"Elizabeth Warren Has Been My Candidate...Now I'm Waiting For Her Next Step" [View all]

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'Elizabeth Warren has been my candidate since before day one, and now I'm waiting for her next step.' By Mark Sumner, Daily Kos Staff, March 4, 2020.

Elizabeth Warren has been my candidate. She was not just the person I wanted to see win the primaries and the White House; she was also the person I was cheering for even before she entered the race. The reason for that was not her stance on health care, or her position on a wealth tax, or even her firm support for the Green New Deal. The reason was, and is, that Warren has the single quality that I always look for in a presidential candidate. It has nothing to do with beer drinking, stars twinkling, or even the eloquence required to make a moving inspirational speech. It’s not how she stirs a crowd. It’s not even that she agrees with my positions up and down the chart. The quality that I endorse above all others and that Elizabeth Warren has in spades is simply this: overwhelming competence.

For 40 years, my father was the city administrator for a small town in western Kentucky. I watched every day as he dealt with the water supply and the street repair, the police and the parks department. He raised the bonds that permitted things as uninspiring, but absolutely necessary, as a sewage lift station. At the same time, he also managed the construction of affordable housing and kept the local collection of KKK bastards from turning the July 4 parade into a racist display. He poured over the books every night, worked with regional and state authorities every day. He left behind no grand monuments, to himself or anyone else, other than a city that was clean, well-run, with good services and balanced books.

And that became the quality I looked for in a candidate, the quality that I believe Warren has above all others: simple competence, the dedication to do both her best and what she thinks is best, even if it’s not always expedient. To realize that building that sewage lift station is more damned important than adding more tennis courts in the park, or giving the police a new squad car, or any of a dozen other things that might be far more visible and easier to champion.

I believed she would do what is needed to be done more than I believed this about anyone else.

I still believe this, but then … this is an elegy of sorts. Not a very pretty one. The sewage lift station of elegies. An ode to the campaign for that person who would have sat up all night going over the numbers one more time. Someone who would always find a way to fund the thing that was necessary and not act out of anger, retaliation, or simple self-aggrandizement. Competence doesn’t mean just doing well what’s always been done. It means looking for new opportunities, a willingness to overturn outdated ideas, and a recognition that what was good enough then is not necessarily good enough now. Competence is hard work, collecting good information, making sound decisions. It’s being just and fair and innovative.

Competence is always progressive. Because conservative ideas are not supported by the evidence. Any evidence...

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