what happens to the democratic party in the wake of donald trump <u+2019>s victory? to get insights, the wall street journal<u+2019>s gerald f. seib spoke with sen. elizabeth warren. here are edited excerpts of their discussion. mr. seib: a couple of days after the election, you said, <u+201c>if we learn nothing else from the past two years of electioneering, we should hear the message loud and clear that the american people want washington to change. it was clear in the democratic primaries. it was clear in the republican primaries. it was clear in the campaign and it was clear on election day.<u+201d> how do democrats show that they heard that message? sen. warren: the interesting question is going to be both halves. how are the democrats going to show it, and how is donald trump going to show that he actually heard that message? that<u+2019>s the message he ran on. what donald trump is doing is putting together a transition team that is full of lobbyists<u+2014>the kind of people that he ran against. [vice president-elect mike pence has since ordered the removal of all lobbyists from the transition team.] the clearest point that comes out of this election is that the american people do not want wall street to run their government. they do not want corporate executives to be the ones who are calling the shots in washington. look at the polling from this, that about three-quarters of all americans do believe that the game is rigged. they believe it is rigged in favor of the people in this room and that it is rigged against them and their families and their children. and they want to see change. they want to see that connection between wall street and giant corporations and our government broken. they want that not to happen anymore. they want a government that runs for the people. that<u+2019>s what i think this election is about. mr. seib: so how do the two parties show that? what do democrats do? what does the trump team do that it<u+2019>s not doing now in your opinion? sen. warren: well, it doesn<u+2019>t start by hiring a bunch of lobbyists to run the transition. it doesn<u+2019>t start by floating names of people who<u+2019>ve run giant hedge funds, or been part of that, to be able to run the treasury. or people who come from industry to be able to run the regulatory agencies. the american people understand about the revolving door. they<u+2019>re really sick of it. he did not win on mitch mcconnell, paul ryan, business as usual, what can we do to help the giant corporations in america. the k street lobbyists are absolutely out there, salivating. they say, <u+201c>this is our big chance. we<u+2019>re going to get to slash regulations. look for a tax cut for those at the top.<u+201d> that is not what the people who elected donald trump are thinking. mr. seib: is there a place where populists in the democratic party and a trump administration could come together? sen. warren: this just keeps going back to, what is donald trump going to do? he<u+2019>s now given us the first tangible sign of his vision of how to run a trump presidency. and a big part of that are lobbyists and washington insiders. and let<u+2019>s face it. there was a lot during the election of the toxic stew of bigotry and attacks on americans all across this country. donald trump started his campaign with an attack on mexican-americans and then he rode the escalator down. he did attacks on women, on african-americans, on muslims, on immigrants. he did attacks on people with disabilities. everybody who didn<u+2019>t look like the people who showed up at his rallies. there were a lot of people who were attracted to that. but there were a lot of people who were not and yet voted for donald trump. they said, <u+201c>we want somebody who<u+2019>s going to shake it up.<u+201d> here i am with the business leaders of america, and i just want to underline something that every one of you know. bigotry is bad for business. bigotry is not what your employees expect. bigotry is not what your customers expect. and if that<u+2019>s the direction that this administration goes, that creates a real problem for everybody. mr. seib: but as you suggest, there are millions of people who voted for donald trump not for those reasons. most of those people used to be democrats. how did your party lose them? why were they trump voters? sen. warren: i think that donald trump made the promise to shake things up. he made the argument over and over and over that the democrats were too close to wall street and too close to big business. that was the core of his economic argument, that too many insiders were calling the shots. that too many multinational corporations were running the trade deals. that too many people who<u+2019>d already made it big were using the tools of government to work for themselves and not to work for anyone else. i want to be clear. i think hillary clinton ran on very much the same argument, i just think donald trump made it aggressively. but the point is, you can<u+2019>t miss this about the election. whether they drove it effectively or whether they drove it less effectively, it was driving the message that washington needs to work for the little guy. that washington needs to work for the families who<u+2019>ve been left behind. that washington doesn<u+2019>t need to work for those at the top anymore. and this is so important going forward because it raises this question about what does the economic agenda look like. mr. seib: well, let<u+2019>s talk about that. what should the economic agenda look like, in your opinion? sen. warren: i think there<u+2019>s no mandate out there for mitch mcconnell and for paul ryan. i think there is no mandate right now to cut regulations and say, <u+201c>i know, let<u+2019>s just turn a bunch of wall street banks loose and see what they will do. let<u+2019>s not remember what happened in 2008 and the run-up to 2008.<u+201d> i think the appetite for that among the american people is zero. whether people were voting for hillary clinton or whether they were voting for donald trump, they weren<u+2019>t voting for mitch mcconnell and paul ryan<u+2019>s deregulatory mix<u+2014>let guys do whatever they want to do, let giant corporations do whatever they want to do. write to reports@wsj.com
the election<u+2019>s message for the democrats - wsj
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