Tom Steyer. Very impressive.

Tom Steyer

I expected to think "ho-hum" vanity candidate, who shouldn't have bothered to run.

Instead, I got blown away. He is good. Very good.

He is electable. He could be a good president, the FDR-type that Democratic activists are asking for. All he needs are for Democrats not to hold against him the fact that he got really, really rich.

Tom Steyer met with Salem, New Hampshire Democrats Thursday morning.  I got there early, saw the table and venue setup, and thought "amateur hour for a vanity candidate." The event was badly advanced.

It was in a coffee shop that could not accommodate even 20 people, and the event conflicted with the lunch business of the proprietor. They put him in the middle of the room, so as he spoke he had to keep turning in full circles so he would face the entirety of the room. There was no microphone.

I came to the event with a negative presumption, that a guy who made a billion dollars from scratch would feel very entitled, and would be insufferably corporate in orientation and likely condescending. He would be the liberal version of Trump, thinking he was special and consider himself a savior, another "chosen one. I had that presumption in part because his ads all have a format: Tom Steyer, alone, looking at the camera, telling us something big and important.  He was positioning himself as the truth teller, a lonely unheard Cassandra, but not as the leader of multitudes. Steyer all alone. The presidency is a job of leadership and persuasion. Where are your crowds, Mr. Steyer?

I was wrong. Steyer was very impressive. His campaign does not do him justice. Maybe he will fix it, and if he does he has an impressive and persuasive story to tell.

He is a liberal progressive, sounding a lot like Elizabeth Warren, but without the Pocahontas problem, and he doesn't remind people of Hillary.

He started his investment business alone a single room with no windows and no employees and in thirty years made a fortune as an investment manager.  He turned to politically liberal advocacy, philanthropy, and direct organizing campaigns on climate, on voter access, on requiring corporations to pay more in taxes, in opposition to the Keystone Pipeline, building grass roots involvement of young voters, and most recently, calls for impeaching Trump.

He speaks with conviction and intensity. His political views are essentially the same as those of  Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, or Pete Buttigieg, i.e, liberal progressive but not Bernie. He sounds as anti-corporation as does Warren, citing the stranglehold of the drug companies on drug prices in America. He said that corporations have corrupted the our government to secure and enhance their own power.  Steyer proposes a 1% annual wealth tax, on people with assets greater than 30 million dollars, rather than Warren's 2% on people with assets greater than $50 million.

He supports a public option, not Medicare for All, at least not immediately, voicing his opposition to immediate Medicare for All on the basis of honoring unions and their hard-won negotiations to secure health insurance as part of their compensation. Don't take that away from them, he said.

Steyer says the American economy is failing. The rich are getting richer but everyone else is falling behind because housing, health care, and education have become very expensive in comparison with wages. There is no unemployment problem, he said, there is a wage problem. Jobs don't pay enough to support a family. He supports unions, opposes so-called right-to-work laws.

He brings to the table one of the assets that Trump brought in his primary, the presumed and independence that comes from self funding, and the presumed practical skill in the world of business that is documented by business success. He matches up nicely against Trump. Trump is a genial huckster; Steyer is sincere. Trump is notoriously self serving; Steyer is public spirited. Trump's fortune was inherited and squandered; Steyer's was earned and is now the subject of philanthropy.

Steyer can win the general election.

His problem is the primary, where Democrats make the same assumption I made--that he simply must be irredeemably corporate and protective of an exploitive establishment. He isn't. He could, instead, play the role of the patrician Theodore Roosevelt, with the dedication to break up the trusts organized by his friends and college classmates at Harvard, and of Franklin Roosevelt, the accused traitor to his class.
Tom Steyer has the ability to motivate and inspire. It takes a thief.

Steyer is a credible liberal progressive change agent.

So far, his campaign has not communicated that he can lead a nation, and indeed I strongly doubted it until seeing him up close.

He could be president.


Watch him:
Two minute clip on why he's running:  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7XudWnxW98U
Two minute clip on corporations:  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_DObHu8xAf0