The reasons to be skeptical of Hillary Clinton are legion, from her husband's record in the '90s, to her corporate ties (including being on the board of Walmart), to certainly worrisome foreign policy hawkish statements. I feel no need to rehash them since plenty of you have been doing so in recent months, and heck, years.
My approach to a better Hillary hasn't been trying to drum up a viable primary challenge since none will exist. The Democratic Party is showing unprecedented unity around her. As I've written before, there is no space for an insurgent challenger to Hillary this cycle because the public demand for an alternative is simply not there. You can wail and scream and kick all you want, but at over 60 percent in the polls, and even higher numbers among the party's growth demographics (African Americans and Latinos), Hillary will be our nominee.
So how to push for a more liberal Hillary, if she has nothing to fear from the primary? By trying to convince the party establishment that the triangulation bullshit of the '90s is played out and ineffective in today's political environment. In short, there are more of us than there are of them. If we vote, we win. And the path to victory isn't trying to win over nonexistent real "independents," but to motivate our low-performing base to turn out.
And on that front, the early days of the Clinton campaign are truly encouraging. Head below the fold for the details.
Let's start with her choice of her campaign manager, Robby Mook. Mook is the guy who ran Terry McAuliffe's successful 2013 gubernatorial campaign. Why is that notable? I wrote about it at the time:
Note that this is Virginia, and Democrats were wedded to the idea that they had to run Mark Warner-style campaigns to win, wooing downstate white rural voters with gimmicks like NASCAR sponsorships and the like. But Mook ignored such advice and focused on a base mobilization strategy, working hard to excite, motivate, and turnout core supporters (younger, browner, more educated) in the DC suburbs of northern Virginia.
The race was neck and neck the entire cycle, but Mook proved the value of his strategy when those NoVa Democrats turned out for McAuliffe on Election Day, dealing him a 2.5-point victory. Amazingly, African-American turnout matched that of 2012, with President Barack Obama on the ballot. It was a triumph for the strategy we've long advocated here: there are more of us than there are of them, so if we turn out, we win. Mook made sure to give our people a reason to vote, they did, and we won.
Hillary could've picked from any number of people to run her campaign, including her husband's stable of Third Way hacks, yet here she was, picking a guy whose entire job in 2013 was revving up Virginia liberals to vote for an asshole like Terry McAuliffe ... AND SUCCEEDED!
So there's that. There's another theory floating around DC from the "Clinton will be a liberal" optimists. I'm not sure I buy it completely, but it has a certain logic. It goes like this: John Podesta wrote Barack Obama's 2015 State of the Union address. Now I don't actually know if Podesta "wrote" the speech, but he had a heavy hand in it, and the DC beltway conventional wisdom was that it was his blueprint.
That was an explicitly liberal State of the Union address, the most liberal of his presidency.
John Podesta is now Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, leaving the White House exactly after the SOTU address.
Thus, Podesta was creating a bridge between the two presidencies by crafting a narrative that can be passed from Obama to Hillary like a baton as her campaign begins taking shape. Or, put another way, Podesta wouldn't help craft a super-liberal Obama if Hillary was going to take it all back six months later.
When I heard this, I was skeptical to say the least. I even LOL'd, as in literally laughed out loud. But given Hillary's recent steps, that idea doesn't seem as far-fetched anymore.
On Immigration Reform, Clinton (pleasantly) shocked even the strongest reform advocates by advocating for reforms that go far beyond even what Obama has done on the issue. Latino media has been buzzing about her immigration forum for days.
On police brutality and criminal reform, Hillary has been saying all the right things. And while people might be skeptical given that many of today's problems stem from policies enacted by her husband, even that guy is now admitting his mistakes.
In fact, that might be a nice model to follow: Bill admits his fuckups, like this and welfare reform and others, and Hillary says she'll reverse course.
What about her Wall Street friends? Her record on that front is obviously abysmal. Could she really turn on them by advocating real financial reforms, regulations and taxes (like a financial transaction tax) that would make the mega rich slightly less rich?
This is perhaps where the most skepticism is warranted, and certainly where I worry the most. As of now, she's been field testing a populist approach.
She is embracing the ideas trumpeted by Ms. Warren and the populist movement — that the wealthy have been benefiting disproportionately from the economy while the middle class and the poor have been left behind. And the policies Mrs. Clinton is advancing, like paid sick leave for employees and an increase in the minimum wage, align with that emphasis.
It's certainly a start. But really, Clinton HQ, don't say this again, ever:
Nothing stings members of her inner circle more than the suggestion that their candidate is late to these issues. Mrs. Clinton was the original Elizabeth Warren, her advisers say, a populist fighter who for decades has been an advocate for families and children; only now have the party and primary voters caught up.
Ha ha ha ha ha! On family issues like paid sick leave? Sure. On reforming Wall Street? Fuck you, Clinton advisers. But, it's not too late to join the party! But it's also not as if Clinton is completely new to some of these issues.
Advisers have lists at the ready outlining Mrs. Clinton’s calls as early as 2007 to eliminate the so-called carried interest loophole, roll back the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, impose tighter regulations on derivatives and place limits on chief executives’ compensation.
“Let’s finally do something about the growing economic inequality that is tearing our country apart,” Mrs. Clinton said during her campaign, appearing at the Take Back America conference, a gathering of liberal groups, in June 2007. “The top 1 percent of our households,” she added, “held 22 percent of our nation’s wealth.”
Fair enough, but as anyone will say, rhetoric is easy. Wall Street hates Elizabeth Warren because she has struck a nerve and is actually harming their interests. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, well, this ...
In her brief 2008 candidacy, all four of the New York-based Big Six banks ranked among her top 10 corporate donors.
They wouldn't be so generous to her if they considered her a threat in the mold of Elizabeth Warren. It really is that simple. None of those banks gave a dime to Warren.
Still, if this is real, it's a good sign:
In a meeting with economists this year, Mrs. Clinton intensely studied a chart that showed income inequality in the United States. The graph charted how real wages, adjusted for inflation, had increased exponentially for the wealthiest Americans, making the bar so steep it hardly fit on the chart.
Mrs. Clinton pointed at the top category and said the economy required a “toppling” of the wealthiest 1 percent, according to several people who were briefed on her policy discussions but could not discuss private conversations for attribution.
The article goes on to note that she won't use language like "toppling" in public, because heavens, it might give some of those one percenters the vapors! But that's the Hillary Clinton that would erase doubts on her commitment to income equality and the re-engineering of our economy to better serve the interests of the rest of the 99 percent.
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So is this meant to convince you that Hillary is kosher and awesome and will be the next Teddy Roosevelt? Nope. I couldn't make that argument with a straight face.
But as of now, Clinton is doing and saying all the right things, and in a campaign, that's the best you can hope for. If you are dead-set on distrusting her, then there is nothing she can do to change your mind. Luckily, you'll have primary options to chose from to vote your conscience.
But consider this: she could be running a cautious "centrist" campaign, designed to inspire no one, offend no one, and coast to victory given her poll numbers. And no one in the Beltway would fault her for it. They'd probably applaud her for punching hippies!
Instead, she's running exactly the campaign we've asked Democrats to run for years and years and years. And we're all going to be in great shape if the primary ends up consistently looking like this:
In fact, my advice to Hillary would be to parrot that every chance she gets: "I agree with Bernie."
In the end, promises are just promises. But if this is the real Hillary we're seeing, then we're certainly looking at an improvement from these last six years. And perhaps we can someday look at Obama's presidency as a transitionary one, easing the path from the Bush years to a much more glorious America.
Ha ha ha, I cracked myself up. But seriously, I want to be optimistic. And given her polling numbers, the bulk of the Democratic primary electorate already is.
