A Theory of the 2008 Race
I generally concur with the consensus view that this crop of Democratic presidential candidates is probably the deepest, most talented and most interesting in decades, maybe ever. Individuals who are second- or third-tier candidates in this cycle, like Richardson and Biden, might have been front-runners in past years. Others on the periphery of the race have very compelling stories to tell as well--Wes Clark, whom I supported in 2004 and still feel might be the best potential president of the group, and of course Al Gore, who has shown a degree of courage and patriotism I wouldn't have thought possible during and after the absurd and tragic 2000 campaign.
But this all strikes me as theoretical, because a Clinton is in the race. I think Hillary Clinton would be a disaster as the Democratic nominee, and very likely a failure if she won the presidency, for reasons I'll explain in a minute. Even so, she brings advantages to her campaign that no other Democrat can approach: unlimited money, influence over local and state party organizations, her husband's political brilliance, and perhaps most importantly the residual loyalty and affection of Democrats who look back with fondness on Bill Clinton's presidency. Assuming that there's a finite amount of money, energy and talent in the Democratic primary contest, Hillary Clinton commands a plurality of it, maybe approaching an outright majority.
So we have a situation where, given her resources, Senator Clinton will be very tough to stop in the primaries--even if she doesn't get more than 35 percent in any of the early contests. She'll just keep rolling up pluralities, waiting for the crowded field to thin, playing to the media which usually assumes a deferential posture to the front-runner (well, unless it's someone who scares them, like Howard Dean). By the time the race narrows down to a few candidates--call them Hillary and Not-Hillary--she'll have an air of inevitability, as Kerry did by mid-February 2004, and it would take a minor miracle to deny her. But at least we'd have six months to churn through our buyer's remorse.
The sooner Not-Hillary emerges, the better chance that individual has to win the contest. Beyond his own tremendous appeal, I think Barack Obama is by far the best Not-Hillary option, capable of driving the transformational change in our politics that so many of us yearn for.
Why Not Hillary?
The pratcial case against Sen. Clinton is the same as it's been since the first rumor of her presidential intentions five or six years ago: her appeal is sharply limited by the near-half of the country that won't vote for her under any circumstance. Charlie Cook a few weeks ago reported this figure as 46 percent; by contrast, John Edwards is outright dismissed by about 34 percent, and Obama by 23 percent. If these figures are close to accurate, that's a much larger pool of potential support for either of the other two Democratic first-tier candidates. I'd argue that the deep antipathy toward Senator Clinton also poses tremendous potential danger to Democrats' House majority, considering how many challengers won in 2006 in purple-to-red districts in Indiana, Kentucky, Colorado, Kansas and elsewhere. Their chances of surviving a first re-election bid--statistically, the toughest by far--greatly diminish if they have to run away from the top of the ticket.
Beyond the numbers, though, I don't believe Hillary Clinton is interested in, or maybe even capable of, offering the kind of progressive leadership most of us on sites like this yearn for. Consider this analysis of her announcement speech, by the always-entertaining Matt Taibbi at rollingstone.com:
It's somewhat unfair to bash a politician for literary unoriginality these days, mainly because the vast majority of them are guilty of using the same robotic, machine-generated, market-tested campaign rhetoric. But Hillary's opening speech was really remarkable for its computerized coldness even compared to such notorious campaign robots as John Kerry and Wes Clark. It was a surprisingly impersonal, almost defiantly by-the-book recitation of the DLC formula for national Democratic campaigns -- bash the incumbent, talk tough militarily, and then try to beat the Republicans in the middle on the issues of health care, the environment and a balanced budget. Take a look at the opening of Hillary's speech:
I'm in. And I'm in to win.
Today I am announcing that I will form an exploratory committee to run for president.
And I want you to join me not just for the campaign but for a conversation about the future of our country -- about the bold but practical changes we need to overcome six years of Bush administration failures.
I am going to take this conversation directly to the people of America, and I'm starting by inviting all of you to join me in a series of Web chats over the next few days.
The stakes will be high when America chooses a new president in 2008.
As a senator, I will spend two years doing everything in my power to limit the damage George W. Bush can do. But only a new president will be able to undo Bush's mistakes and restore our hope and optimism.
Only a new president can renew the promise of America -- the idea that if you work hard you can count on the health care, education and retirement security that you need to raise your family. These are the basic values of America that are under attack from this administration every day.
And only a new president can regain America's position as a respected leader in the world.
I believe that change is coming November 4th, 2008. And I am forming my exploratory committee because I believe that together we can bring the leadership that this country needs. I'm going to start this campaign with a national conversation about how we can work to get our country back on track.
Here's the human translation for that piece of text:
Crappy Corbin Bleu song.
"National conversation." Bold. Change. Bush is a failure.
National conversation. American people. I know how to use the Web.
High stakes.
Bush causes damage. Bush made mistakes. Hope and optimism.
Promise of America. Hard work. The New Deal. Family. Values. Under attack.
Together.
Leadership.
National conversation.
...
Kerry used to be the master of the focus-word-list style of campaign speechifying ("My fellow citizens, elections are about choices. And choices are about values..."), but Hillary blows Kerry away. You seldom caught Kerry lumping more than four focus words into a sentence, but check out Hillary's penultimate line. It's a six-word list: Principles, values, new ideas, energy, leadership, challenge. In fact the only focus words that Hillary left out of her speech, as far as I can tell, were freedom, pride, and truth. The key words -- values, principles, change, heroes, future, etc. -- were mostly all double- or triple-represented.
Will the 2008 campaign see the world's first ten-focus-word sentence? I used to think that was an impossibility, but I'm beginning to wonder. Would you put a sentence like the following past Hillary Clinton?
The promise of America requires bold new leadership, leadership based on the principles and values of hope and optimism -- leadership with the vision to honor America's heroes and stand up to any challenge.
Hmm, maybe I'm underestimating these people. That was too easy, insultingly easy in fact...Can we reach for a fifteen-word list maybe? I have no doubt that if it happens in the next two years, Hillary will be the record-setter.
Hillary Clinton represents the perpetuation of the zero-sum politics of the last 20 years. This is hardly a coincidence, as her election would mean the Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton sequence that so many of us who remember that this country isn't a hereditary monarchy find repellent. The old Clinton crowd of difference-splitters, world-class triangulators, and status-quo perpetuators would get another turn.
What would this mean? Well, perhaps the Iraq War would end, perhaps not, but the mindset that led to this strategic disaster and tragic mistake would endure--in part because that same mindset holds that military intervention is just something that presidents should do. Perhaps some incremental progress might be made toward expanding health care or slowing the pace of global warming--but the second Clinton Administration would be working within a self-limited framework defined by their reluctance to take on big political fights, because this or that constituency simply cannot be offended or angered. This is how things have been, ergo this is how things must be.
If you believe in reform, if you believe in the American community, if you believe in the progressive vision, I simply don't see how you can support Hillary Clinton. If, on the other hand, you enjoy Rovian polarization and a nation too bitterly divided to take on the great challenges of our time, if you appreciate focus group-driven politics through which the aficianados nod and smile at the buzzwords, she's your candidate.
Okay then; why Obama?
Every candidate is, among other things, a vehicle for the hopes and aspirations of her/his supporters. This was never more apparent than in the John Kerry campaign of 2004; to this day I don't believe that most Democrats, maybe not even a plurality, really supported Kerry as their first choice early that year--but because the stakes did seem so high, because the prospect of four more years of Bush seemed so unbearable, we took up his cause. Kerry himself didn't seem to understand this, but I think most of us did.
Obama, on the other hand, does seem to grasp that, for all his personal appeal, his political appeal is mostly driven by the yearning for something else, something better. The speech this morning, like his two past great speeches (the 2004 Democratic Convention keynote, and his superb 2005 commencement address at Knox College), makes this point:
[A]lthough government will play a crucial role in bringing about the changes we need, more money and programs alone will not get us where we need to go. Each of us, in our own lives, will have to accept responsibility – for instilling an ethic of achievement in our children, for adapting to a more competitive economy, for strengthening our communities, and sharing some measure of sacrifice. So let us begin. Let us begin this hard work together. Let us transform this nation.
...
I know there are those who don't believe we can do all these things. I understand the skepticism. After all, every four years, candidates from both parties make similar promises, and I expect this year will be no different. All of us running for president will travel around the country offering ten-point plans and making grand speeches; all of us will trumpet those qualities we believe make us uniquely qualified to lead the country. But too many times, after the election is over, and the confetti is swept away, all those promises fade from memory, and the lobbyists and the special interests move in, and people turn away, disappointed as before, left to struggle on their own.
That is why this campaign can't only be about me. It must be about us – it must be about what we can do together. This campaign must be the occasion, the vehicle, of your hopes, and your dreams. It will take your time, your energy, and your advice – to push us forward when we're doing right, and to let us know when we're not. This campaign has to be about reclaiming the meaning of citizenship, restoring our sense of common purpose, and realizing that few obstacles can withstand the power of millions of voices calling for change.
I would submit that this is the essence of the progressive ideal: us, not you or me. My single biggest problem with the Republican philosophy, what I think is the rot at its core, is that they really contend that each of us is on our own, that there are the worthy and the worthless, and that government at most reflects and reinforces these differences. In some sense this is what binds the billionaires and the Christofascists: they share a binary worldview, and regard the Other--the unions, the secularists and insufficiently belligerent people of monotheistic faith, pretty much anyone who doesn't show them absolute deference--with rage and fear. Whereas Senators Clinton and Edwards, at their best, promise to take up this fight on our behalf, Obama has the vision of transcending the conflict, of getting beyond the zero-sum, of defeating the Dobsons and Hannitys not by frontal assault, but by revealing the essential moral bankruptcy of their worldviews, how far they are from the best traditions of America.
Politics is about storytelling, and Obama more than anyone else in this race tells the stories I think we need to hear. Yes, it's a leap of faith to entrust a man so young, with no real executive experience, with the presidency. But such was the case with Lincoln, who also had never really run anything bigger than a law office or a general store. I would rather vote my hopes than my angers or resentments.
The Rest of the Field, Now and Later
Before today, my first choice for the presidency was the same as many in the Daily Kos community: General Wesley Clark. I still feel that Clark might be the best potential president in the field: his great strengths, executive experience and an unquestioned mastery of foreign policy, are Obama's great questions. If Clark were in, if he had the money backing and the media attention, I'd support him with total enthusiasm. I personally look for leaders who make me proud to be an American; Clark, a self-made man who was wildly successful in perhaps the most rigorous meritocracy in our society, fits that bill completely.
Unfortunately, he's not in the race. I don't know what he was, or is, waiting for--but at this point, given the crowded field, I don't see how he can win the nomination. He's certainly smarter than I am, and maybe he has something in mind, but I don't think we can afford to wait, considering that the party as a whole is not as appreciative of this extraordinary man and his talents as this community is.
Al Gore, while not as appealing to me as Clark, does have some strengths that the General lacks. His stature is such that he somewhat can afford to wait; in fact, one could argue that his ideal time to enter the race might be after the first stretch of primaries, to take advantage of the presumptive buyers' remorse that might follow a string of early Clinton victories. If that's the case, and the contest turns into the former First Lady versus the former Vice-President, I will enthusiastically back Gore. If he comes in later this year, to contest the primaries, I know a lot of Democrats will be conflicted, and I probably will be too. But, as with Clark, I don't think those of us who prefer Obama can afford to wait.
John Edwards? I liked him in 2004 because he forcefully made a point that John Kerry seemed unwilling to accept: it's immoral to privilege wealth over work for taxation purposes. In some ways, he's a better and more appealing candidate now than he was then: his health care plan is compelling, as is his full-throated populism. But his foreign policy views strike me as little evolved from 2004, and he seems too quick to pander to the Democratic base without concern for the real-world consequences if those policies were enacted.
Obama is preferable here because he grasps what I think is the secret of leadership: one must know where the country is, where s/he would like to take the country, and how to move that center point of public opinion. In the end, this is why I'm inclined to support him. And, for this mix of practical and idealistic reasons, it's why I think progressives now on the fence for the race next year should strongly consider doing the same.
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