Think Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are the same? They aren't

For progressives subjected to daily outrage from the Trump administration, there’s something to look forward to. In 2020, they’ll be spoiled for choice – presumptive candidates in the Democratic field are tacking to the left and both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are acting like people running for president.

While a 2020 campaign by Sanders wouldn’t be surprising given that he ran before, Warren has long denied that she has any interest in becoming president. That seems to have recently changed. Warren said last month that she would “take a hard look” at running in 2020. And then, last week, she made headlines by releasing a DNA test to counter Donald Trump’s claims that she was misleading people over her ancestry – a move largely interpreted as preparation for a presidential run.

Warren and Sanders have been conflated for years – commentators often talk of a “Sanders-Warren wing” of the Democratic party. But the two are not the same, and though Warren is an ally of many progressive causes, the best chance that we have to not just construct some better policy, but reconfigure a generation of American politics lies with Sanders running and capturing both the Democratic primary and the presidency.

Arguing between two seemingly good choices can seem from afar like the bickering of two rival fan clubs. But there are significant differences between Warren’s and Sanders’ approaches to politics and what their respective victories would mean in a country desperately in need of change.

To understate things, Sanders’ background is unusual. He was trained in the dying remnants of the Socialist party and cut his political teeth in trade union and civil rights organizing. His lifelong lesson? The rich were not morally confused but rather have a vested interest in the exploitation of others. Power would have to be taken from them by force.

Sanders’ message from his early days in third-party politics to today has been remarkably consistent. Back in the early 1970s he denounced “the world of Richard Nixon, and the millionaires and billionaires whom he represents”. Even back then he was reminding audiences: “This is the world of the 2% of the population that owns more than one-third of the personally held wealth in America.”

Warren’s career started as an academic, teaching at law schools and establishing herself as an expert on bankruptcy and consumer protection. Believing that markets fundamentally worked, but the rules of the game needed to be fairer, Warren was a registered Republican until 1995.

In the six years since she won her Senate seat, Warren has established herself as a credible, progressive Democrat. But her background hints at the difference between her more wonkish approach – seeking to construct better policy but not an alternative politics – and the class-struggle, worker-centric approach of Sanders. Not surprisingly, Warren has been keen to assure business interests that she believes that “strong, healthy markets are the key to a strong healthy America” and that she “is a capitalist”.

Warren does have significant support among the Netroots Nation crowd, but it’s telling that she also appears to be getting traction among prominent Democratic party policy types: Anita Dunn, Brian Fallon, John Podesta, Neera Tanden and Matt Yglesias, among others, have had positive things to say about her in the media lately. Sanders – an outsider without ties to many prominent in the liberal politics during the Obama years – gets no such love.

Yglesias, in particular, has showed interest in Warren’s Accountable Capitalism Act, a plan that, to her credit, is far more ambitious than that of her other Democratic colleagues. It would require the largest businesses to engage in “codetermination” with their employees, giving workers more say in management, and limit corporate political activity and what executives could do with their company shares.

But it relies on notions of “corporate citizenship”, and it’s clear in her Wall Street Journal op-ed promoting the act that Warren sees neoliberalism as an ideological shift that can be corrected while retaining many of the existing parameters of capitalism. For Warren, US capitalism used to be good: “Corporations sought to succeed in the marketplace, but they also recognized their obligations to employees, customers and the community.” But then something changed in the 1980s: “Building on work by conservative economist Milton Friedman, a new theory emerged that corporate directors had only one obligation: to maximize shareholder returns.”

But it wasn’t a moral failing that brought about neoliberalism, but a structural shift: corporations in the 1970s couldn’t keep up with militant wage demands from unions, the after-effect of the Opec oil shock and increased international competition. Profitability sagged. Without a broader ideological agenda, capital knew that it had to restructure itself and saw labor regulations and unions as impediments. Neoliberal mantras and ideology followed these developments.

The only way to undo that U-turn is to rebuild the trade unions and leftwing political movements that could actually bring about a different sort of political economy. And that won’t come from the politics of shared responsibility, or clever policy initiatives, it’ll come from the mobilization of people on the streets, and in their workplaces and communities. Sanders is the only candidate that can open up those possibilities.

It will be easy for Sanders supporters to spread their vision to people who feel unrepresented by establishment politics. With his relentlessly disciplined messaging, Sanders has communicated to millions exactly what he is about. It isn’t “corporate citizenship”, it’s creating a “political revolution” to get what’s rightfully ours from “millionaires and billionaires”.

More and more people are struggling and looking for an alternative: Medicare for All, a jobs program, tuition-free college and a living wage are all incredibly popular. In large part, this is because of Sanders and the movements he has spent his life supporting and has recently helped revitalize. Whether or not they want to call it democratic socialism, millions of Americans are ready for a political revolution built around their needs.

Elizabeth Warren is a progressive who can be an important part of a broad coalition for change, but we need a democratic socialist leading that coalition if we’re to deliver it.

• Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin