Bernie Sanders has an Elizabeth Warren problem; while her background and intellectual roots are vastly different than his, her specific policy ideas are not. She is clearly taking control of the progressive wing of the party. How can he turn things around?
As I’ve noted previously, the most logical way to make the “revolution” happen is to move to the right on cultural issues to accommodate reactionary workers, but Sanders won’t do that. Nor will he deign to make himself a more effective identity politician. No, his solution is to move even further left and hope that Warren won’t follow him.
Bernie’s previous ideas about addressing inequality, largely through a massively beefed-up inheritance tax, were constitutional and relatively moderate. His new wealth tax has all of the defects of the Warren proposal, and then some. It’s also too late.
My best guess is that, by moving left, Sanders will cause Democratic voters to view Warren as more of a centrist than she really is, which will be of enormous benefit to her in the later stages of the race. Moving that far left may win him back a few progressive votes, but it is not a plausible path to the nomination.