From Brian Beutler’s “Big Tent” newsletter:

If you could construct a perfectly life-like, bionic Democratic president optimized to make headway in our dysfunctional system, and to cleanse the country’s political economy so that future presidents could make further progress, it would look more like Elizabeth Warren than any other candidate who has ever run for president. I’m talking less about the specifics of any of her policy plans than her understanding of what’s gone wrong in America.

If Democrats win the House, Senate, and presidency, the filibuster will hobble their ability to govern; if they get rid of the filibuster, right-wing courts will remain rigged against them; fix the courts, and money and corruption in politics will still limit what’s possible. She knew all that and was prepared to sink her teeth into each of those choke points like Bailey into a stolen burrito. Existing laws give presidents tons of power that could be put to use making people’s lives better, and overwhelming the court’s capacity to sabotage a liberal administration. She was willing to try. Corporate and financial elites exercise power in fine print. She is the country’s leading expert in how to read the fine print, and strip it down, so that those elites stop fleecing the country.

For these reasons and others, it’s sad that she didn’t make it farther along in this race than she did. But it will be an absolute tragedy if Democrats ignore her insights and duck the fights she was willing to pick out of some misbegotten sense that shaking things up is wrong or risky. Neither of the two remaining candidates have shown much appetite for Warrenism, as loosely defined here, and it places their potential presidencies in grave risk. We have to put a lot of work into changing that. Basically everything depends on the winner coming around to her way of thinking.

Unquote.