Don’t despair, political junkies. There is still going to be a vigorous debate in the Democratic presidential primary campaign — even though it will not really be about who the nominee should be. Unless she stumbles, Hillary Clinton seems to have the nomination pretty well sewn up. Instead, the debate will be about something just as important: What it means to be a Democrat in 2016 and what message the party should take into the general election fight.
And, for all you heartbroken liberals, here is good news: In that debate, Senator Elizabeth Warren (Democrat-Massachusetts) is still a full-fledged player — not as a candidate, but as an insistent voice in Hillary’s left ear. Warren, the heroine of the party’s progressive wing, met Hillary a few months ago to urge her to run a populist campaign.
The senator outlined some of the policies that she would like to see: An increase in Social Security benefits, a much higher minimum wage and stronger financial regulation to force big banks to get smaller. And one more request: Warren urged Hillary to distance herself from the Wall Street fat cats who she thinks have amassed too much influence in Democratic administrations, including both Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s.
Warren did not get a solid commitment, I am told, so she has a long way from giving her blessing to Hillary’s campaign.
“I want to see who else gets in this race and I want to see what the issues are that they push,” she said in a CNN interview last week.
There is no shortage of candidates for the Elizabeth Warren Challenge. Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent socialist from Vermont, is likely to join the Democratic Party and announce his candidacy soon. Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley has conspicuously sounded Warren’s themes on visits to Iowa and New Hampshire. Former Virginia Senator Jim Webb has tried to stake out populist ground to Warren’s right, in weighing against a “moneyed aristocracy” but opposing higher income taxes. And former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee, a Republican-turned-Democrat, says he may run because he thinks Hillary is too hawkish on foreign policy.
As candidates, they all look a bit Quixotic. (Actually, Don Quixote probably has higher name recognition.) But in policy terms, they represent serious Democratic alternatives to Clintonland.
Increasing Social Security benefits has suddenly become a progressive touchstone after a decade of debate over trimming the programme. Warren, Sanders and O’Malley are in favour; Hillary has not taken a position.
Breaking up big banks and restoring the Glass-Steagall Act, which limited commercial banks’ activities until Bill Clinton helped repeal it, is on the same wish list. Warren, Sanders and O’Malley are in favour; Hillary has not taken a position.
Warren, Sanders and O’Malley have said they oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a big trade pact that Obama hopes to pass this year. Hillary supported it as secretary of State.
And Warren, Sanders and O’Malley oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from Canada’s tar sands to the US Gulf Coast. As secretary of state, Hillary said she was “inclined” to approve the project, but more recently she has refused to take a position.
On foreign policy, Hillary faces a different set of challenges. She has long been more hawkish than Obama; she initially supported the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, only to acknowledge later that it was a mistake, and she urged the president to intervene more forcefully in Syria. (He did not.) Webb and Chafee have both said they think she is too quick to call for military action. “Anybody who voted for the Iraq war should not be president,” Chafee told Politico last week.
That is a range of views almost as diverse as in the bustling Republican campaign.
While we do not know how things will shake out, the results matter. At stake is whether the Democratic nominee will continue in the Centre-Left “New Democratic” tradition of Bill Clinton, the slightly more liberal vein of Obama, or move further to the populist Left.
Hillary already knows what she thinks about most of those issues, of course; she has been in politics a long time. But she has avoided taking precise positions, a way of keeping her options open to see how the campaign develops. That cannot last. It is not just pesky reporters who will be asking her questions; as soon as she starts talking with ordinary Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire, whose voters are among the best informed in the country. They are going to demand to know where she stands.
Like many pundits, I have written that it would be good for Hillary to have real debates with capable sparring partners, under the theory that she needs a tune-up before taking on the GOP nominee. Almost every professional campaign strategist I have spoken to says that is nuts. For a front-runner, they say, debates are mostly an opportunity to commit gaffes and lose support.
However, Hillary says she is going to work for every vote; she is not going to make the mistake she made in 2008, when she behaved as if she were the inescapable nominee. She needs to prove herself.
In any case, primaries are not only about choosing a candidate. Equally important, they are about refining the ideas that the nominee will take into the general election — and, if she wins, into the White House.
— Los Angeles Times
