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Young Voters Speak Out: Each day, RR.com will spotlight politically minded youth writers from throughout the U.S. speaking their minds on Election 2012. First-time voters, student journalists and new graduates will debate the Obama vs. Romney race to the White House. Young Democrats, Republicans and ‘Undecided’ Americans are eager to play politics and choose the next Commander & Chief.
Read Warren Bianchi's thoughts from a left-leaning perspective:
It takes wisdom to speak modestly, and it takes experience to be blunt. In her moving speech at the Democratic National Convention, Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren showed these qualities in an address that was both inspiring and insightful.
The Game is Rigged
Warren's emphasis on the ''rigged'' economic playing field that leaves American workers ''chipped, squeezed, and hammered'' bears something more than the stamp of savvy politicking. Her expertise in bankruptcy and role in creating the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau bespeak the legitimacy of her lament.
Don't let the fanaticism and sensationalism of election time get the best of you. Discernible amid the din of rabble are voices well versed in the troubles of our time. It sounds like run-of-the-mill rhetoric to lean into oil companies, tax cuts for the rich, and Wall Street CEOs, as Warren did. But her insight into the fundamental destructiveness of these actors qualifies her grievances as more than pettiness. Through her congressional position overseeing the financial relief programs of 2008, Elizabeth Warren has seen, and in many ways solved, the problems arising from the reckless freedom granted to financial institutions. This freedom has created an incumbency of power and wealth that reins in Washington as well as the private affairs of hard working citizens. The interests of corporations have a stultifying grip on our capital -- interests of faceless entities that do not share in the human experience, nor in the common struggles citizens work to overcome.
A Clear Choice
The game we play is indeed rigged--the rat race skewed to the rich man's advantage. As long as corporations guide human action, there is no hope for fairness or equality. Not only, as Warren pointed out, is the middle class losing out to Republican tax cuts and slashes to student aid, Medicare, and Social Security, but groups like women also suffer in the wake of a system that perpetuates unsustainable political practices and the desperate social conditions that they create.
Warren concluded her speech with an appeal to something truly bipartisan--a call to action and the demand to heed it. Whether this comes from a divine unity, as in Warren's chosen words of Matthew 20:40, or from a basic goodness in human beings, there is a dutiful obligation we have to serve our community and our society. This can mean fair taxation of the rich or checks on financial institutions or simply the willingness to stand up to special interests and the sway of corporate power, which Warren believes Obama possesses and which I think he will demonstrate over the next four years.
