The forgotten reactionary Elizabeth Warren

The fundamentally reactionary nature of Warren’s appeal is also bound up in her personality. Warren is many things, but an East Coast coddled exquisite is not one of them. She has the grit and toughness of a prairie housewife, which, in a way, is what she remains at heart. Her offhand references in her writings and speeches to peach cobbler and frying pork chops with a baby under one arm are not moronic affectations like those unreasonably demanded of so many female politicians these days but simply a reflection of who she is. She once wrote that she had done more good appearing on Dr. Phil’s show for a few minutes than she had in an entire year teaching at Harvard — perhaps the greatest popular triumph for redneck populism since Gretchen Wilson.

Warren’s vision of human flourishing is fundamentally a conservative one — or at least it would be if the family were still at the center of the conservative conception of politics. What she argues for is the right of families to thrive, not be the slave of financial interests, corporate power, housing monopolies, the educational establishment, or any other external force. She believes, radically, alas, in 2018, that we all have a right to food, water, housing, education, and medical care. The idea that hard-working Americans should be able to raise their children in comfort and with a sense of dignity is not, or at least should not be, the exclusive purview of any one politician or party. The fact that Warren very frequently does seem to be among the only elected officials in this country who both affirms these things and has taken the trouble to think carefully about them is a reminder that the centrism rejected by her and fellow travelers on the left and the right alike is not only noxious but omnipresent.