Michael McAuliff — Elizabeth Warren Book Is A Liberal Call To Arms That Rips Tea Party 'Magical Thinking'

Elizabeth Warren's new book isn't just a memoir -- it's a full-throated endorsement of modern, populist liberalism and a scathing indictment of anti-government "magical thinking" by the tea party.

While the Democratic Massachusetts senator structures her new volume, A Fighting Chance, as a chronological tale of her life, she also uses her experiences to make strategic points and arguments about her political philosophy, which embraces government and the labor movement as forces for good.

"We can't bury our heads in the sand and pretend that if 'big government' disappears, so will society's toughest problems. That's just magical thinking -- and it's also dangerous thinking," Warren writes. "Our problems are getting bigger by the day and we need to develop some hardheaded, realistic responses. Instead of trying to starve the government or drown it in the bathtub, we need to tackle our problems head-on, and that will require better government."

She's off to a good start. Small government versus good government. What a novel idea.

The small government argument is based on the assumption that good government is impossible or at least highly improbable, as well as the assumption that democracy doesn't work.

The good government argument is based on the assumption that government is of the people, by the people and for the people and democracy works. You know, like it says in the preamble to the US Constitution.

The Huffington Post
Elizabeth Warren Book Is A Liberal Call To Arms That Rips Tea Party 'Magical Thinking'
Michael McAuliff

Also McAuliff's Elizabeth Warren's New Book Skewers The White House Boys Club

She doesn't always say it directly and she usually cuts the sting with some praise, but Warren seems particularly disappointed with two of the lions of Obama's economic team: former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and former National Economic Council boss Larry Summers....

Learning how the inside game works.

"[Summers] teed it up this way: I had a choice," Warren writes. "I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don't listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People -- powerful people -- listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don't criticize other insiders."...

... Geithner brought home to her that "[d]espite the way it was sold, TARP was about saving banks, pure and simple."

"There it was," Warren writes. "The Treasury foreclosure program was intended to foam the runway to protect against a crash landing by the banks. Millions of people were getting tossed out on the street, but the secretary of the Treasury believed the government's most important job was to provide a soft landing for the tender fannies of the banks...."

"The president chose his team, and when there was only so much time and so much money to go around, the president's team chose Wall Street," she writes.