Is an Elizabeth Warren presidential run the best way to influence Hillary Clinton?
Noam Scheiber's piece touting a progressive challenge to the expected presidential run of Hillary Clinton by Elizabeth Warren is interesting in its subtext (a strong populist progressive mood in the Democratic electorate) while grasping at
a very unlikely hook to sell his story—that Elizabeth Warren would challenge Clinton in a nomination fight. Anything's possible I suppose, but put me in the "I seriously doubt it" camp.
That said, I do think the piece raises interesting questions about how progressives can gain and wield influence in the Democratic Party and over Democratic presidents. When does that process start? How does it work? What tactics will be successful?
Let's start with a basic point—nominating and electing a progressive president is the ideal. But it doesn't happen often. If Elizabeth Warren runs and can win the Democratic nomination and the general election, then the strategy is pretty straightforward—elect Elizabeth Warren as president of the United States. That's why I would never denigrate anyone who is advocating for a Warren for President movement. I don't think she would run, or win the nomination or win the presidency, but that's just like, my opinion, man.
I note that Dave Weigel makes a good point that imbuing your favored presidential candidate with progressive bona fides is not a winning movement strategy:
[I]t’s risky, weak strategy to make a presidential primary the test kitchen for policy change. [...] Over time, conservatives stopped expecting a president to get elected, lead, and solve all their problems. They built a grassroots machine and a litany of policy goals—the activists would speak, and the president would nod along. By 2012, Grover Norquist could tell a national conference that the next Republican president need only come to the job “with enough working digits to handle a pen.” That’s where progressives need to get, that un-glamorous and under-covered triumph of movement over party.
I agree but acknowledge that Warren would be different. In any event, assume for the moment though, that I am right that Warren will not run, what then?
Please see under the fold for more on Warren.
A hilariously absurd paper from the American Enterprise Institute purported to study the influence of the tea party (it's been touted for the idea that the IRS blunted tea party influence). As I say, the paper is hilarious, but it raises some interesting benchmarks for measuring movement influence:
How does political change come about? While freedom of speech and assembly are central pillars of democracy, recognized as intrinsically valuable, it is unclear how effective the exercise of these freedoms is in bringing about change. [... W]e investigate the impact of the Tea Party movement protests in the United States on policymaking and citizen political behavior.
In simpler terms, the questions are how can a movement influence policymaking and voting? These are seminal questions for anyone who cares about politics and government. In our country we have a two-party system that must be accounted for if you really care about change. Third-party movements just don't work.
So what then? A few things in my opinion in this particular climate.
The Inside Game: One approach is for some segment of the movement to try to persuade by getting inside the tent and exchanging early support for Clinton in exchange for concrete proposals (campaign proposals are worth the paper they are written on, of course, but they do allow for opening the political dialogue to progressive policies). Here's an example—by the time 2016 rolls around, we're going to be pretty openly discussing "progressive fixes" to ObamaCare. What would the progressive movement like to see be proposed? An obvious candidate is the public option on the exchanges. (On this point we are in luck when you consider Hillary Clinton's 2008 health care proposal: "Her proposal allows people to enroll in a public plan similar to Medicare or the program federal employees use, or to get health care through a private insurer.")
How about a revisit of homeownership policy? Again, some luck, as Clinton proposed a new HOLC: "I've proposed a new Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), to launch a national effort to help homeowners refinance their mortgages."
Some issues that require more definition may include climate change (but see Clinton on climate change—"[C]limate change is our Space Race. It is our homefront mobilization during World War II and it is our response to the Great Depression") and tellingly, military intervention, where Clinton remains a dangerous liberal interventionist.
Can the inside game work? I think it can in terms of getting progressive positions adopted in policy papers. But what does that mean in terms of actual governance? Unfortunately, not necessarily a lot. But policy papers do set the terms of the debate.
There can be no doubt that an actual contested Democratic primary is the most effective tool for garnering public support from candidates. Certainly 2008 proves that. However, is it worth the trade-off of permitting the media to declare "progressivism" the loser in such a contest? I note in passing the absurd notion that President Obama's victory was a triumph of progressivism over the evil forces of the Third Way. As the president and the then Secretary of State themselves put it:
“Despite our hard-fought primary, we had such agreement on what needed to be done for our country,” Mrs. Clinton said.
“Made for tough debates, by the way,” Mr. Obama added, “because we could never figure out what we were different on.”
“Yeah, we worked at that pretty hard,” she said.
And there is another side to the Inside Game coin—who else is in the tent? How about
Goldman Sachs?
Hillary Clinton will be the featured attraction at a Goldman Sachs conference Tuesday evening, in a question-and-answer session with chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein, POLITICO has learned. The conference is aimed at start-up businesses, and Clinton’s session with Blankfein will be held in the evening, a source familiar with the planning said.
Yeah, Jesse Unruh said "If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women and then vote against them, you have no business being up here," but there is always a price to be paid.
The Outside Game. There are two plausible ways to play the outside game in a political campaign—support another candidate or support no candidate. There is likely to be some candidate on the ballot who is more progressive than Hillary Clinton. Let's hope is it an intelligent, persuasive and articulate one. It's not going to be Warren in my opinion, and I think that is a good thing. Here's why—a lower-profile candidate who is not perceived as a threat to a frontrunner can score points and "win" by beating expectations, not by winning. That would be the threat posed and it could have the same consequences in terms of progressive policy pronouncements from the frontrunner.
It also would lead to the virtue of a more substantive policy debate. Mudslinging on peripheral personal issues generally arises in contests that are in doubt. How to conduct a progressive persuasion campaign in an election also raises the issue in more general terms. In that respect, I highly recommend the TDS Memo on Democratic dialogue:
As the Democratic coalition and community looks to the future, however, there is a quite different challenge that the coalition must also prepare to confront: Democrats will soon have to begin debating important and deeply divisive issues about the Democratic platform and message for 2016 and beyond. These intra-Democratic debates will set the stage for the more public disputes that will emerge during the next presidential primaries.
The critical challenge Democrats face is this: How can Democrats energetically debate their differences while at the same time still retaining a sufficient degree of unity to maintain a united front and “hold the line” against the profound Republican threat.
I'm much less concerned about the unity thing than Ed Kilgore and his group. I'm actually more interested in thinking about how progressives can influence and "win" that debate. But the paper provides some good insights on that as well. This descriptive seems largely correct to me of how the debate is conducted:
[I]ntra-Democratic debates are not conducted within any formal structures of the Democratic Party. Rather, both sides of most contentious debates
present their perspective in the pages of independent political magazines, major websites or daily newspaper editorial pages, or in the overheated environment of primary battles.
This has a tremendous effect on the style and approach that the authors of such commentaries employ in their arguments. Because of the overwhelming amount of political commentary that is published every day in the American media, each commentator faces a massive challenge in attracting attention for his or her specific position on some particular issue. This encourages the use of arguments that are expressed in the most dramatic and polemical fashion possible.
I think that describes today pretty accurately. (While it does ignore why this phenomenon first developed—the "Left," especially on Iraq, was read right out of the conversation, see
Crashing The Gate and
What is different about this time.)
How does this phenomenon impact how a progressive movement should interact with a presidential frontrunner? I guess it depends on your view of politicians as much as anything. I'm from the pols are pols and do what they do school:
As citizens and activists, our allegiances have to be to the issues we believe in. I am a partisan Democrat, it is true. But the reason I am is because I know who we can pressure to do the right thing some of the time. Republicans aren't them. But that does not mean we accept the failings of our Democrats. There is nothing more important that we can do, as citizens, activists or bloggers than fight to pressure DEMOCRATS to do the right thing on OUR issues.
And this is true in every context, I think. Be it pressing the Speaker or the Senate majority leader, or the new hope running for president. There is nothing more important we can do. Nothing. It's more important BY FAR than "fighting" for your favorite pol because your favorite pol will ALWAYS, I mean ALWAYS, disappoint you.
In the middle of primary fights, citizens, activists and bloggers like to think their guy or woman is different. They are going to change the way politics works. They are going to not disappoint. In short, they are not going to be pols. That is, in a word, idiotic.
Yes, they are all pols. And they do what they do. Do not fight for pols. Fight for the issues you care about. That often means fighting for a pol, of course. But remember, you are fighting for the issues. Not the pols.
I don't expect politician saviors. So I think the search is for tactics and strategies that best forward progressive goals (if we can agree on them). This leads to the second insight from
Kilgore and Co:
Democrats often fail to correctly distinguish arguments over strategy and tactics from arguments over basic principles and goals.
I accept that, but debate over tactics and strategy can also be meaningful. And it goes without saying that not every pol, Democratic or otherwise, shares your basic principles and goals.
Kilgore and Co. posit:
Within the Democratic coalition and community there is firm and overwhelming basic agreement with the basic ethos and spirit of the New Deal reforms.
Although not committed to keeping the New Deal programs intact exactly as they are (particularly in the areas where they are actually regressive in their economic impact) the large majority of Democrats have a basic commitment to the objective of at a minimum preserving and hopefully even expanding the social safety net in the future.
As a result, there is also within the Democratic coalition widespread support for substantial progressive tax reform and upper income tax increases and for cuts in military and other “pork barrel” government spending as alternative methods for achieving fiscal stability.
Is this universally true? It is not. It reminds me of the old lie that "Lieberman is with us on everything but the war." He wasn't. And a lot of Democrats are not.
But even if we are dealing with pols who "share" our values and principles, too often they have been wrong on strategy. The discussion of the Obama Administration's "Grand Bargain" strategy is one of many examples, and to their credit, Kilgore and Co. acknowledge this:
In retrospect, it is clear that the administration’s strategy was basically and profoundly flawed. This reality was clearly underlined in recent weeks when the Center for American Progress, which had originally supported the administration’s support for a “grand bargain” in 2011, released two new analyses that explicitly revised its former position on the issue based on reviewing the events that have occurred since that time.
But the key point is that the administration and its supporters' approach was indeed fundamentally based on a political strategy that turned out to be profoundly wrong and not on an actual objective or desire to undermine the social safety net.
Maybe. But whatever the rationale, the flawed position would have been just as damaging if the motives were nefarious.
While Kilgore and Co. are for promoting a productive and unifying debate in the Democratic Party, arguing that maintaining the coalition's unity is critical to everyone's goals (I accept this as true). I am frankly more interested in making sure progressive ideas win out. That said, we can not deny that, as Kilgore and Co. put it:
Democrats are facing a profoundly dangerous opponent in today’s
radicalized GOP—one that presents a threat unlike any they have faced before in living
memory. If the GOP ever succeeds in gaining control of the presidency and senate, they could quite literally destroy the American social safety net in a matter of weeks using the budget reconciliation process. Democrats cannot avoid debating contentious issues about the party platform and policies in the coming period but they must also maintain sufficient unity to hold the line against the unprecedented threat they now face.
And Kilgore and Co. do not even touch upon the importance of the Supreme Court.
We need to keep these points in mind when formulating a winning strategy for progressives within the Democratic Party, but what about the issues? How do we win on them in the party?
I have what is probably an unpopular view—I think progressive values and goals for 2014 and 2016 are best achieved not by "Stopping Hillary!" but instead by attempting, as best as possible, and presenting her with a Democratic Party that is firm in its progressivism. This would be achieved by "persuading" Congressional Democrats and potential candidates that they need to adopt progressive values and positions.
Come 2016, the frontrunner will have a party ready to enact and fight for progressive change. This is somewhat of an "outsider" strategy, looking to primary challenges and threats of them to push the Congressional delegation leftward.
I would couple that with an inside strategy of persuasion and inclusion to coax the frontrunner to adopt a common-sense progressive agenda.
I think we've seen already that "leaders" are often led to the head of the ongoing parade (see gay marriage). I would counsel attempting a similar approach to our presidential frontrunner for 2016, who could, in fact, lead a progressive landslide in 2016, even if she herself is not as progressive as the movement.
As has been noted many times, it's a long way to 2016 and circumstances could change everything I discuss here. But for now, this is my view.