Even the most appealing aspect of Warren’s politics, her alleged commitment to weakening Wall Street’s influence over Washington, is not what it seems. Some people were surprised when she offered to support the corporate welfare Export-Import Bank last week. On the surface this looked like rank hypocrisy. But that’s only because sometimes we confuse those who try to restrict and control markets with those who have genuine anxieties about crony capitalism. It is similar to the way we often confuse the coddling of rent-seeking corporations with “capitalism.”

But Warren’s anti-cronyism is incidental; a byproduct of a progressive political agenda that supports the funneling of nearly all serious economic choices (from mortgages to energy policy to health care) through Washington — the kind of strategy that breeds the unhealthy relationships she claims to abhor. The “system is rigged,” Warren likes to say. And maybe she’s right. But she just wants to rig it her way. Warren doesn’t have a problem with big banks or corporations. She has a problem with banks and corporations that make profits in ways that she finds morally intolerable or ones that won’t further her aims. She is an enemy of dynamism not cronyism. A popular position at Netroots Nation. Less so elsewhere.