Summary of The Rebels by Joshua Green: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics

By Justin Reese

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of The Rebels by Joshua Green: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics

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• Chapter astute outline of the main contents.
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Joshua Green's book, The Rebels, tells the story of the Democratic Party's uprising against economic populism led by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The book, based on inside sourcing and analysis, uses the grand narrative of a political party undergoing tumult and transformation to tell a larger story about the fate of America. The Democrats made their bed with Wall Street and big tech, relying on corporate money for electioneering and embracing the worldview that technological and financial innovation and globalization were a powerful net good. The 2008 crisis turned these forces into national icons, turning the protagonists into national icons. The book also explores the Democratic party's culture war issues between centrists and progressives, and the ultimate test of the legacies of all three characters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: jUSTIN REESE
• Release date: Jan 10, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224997886

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The 2008 financial crisis was a significant event that shaped recent American politics, fueling anger and contention, eroding the nation's faith in its leaders, and elevating radical alternatives. The global financial system blew up, and millions of people's lives and careers began to fall apart. Major government agencies like the Treasury and the Federal Reserve moved to ensure banks held together, but most people didn't get that kind of attention. This realization set in that their elected leaders weren't looking out for them, and for many people, it shattered the democratic ideal of government serving the common good and everyone having a fair shot at a life of decency and honor.

The 2008 financial crisis also produced a new strain of populism on the left, which revived an old strain of economic populism that would have been familiar to Democrats of the New Deal era but had fallen dormant in the decades before the crisis. This left-populist movement emerged from the ashes of the financial crisis to become an important force in the Democratic Party, with three major characters—Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez—each playing fateful roles in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries.

Big, epoch-defining shifts don't happen just because of charismatic politicians; people in politics are constantly building up the party apparatus and jockeying for advantage over their opponents. The 2008 financial crisis was made jarring because it came after a long bull market and an economic expansion that appeared to produce a number of benefits.

The period before the housing bubble burst marked the peak of the neoliberal order, which aimed to free markets from government regulations to increase wealth and wellbeing. However, dissenting voices, such as Seattle protests against the World Trade Organization and the Million Worker March, were generally ignored or dismissed. Both parties were culpable for the 2008 crisis, but Democrats were more damning for their embrace of finance. Warren, Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez were captivating in the years after the crash because they conveyed a sense of understanding of how the Democratic Party had lost its way and been captured by Wall Street. This understanding helps explain the rise of left populists like Warren, Sanders, and Ocasio-Cortez, who were reacting against the financialization of the party and its subsequent ill effects on American life.

The story of this fight and how Carter lost it captures the tectonic shift that took place in America as the New Deal era ended and a new one was being born. It set the party on a path that would transform it into something Democrats of an earlier generation would hardly recognize.

THE THREE-MARTINI LUNCH

In 1978, Jimmy Carter, a young president, faced a pivotal decision in his presidency. He was deeply unhappy with the economy, inflation, and the impending midterm election. Carter believed that the societal rot that produced Watergate was a result of a corrupted value system enshrined in the federal tax code, which he considered a disgrace to the human race and a welfare program for the rich. He criticized the middle-class tax burden rising as inflation pushed workers into higher brackets.

Carter's appeal to voters was fueled by his personal story, as a farmer, governor, southerner, and born-again Christian. He argued that the societal rot that produced Watergate grew out of a corrupted value system that powerful business interests had enshrined in the federal tax code. He criticized the deductibility of the three-martini lunch as a symbol of elite self-dealing.

Carter offered a solution: zero out the tax code, wipe the slate clean, and start anew. He would tax capital gains at the same rate as income to put workers back on equal footing with their bosses. He would eliminate the loopholes through which the middle class subsidized the extravagances of the wealthy.

Carter prioritized the moral dimension of the problem, stating that questions of dollars and cents were secondary to the moral dimension of the problem. He declared that it was time for a complete overhaul of the income tax system and promised that with the help of the average citizen, they would finally make it happen.

Carter's grand plan to reform the tax code has collapsed, dividing his administration and his party. His decision will be a turning point in his presidency, as powerful business interests are on the verge of achieving a victory that Carter has the power to stop. However, it will also be an inflection point in the history of the Democratic Party, one that Eizenstat and other administration officials will come to rue even before they leave the White House.

Carter had already made an honest stab at reform at the beginning of his presidency, with the help of Laurence Woodworth, a superstar director of Congress's professional tax policy staff. However, things quickly went awry when the economy looked weak and Carter's advisers decided to delay tax reform and pursue a stimulus, which had bogged down in Congress and finally been dropped. The rising oil prices necessitated an energy bill, which also got stuck in Congress and further damaged the deteriorating relations between the White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

Carter's habit of ignoring Congress and keeping his own counsel is one of three reasons his reform