Elizabeth Warren: Markets Without Rules Are Theft!

From the inimitable Charles P. Pierce in Esquire:

Elizabeth Warren should say this line every day for the rest of the campaign: https://t.co/gTQDVAX6Zapic.twitter.com/cOWWpd4e4Z

There is no embarrassment of riches in this primary season. Charles Pierce covers the three solo candidate appearances on cable news last night.

MSNBC had Cory Booker and Kirsten Gillibrand, back to back, the latter in a town hall format, and CNN had Senator Professor Warren, from the campus of Jackson State in Mississippi, which was an interesting choice on the part of her campaign.

Sen. Warren gave some great answersin the CNN town hall.

When Jake Tapper asked her if Mississippi should drop the Confederate battle emblem from its state flag, and she answered, simply, "Yes," it brought down the house and even got Tapper to admit that it was the most direct answer he'd ever received from a politician.

Sen. Warren also called for the abolition of the electoral college:

Presidential candidates should have to work for votes—and listen to voters—in more than 8-12 states. Abolish! https://t.co/6XggsVRQHa

And she put her reasoning in context of the war on voting, which is a war to maintain white supremacy.

It's exactly right that Warren places this discussion in the larger context of election reform and the restoration of voting rights in the face of voter-suppression laws targeting voters of color. It is fundamentally about the principle of one person, one vote. And she wisely focused on the fact that her Mississippi audience last night gets entirely ignored during a presidential election.

"Every vote matters," Warren said, "and the way we can make that happen is that we can have national voting. And that means get rid of the Electoral College and everybody counts. Everybody. I think everybody ought to come and have to ask for your vote. What do you think?"

But the line of the night came when she was asked the inevitable question about socialism:

"I believe in markets," she answered. "But I believe in markets with rules."

"Markets without rules is theft."

Charles Pierce on the origin of this clever turn of phrase by Sen. Warren:

[R]epurposing the 19th Century French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's most famous axiom (La propriété, c'est le vol!/Property is theft!) as a call for a reinvigorated regulatory regime to safeguard the public welfare and break the power of corporations to cause widespread chaos and destruction. OK, Proudhon likely would be très en colère about her having appropriated his trademark aphorism for this purpose, but clearly, the crowd knew what she was getting at. That line should be in every speech she gives for the rest of the campaign. She should say it every day, whether she wins the election or not.

Indeed.