I do not blame the DNC for their decision to essentially treat Hillary as an incumbent and taking action to make the path to the nomination as clear as possible for her. If your goal is to elect a Democratic president and you’ve got a candidate with as much experience and name recognition as she has—not to mention her polling favorables a couple years out from the election—this is a perfectly sensible strategy. In fact, had the DNC not put their thumb on the scale and had she emerged bruised and tired after a brutal 10-way primary fight with a 20 stop debate schedule only to then go on and lose the general, we might all be here lamenting the DNC for not doing more to help her along the way. She was the obvious choice and many of us would say ‘this is how we always clutch defeat from the jaws of victory’ etc.
But things clearly didn’t work out the way that the DNC had expected and Hillary lost anyway. Having only one main opponent for the majority of the primary season, for example, created (or exacerbated) an adversarial tribe-like division among the base, which has obviously had lasting negative effects.
Still, Hillary and the DNC could have easily co-opted the entirety of Bernie’s message, even if only in lip-service, participated in 20 debates if she wanted the free tv time for a progressive love fest, and ridden her name recognition alone to the nomination—no problem.
Instead, they chose to take a more centrist tack—which didn’t help the division among the base—but again is a perfectly sensible strategy to have chosen, especially as it looked more and more likely that Trump would win the GOP nomination. Moving to the middle and limiting the opportunity to get dinged for it by the more progressive side of the party is an excellent tactic when you think you’re going to be able to shave off more than enough votes to make up for it from independents and ‘reasonable’ Republicans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for such a poor excuse for a human being.
Even based on quantifiable results, this wasn’t a bad strategy in the sense that Hillary was able to win the popular vote. I’m sure many Republicans and Independents did in fact reject Trump at the ballot box in favor of Hillary—probably totaling far more votes than she lost from the left flank as a result of moving more to the middle. That said, I’m sure we’re all aware that the popular vote is a poor consolation prize and doesn’t actually provide much consolation.
All that to say, the DNC made a lot of what seemed like smart decisions at the time, but nothing changes the fact that those decisions led to a supremely undesirable outcome. Even though she won the popular vote, and even though her move to the middle probably picked up more R’s and I’s than she lost from the left, it still wasn’t enough. She not only lost, but she lost to one of the worst people that has ever walked the planet. Even with an opponent that was one of the most deeply flawed, self-absorbed, and so obviously corrupt piles of excrement that has ever represented the Republican party (which is quite the low bar to ooze under) Hillary’s move to capture the centrist votes of the adults in the room/country was not enough to get her into the White House.
Perhaps Hillary and the DNC overestimated the size of the ‘not a Democrat but not crazy enough to vote for Trump’ population. Perhaps Trump’s smoke and mirrors clown show just didn’t look as bad in the occasional soundbite or headline consumed by the type of people that don’t read political blogs every day. My personal theory is that centrism and incrementalism just sound too much like a defense of the status quo, which isn’t a compelling argument when the majority of people are increasingly so desperate for change that they’re willing to gamble on change for the worse.
But the bottom line is, Hillary and the DNC made a calculated decision—and that calculated decision backfired when the stakes were at their highest.
For the coming election cycles, we as a party will have more choices to make. Because Trump is such a train wreck, I think it’s very possible that a centrist platform might be considerably more effective at peeling off R’s and I’s this go round. But then again, just about any platform my expect those same reactionary results. Compared to the mess we’re currently in, the status quo of 2015 seems like a very comfortable place to go. But even if it works in the near future for 2018, 2020, 2024... it’s hard to believe that center could hold for very long, and with Pandora’s box now open, I fear the next rejection of the status quo might make Trump look like Nixon. We can no more turn back the clock to 2015 than the Republicans can to 1950.
I appreciate the fact that our party leaders are willing and able to make calculated decisions. But the calculation has changed and we’re not at a crossroads—we’re approaching a T-intersection. We can go left or we can try to go further right and maybe peel off more R’s, but straight up the middle is not going to be a viable option much longer. There is no middle. It’s time to recalculate.