Kerry Eleveld recently wrote a poignant piece that shines a light on the state of the Republican side of the 2016 Presidential race.
Additionally, I wrote a similar piece to the one I am about to write almost a whole year ago, and although a lot has happened in the last year, the main points still seem to apply.
In short, regardless of the Republican nominee's name, we already know what their policies will be: the same staid ultra-conservative, out-of-step with the average American, pro-business anti-worker anti-tax anti-Obamacare drivel we got out of Romney, and out of McCain before that. They will pretty much have to be to make it through the Republican primaries. On the other hand, in all likelihood we already know that Hillary Clinton will be the nominee, and the question now is just what kind of Democratic candidate will she be. Will we get another Third Way Corporatist, or the second coming of Elizabeth Warren?
The cynic in me might say the former, but the activist in me is not ready to accept that we don't have the power to nudge her more into the latter.
For some, simply having Hillary being a Democratic candidate who wins the Presidency may be enough for them. Lord knows it will be an important seat to win. But we should really be taking a more holistic approach, and aiming for not just the Presidency, but for retaking many seats in Congress, as well as stateside seats. To do so, the Democratic Party needs as charismatic a representative as they can get at the top of the ticket, and a Corporatist Democrat, Hillary or not, will not fill that role.
The goal then, should be to make sure Hillary comes out of the Democratic primaries as far left as possible, and keep her as far left as possible throughout the general election. At that point, whether or not she wants to remain to the left once in office, the hope is that there will be many more Warrens in Congress that she won't really have a choice one way or the other.
This, I feel, should be what Democrats consider to be the toughest challenge in 2016, not defeating the Republican opponent.
First of all, I am building this argument based on the assumption that Hillary Clinton will be the Democrat Party's candidate coming out of the primaries. I know, that is not necessarily a popular choice here at Dkos in particular, but based on the best available evidence, that is the most logical outcome. And I am not saying that this should just be a coronation, that we shouldn't still champion for a primary challenger to Hillary's left, but that is a longshot at best. You don't build a chess strategy based on what you would like the opponent to do, but on what you expect the opponent to do.
So expecting Hillary to win the Democratic nomination, we can pretty well call what the gameplan will be from that point on. Whether through advice from her campaign advisors or her donors, she will begin moderating her views and moving back toward the Center, and we will start to hear less populist-type rhetoric, and more Grand Bargain-type. You can pretty much count on it.
The thing about that is, the rationale for this type of move defies logic.
What is the rationale for this? You need to be more of a moderate so you can pick up some of the Republican voters.
Utterly ridiculous based on what we have seen out of past results. The idea that any Democratic candidate can win Republican votes over the ultra-conservative that will invariably come out of their primaries, because they went to more moderate policies over the Liberal policies they campaigned on the Democratic primaries on, is pretty absurd.
If not winning over Republican voters, the rationale then focuses on the idea of swing voters, who are still on the fence and need to be won over somehow.
But what often goes unsaid is that to win over these swing voters, if you can win them over at all, often requires the kind of backpedaling and flip flopping that will lose you just as many of the more base supporters in the process. Overall, I've always seen the efforts to win over swing voters as about as much of a zero-sum game as it gets in politics, and that is saying a lot. I'm not entirely convinced these type of swing voters that can sway these elections have ever existed in the numbers people envision in the first place.
As kos points out, the key to winning in 2016 will not be winning over some holdouts, but simply getting out the vote. Democratic voters already outnumber Republicans, the question really is, how do we best motivate them to get out to polls?
Obviously, they will be more motivated the better a candidate represents their views. And we know that what best represents the average American will be a Populist Democrat, definitely not a Third Way type.
So, what can we do to prevent this backslide of Progressive values by the Democratic candidate, Hillary or otherwise?
First, we should make sure to focus on most of the Progressive proposals that will continue to contrast with Republicans, no matter how much they try to moderate themselves, and are also proposals that resonate quite well with most Americans.
Things like raising the minimum wage. Like closing tax loopholes and Robin Hood taxes. Like funding infrastructure repairs and modernization. Like actual job stimulus programs like what we say in the New Deal. Like strengthening the country's social safety nets like Social Security and unemployment and food stamps, and yes, expanding Obamacare. We must not stray from championing these efforts.
In this regard, the Obama of the past half-year has actually started down a very solid path for Democrats to follow. Sure, we can quibble about how hard it was just to get him to set his own feet on this path in the first place, but we should also give credit where credit is due.
Furthermore, we know that the plutocratic side will be doing their best to defuse these populist platforms, despite how successful they have been shown to be at the polls. We've seen how hard these so-called Centrists like the Third Way came after Elizabeth Warren. But we also saw how quickly they had to backtrack, once the Liberal base got wind of their meddling. If nothing else, we must send the message that we will not allow fake Democrats to pull the wool over our eyes once again.
Second, we need to make sure to focus our efforts, not on finding and cultivating a true Liberal Warren-esque primary foil for Clinton, but in finding more Warren-esque candidates to contest seats in the House and Senate. We, like the media, tend to focus on the most polarizing figure, when should really be casting a wider net. And As much as I would like for a more Liberal candidate at the top of the ticket than Hillary, at the end of the day, her liberal bonafides are not much worse than the average Democratic Presidential aspirant (debatable, of course), so we might as well see how much she can embrace Liberal policies, and focus our efforts where they can have the most impact, downballot.
At the end of the day, it is still so early that any one of these assumptions may prove to be in error. But regardless, we must make sure we have a strategy in place now, where the endgame is not just the most Liberal person we can get in the White House, but as Liberal a representative government as we can get overall. Because if that is not where our efforts point, even this early on, what are we really going to accomplish?