Why Elizabeth Warren Is Criticizing Obama & Fellow Democrats

If you've heard Elizabeth Warren speak about the Trump agenda, it's not hard to tell what she thinks. When it comes to President Trump and the GOP, she holds nothing back. But thanks to a recent interview with The Guardian, it's now clear that she doesn't agree with all her fellow Democrats or even the former president 100 percent. Warren criticized Obama and the Dems for their economic agenda, accusing it of having "giant blind spots" that left out working class voters.

Coming just days after she said Obama's acceptance of a $400,000 speaking fee from a Wall Street firm "troubled" her, Warren intensified her criticism of Obama. She said that despite leading the country through its longest streak of job growth since 1939, which netted 15 million new jobs, Obama was supposedly out of touch with the economic reality of American voters:

I think President Obama, like many others in both parties, talk about a set of big national statistics that look shiny and great but increasingly have giant blind spots. That GDP, unemployment, no longer reflect the lived experiences of most Americans. And the lived experiences of most Americans is that they are being left behind in this economy. Worse than being left behind, they’re getting kicked in the teeth.

Were that the case, it could in part explain Trump's surprising electoral college win in November. But that was not Warren's only comment. She also had insights looking forward. Even though Obama will not be up for reelection, hundreds of Democrats will. They'll need to win and turn some seats blue if there's any hope to win back Congress.

Yet polls in April showed that 67 percent of the country believed the Democratic Party was "out of touch" with most Americans. That's more than the GOP, who clocked in at 62 percent. Warren, while clearly seeing the Dems as the better party to back, has some concerns about her Democratic colleagues:

I think there are real differences between the Republicans and the Democrats here in the United States. The Republicans have clearly thrown their lot in with the rich and the powerful, but so have a lot of Democrats.

For the Dems to pull ahead in the midterms and seize on the anti-Trump activism that's alive and well across the country, they will need to reconnect with the American voters. "We are no longer a country that believes we can do politics only once every four years, or even once every two years, no longer a country that says that democracy is only about elections and that it will tend to itself in the time periods between elections," Warren told The Guardian.

For that to translate to votes for Democrats, they can't stand for the elite. Being slightly better than the Republicans isn't enough any more. People need a clear choice. Trump has shown who he is. As Warren explains, "He put millionaires and billionaires in charge of his government."

But Democrats need to clearly stand for the opposite. Being the better of "two evils" doesn't win elections; November proved that.