Elizabeth Warren has taken many economic populist positions. Were she to run, I likely would support her against Hillary Clinton because of those issues. I don't think she is going to run, and believe the recent speculation is driven by the media's lack of content and fears of a boring race in 2016 for Dems. We're three years away, but the internet needs content, and few can provide substantive content in times of political dysfunction. Because of this, many speculate about a battle royale between two women for the Democratic presidential nomination. Moreover, there are many Left Democrats who are uncomfortable with Hilalry Clinton on many issues, just as they were in 2008. Left Democrats have some issue-based disagreements with Hillary Clinton.
In 2007-08, the reality was that Clinton and Obama were very close on the issues. (Remember that one big difference was that Obama was opposed to a mandate in health care reform and Obama supporters really disliked Paul Krugman for pointing out a mandate was necessary?)
John Edwards, notwithstanding the later revelations about his conduct and character, was the choice of many Left Democrats, of many of the economic populist brand. Barack Obama also obtained much Left support, although many of his differences were more stylistic than substantive with Clinton.
In the primaries and caucuses, however, Edwards quickly flamed out. Many Left Democrats went to Obama, and Obama eventually won a hard fought battle with Clinton. Of key parts of the Democratic coailition, African Americans tended to go for Obama and Latinos for Clinton. It was very close with other parts of the coalition like unions splitting.
Edwards never had much Latino or African American support. Had he made it past the first month, I believed this would have killed him electorally anyway.
In 1968, Gene McCarthy had white leftists, anti-war people who "came clean for Gene," but Latinos, African American, and working class folks went for RFK. RFK was winning (had just won California) when he was assassinated. And that electorate was much whiter than the one today in a Democratic primary.
Dave Weigel on Slate looks at this dynamic and speculates what it would mean in a Clinton v. Waren race, a race I believe will never happen.
There’s no mention of the Democratic Party’s ethnic demographics in the New Republic’s or the New York Times’ Warren pieces. Scheiber reminds us that Obama was able to upset Hillary Clinton: “All it takes is a single issue and a fresh face to bring the bad memories flooding back” among progressives. Both Scheiber and the New York Times’ Jonathan Martin mention Bill de Blasio’s victory in New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor. And you can’t explain the Obama or the de Blasio win without black voters.
A refresher: The president beat Clinton in a 50-state primary that she nearly won, by the end, as the salience of the Iraq War faded. Obama trounced Clinton in most of the caucuses, building a delegate margin, but he only stayed competitive because of black voters in Southern primary states. Obama was fading until the South Carolina primary, when an electorate that was mostly black gave him a landslide that polling hadn’t predicted. There were 35 primaries to go: Clinton won 21 of them. (That number includes the Florida and Michigan races, which held votes but saw no campaigning due to a party dispute. Still, Clinton won them.) Of the states that went for Obama, only six of them—Illinois, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin—gave him the win among white voters.
Scheiber blinks at this. A Democrat tells him that “the typical Democratic insurgent … captivates the latte-liberal demographic but has trouble making additional gains.” Right: Obama’s “additional gains” come from nonwhites!
Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly further expounds on demographics and liberal/left candidates:
The interesting wrinkle is that before Obama became a viable presidential candidate, HRC’s own front-running status was heavily based on outsized African-American support against the likes of “economic populist” John Edwards. Can HRC now regain that status along with her relative 2008 strength among Latinos? If so, she’ll be hard to beat whether or not Elizabeth Warren represents the Democratic Party’s “soul,” and Warren could well join Edwards, Howard Dean, Bill Bradley, Tom Harkin, Paul Simon, and Gene McCarthy as candidates who lost to “less progressive” rivals because they couldn’t attract enough minority support.
snip
To the extent there was a “movement” candidate in the early 2008 field, at least in the blogosphere, it was probably Edwards rather than Obama. If the ideological mission most pressing to many progressives at the moment is to engineer a sharp and permanent break with Wall Street and the economic thinking associated with it, I’d say there’s nothing particularly perilous about trusting Elizabeth Warren to execute it if she becomes the leader of the Democratic Party and the free world. But even if that perfectly reflects what a majority of Democrats say (or progressive elites think) they want, beating Hillary Clinton in real-live primaries and caucuses—particularly without a nonwhite voter base—will be very, very difficult.
Until the Left has a real base in the demographic groups of the Democratic Party, I think the great progressive hopes will not translate into electoral victories.
DallasDoc had a great comment in a diary about Elizabeth Warren. I excerpt some of it here because I think it well describes a way forward:
Issues of economic justice and social equity are beginning to be whispered about, though their political champions are still few and far between. A progressive caucus in the Senate has begun to find its voice, with Warren's exposure of lying financiers and their minions in the Administration, and efforts like Sherrod Brown's to raise the issue of increased SS payments. This is welcome, but it's early days for the political manifestation of the new Left. There's a lot of grassroots work and changing of average voters' minds to be done before we see a paradigm shift in politics generally.
The full comment is here and worth reading in its entirety:
DallasDoc
Along with changing minds of average voters, for the Left Democrats (and a New, New Left) to be electorally successful, Left Democrats (progressive populists) need to reach out and listen to Latinos and African Americans. Latinos and African Americans need to have a leading voice in the movement. That is also part of the way forward.