that exploitation of labor is baked into capitalism; profits are made because workers are not given the full fruits of their labor. There are plenty of good things you can point to that have come about as a result of capitalism (and plenty of bad ones, too), and there's a case to be made that it represents a necessary stage in global economic development (which was Karl Marx's position, for those unaware); but the idea that we should cling to capitalism, with its undemocratic and often short-sighted allocation of resources, as we face major crises of inequality and pending climate catastrophe, is ultimately a bad one. Capitalism has proven a lot more flexible and resilient than Marx expected, and maybe it's possible for some form of capitalism (depending on how you define the term) to continue existing even as we overhaul our economic system to deal with climate change, poverty, and rampant inequality; but major, major changes really will be necessary to deal with those things, and now is the time to open people's minds to the idea that capitalism should not be a sacred cow—not to proclaim one's fealty to that failing system.

But actions, as they say, speak louder than words; and I think there are a number of actions that show, more clearly than their own self-descriptions do, the meaningful differences between Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. For one thing, there was a significant outcry from progressives for Warren to run against Hillary Clinton in 2016, when it looked like Clinton might have no meaningful opposition; Warren wouldn't do so, but Sanders would. Keep in mind, absolutely no one thought he had any chance of winning the nomination when he declared. His campaign was designed to attract attention to the issue of economic inequality, and started out as symbolic rather than "serious." Of course, you can offer up any number of decent reasons that Warren may not have wanted to run in 2016—she was a freshman senator, and presidential campaigns, even symbolic ones, do take a great deal of time and energy—but she wouldn't even offer an endorsement of Sanders' campaign and, in her position as a superdelegate, she ultimately supported Clinton.

And what was the benefit of all of that in the end? Clinton lost to Trump, as we know, so even as a pragmatic move Warren's strategy was a failure. This was hardly a one-off, either; in my home state of Ohio, there was a similar battle between center and left in the Democratic primary for governor last year. On the one hand, you had Richard Cordray, a relatively bland establishment candidate who could boast an A rating from the NRA; on the other, you had Dennis Kucinich, a long-time progressive who, while perhaps guilty of saying and doing some questionable things in recent years, had supported Medicare for All long before that became an even remotely mainstream position, had consistently stood against imperalistic wars and "interventions" in other countries, and had outspokenly supported LGBT+ rights back when even Jon Stewart thought it was acceptable to mock trans women as "chick[s] with dick[s]." Bernie Sanders stayed out of the race, which was understandable given some of the controversial things Kucinich had done and said in recent years; but Warren, on the other hand, threw her wholehearted support behind Cordray, who would win the primary—and then lose the general election to Republican lizard-man Mike DeWine.

Warren's squishiness—at least in comparison to Sanders—is evident in this campaign already when you compare their stances on Medicare for All. Everyone knows where Sanders stands; he's been championing the idea for years and years and is outspokenly in favor of it. That hasn't changed.  Warren, on the other hand, is less definite. As Axios notes,

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) supports Medicare for all, but has been vague about how to achieve it. Her campaign website calls for a "down payment." And at a CNN town hall in March, she said she would "get everybody at the table" to "figure out how to do Medicare for all," which could include a "temporary role" for private insurance companies.

This is another attempt by Warren to water down progressive principles with centrist-ish "pragmatism," and we know just how well some of her previous efforts have worked.

On foreign policy and the military, the differences are even more striking. Let's take the ever-contentious issue of Israel-Palestine for starters. In 2014, when Israel had killed over 2,000 Palestinians in Gaza (overwhelmingly civilians), Warren said she believed civilian casualties were "last thing Israel wants" and blamed the casualties on "Hamas put[ting] its rocket launchers next to hospitals, next to schools." She then demurred at the suggestion that aid to Israel be made contingent on an end to the building of new (illegal) settlements in the West Bank.

Sanders, on the other hand, has a long (if imperfect) history of criticizing Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, and even voted to withhold over $80 million in aid to Israel unless it put an end to settlement activity, all the way back in 1991. He offered significant, if measured, criticism of Israel and defense of the Palestinians in his 2016 presidential campaign. Later that year, 88 senators signed a letter to then-president Obama, urging his administration to veto any "one-sided" UN Security Council resolution about Israel and Palestine and approvingly quoting Samantha Powers' disgusting speech from when she had vetoed a 2011 resolution that condemned Israel's settlements. Elizabeth Warren signed it; Bernie Sanders didn't.

Not surprisingly, the two candidates' positions on Israel mirror their positions on Iran, Israel's notorious foe; as Warren ran for senate in 2012, her campaign website falsely claimed Iran was "pursuing nuclear weapons" and stated that "[t]he United States must take the necessary steps to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon." Sanders, on the other hand, came under fire in 2016 for saying that the US should "move as aggressively as we can to normalize relations with Iran." In 2017, Sanders (along with Rand Paul) was one of only two senators to vote against authorizing additional sanctions against Iran; Warren voted in favor.

Similarly, last year Sanders was one of only seven Senators (Warren not being among them) to vote against a $17 billion increase in the military budget; at the time, Jeff Stein of The Washington Post noted that "[t]his appears to be the biggest military budget outside height of the Iraq War." When it comes to issues regarding the military and foreign affairs, there's no doubt that Warren is closer to the mainstream than Sanders, and that's not a good thing.

I remember back in 2013, Warren's first year in the senate, when Obama nominated John Brennan to be director of the CIA; Brennan had previously lied about civilian casualties from the administration's drone strike program, and I was disgusted at the idea that he might be put in charge of a powerful intelligence agency after so blatantly misleading people. Bernie Sanders voted against his confirmation—and Elizabeth Warren voted for it. That may have been my first real disenchantment with Warren, whom I'd been very enthusiastic about as she was running for the senate in 2012. Brennan went on to preside over the CIA's spying on Congress and to make excuses for the agency's past torture program before ascending to the level of #Resistance hero after Trump came to power. 

Sanders' stubborn insistence on remaining an Independent—even as he caucused with the Democrats in Congress and supported the party's presidential nominees—while a cause of resentment for many, is actually a good symbol of the quality in him that makes him a preferable candidate from my point of view. While I would by no means call his record perfect (or even close), he has been willing to vote as an Independent in a number of cases, such as on the military budget and sanctions bills I mentioned above. While I certainly don't begrudge Warren her decision to identify herself as a Democrat, it's simply true that she's closer to the party's establishment line than Sanders and, as I said, that's not a good thing.

There's also, I think, some legitimate reason to worry about her abilities as a politician. Her DNA test debacle is one instance of that, resulting in widespread mockery from the Right and condemnation from actual Native Americans. Her recent decision to frame climate change as a question of "military readiness" is another example of her ability to be rather tone-deaf. She has an unfortunate tendency to leave people toward the Left disenchanted in her attempts to appease the Right—attempts that it's easy to see from the start are unlikely to succeed. While Sanders has had his failings, he managed to become, for at least a time, the most popular political figure in the country despite openly identifying as a socialist, and seems able to connect with many different people in a way that I'm not convinced Warren is.

Despite my very real issues with Warren, I really don't want this to come off as a hit piece of any sort. She is still easily better than almost all of her opponents, and vastly better than the guy who's currently at the top of every national poll. She has also put out some genuinely laudable proposals lately. Certainly, no one should lose sight of that, nor do I want there to be some split in the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party. But it seems equally clear to me that Sanders is genuinely better than Warren pretty much across the board; on some issues, the differences are small, but they are pretty consistently in Sanders' favor. And I hope that discussions about the two candidates personally don't overshadow the real, and meaningful, differences in their politics.