Pent up progressive political desires burst out in the comments as David Brooks outlined a rationale for Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, to run for president.
“Events like the Brown case in Ferguson and the Garner case in New York have raised indignation levels across the progressive spectrum,” Mr. Brooks wrote in “Warren Can Win.” “Judging by recent polls, the midterm defeat has not scared Democrats into supporting the safe option; it’s made them angrier about the whole system.”
The nearly 2,000 readers who responded certainly confirmed Mr. Brooks’s analysis.
Ms. Warren’s advocacy for managing the United States economy and financial system in the interests of consumers and workers evoked, for some, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s call for a “crusade to restore America to its own people.”
“So many Americans yearn to hear those words again by a presidential candidate who actually means it, as F.D.R. did, and who will fight for the common good,” Mary Scott in New York wrote. “The 1 percent would hate” Ms. Warren, “and she would probably ‘welcome their hatred,’ just as F.D.R. did.”
Ms. Warren’s memoir, “A Fighting Chance,” speaks of her fights for consumer rights and against banking institutions and their “rapacious exploitation of the poor and vulnerable,” as Mr. Brooks wrote.
“It’s not just social conditions like globalization and technological change that threaten the middle class,” Mr. Brooks wrote of the senator’s views. “It’s an active conspiracy by the rich and powerful. The game is rigged.”
It’s a theme that arises continually across comments on The Times from year to year — the rise of corporate power in United States politics, and a disconnect between economic realities and political rhetoric.
“Elizabeth Warren is the only Democrat speaking for the people” who work “for subsistence and minimum wages and do not understand that the game is rigged against them,” Larry Smith wrote from Edinburg, Tex.
As many write of their yearning for a candidate like Ms. Warren, others are actively working to draft Ms. Warren to run for president, including a campaign by MoveOn.org. As recently as Monday on NPR, the senator denied running. She even offered to “put an exclamation point on it.”
Regardless of progressive yearning, the dream of a power-to-the-people presidency is a pipedream, even if a campaign were successful, some readers said.
“Democrats make this mistake again and again — we nominate someone who’s totally unknown on the national stage (Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama) who makes lots of grandiose promises,” Sharon5101 in Rockaway Beach wrote, “but can’t fulfill them after they move into the White House.”
Grass-roots action would be a better route to progressive success, others said.
“Elizabeth Warren may be brave, but it’s not likely she has the abilities to be in the mold of F.D.R.,” PKBormes wrote from Boston. “We need to quit looking for a savior and start pulling more of the political weight ourselves: vote, protest, demonstrate.”
The progressive dream seems to have a life of its own, some readers said.
“Could she win? I don’t know,” Gemli in Boston wrote. “The zeitgeist is a funny thing, and one appears to be materializing in her favor.”