Not Ready for Hillary

More than eighteen months before the Iowa caucuses, the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination seems to be all but a foregone conclusion. 

Hillary Clinton is widely considered to be the de facto nominee, though she has not yet said she will run. Almost all of the early polls show her ahead by staggering margins and key figures within the Democratic Party are already publicly supporting her. While this is purely anecdotal, “Ready for Hillary” bumper stickers (advertising the Super PAC preemptively launched to support her candidacy) seem increasingly ubiquitous.

Again: it’s only 2014! It’ll be another six months before any serious candidate actually formally declares that they are running for president. This degree of inevitability is unusual for a non-incumbent.

It’s in sharp contrast to the Republicans, who lack anything resembling a frontrunner and seem destined for a protracted fight among the party’s various factions. A recent CNN/ORC national poll illustrates the chaotic nature of their contest: Jeb Bush and Rand Paul were tied for the lead. At 13%. Seven other candidates were between 6% and 12%. One of them is Chris Christie, mired in a scandal in which he is alleged to have closed lanes on the George Washington Bridge as a bizarre form of political retribution. Another is Marco Rubio, who recently said liberals are hypocrites because they believe in climate change and support abortion rights. Seriously.

But regardless of the Republicans’ embarrassing politics, the uncertain nature of the nomination means the candidates are engaging the issues and debating policy. They are putting themselves out there, talking about what direction the party should pursue moving forward.

Clinton on the other hand hasn’t really intervened in current political debates. That is in large part because she does not currently occupy public office and isn’t obligated to.

It’s also because no one within the party is seriously challenging Clinton. She has no incentive at this point to say anything that might alienate potential supporters. The criticism she faces at present is from conservatives, persisting in trying to blame her for Benghazi or in Karl Rove’s case heinously suggesting that Clinton might have sustained brain damage. It’s so absurd on its face that she doesn’t have to respond for it to be dismissed.

But while there may not be anything disqualifying in her handling of Benghazi, Clinton is far from perfect. The ridiculous attacks against shouldn’t preclude legitimate criticism. As Digby wrote recently, competitive primaries are helpful in sorting out party disputes and engaging voters. Individual personalities aside, it’s helpful for nominees to have to persuade party members of their policy agenda and personal fitness for the job they seek. This is doubly true for presidential election years, when the public is more politically engaged and votes at higher rates.

A closer look at Hillary Clinton’s record reveals someone with questions to answer.

It’s well documented at this point that Clinton is somewhat of a hawk on foreign policy, proving willing to use U.S. military force to solve global problems. She infamously not only voted for the Iraq War Resolution but refused to concede it was a mistake. As Secretary of State, she defended the Obama Administration’s drone strikes in countries like Yemen and Pakistan. Clinton also backed the administration’s proposed military strike in Syria in September after pushing behind-the-scenes for more U.S. involvement in the country for years at State.

The Iraq War was a catastrophic error, arguably the worst American foreign policy mistake since Vietnam. The country is beset by instability and ongoing insurgency a decade later. More than eight thousand were killed in 2013 in shootings and bombings, according to U.N. estimates. The violence has empowered al-Qaeda and affiliated militant groups, and they gained control of the city of Fallujah in January. As Dexter Filkins detailed in the New Yorker, the country is in dire straits, in far worse shape than it was under Saddam Hussein before the U.S. invaded.

Supporting the quagmire exhibited exceptionally poor judgement on Clinton’s part, to put it mildly. And while she supported troop withdrawals during the 2008 campaign, she never apologized for her vote. 

Her subsequent actions prove she has not learned from her mistake.

The ongoing violent civil war in Syria is worse than and different from Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. But just as U.S. military force clearly left Iraq worse off, intervening in Syria could’ve been counterproductive if not disastrous. We can’t know for sure since, to his credit, President Obama backed off the air strike plan when a diplomatic option presented itself. It’s nonetheless concerning Clinton lent her support to yet another risky military intervention.

One of the most disconcerting aspects of Obama’s presidency has been the expansion of the aforementioned drone strikes, targeted killings, and lethal night raids in multiple countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Innocent civilians have been murdered. U.S. citizens have been killed without due process. One of those citizens, the 16-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, was killed with a Hellfire missile seemingly by mistake, with no evidence that he was involved in terrorism. There has been no accounting for his death. In addition to being a moral abomination, the strikes are constitutionally and legally dubious. These actions are engendering hatred and fostering terrorist sympathies in the Middle East, making them counterproductive in addition to being wrong.

Considering how critical Obama’s anti-war stance on Iraq was in his ascension, these developments have been an especially bitter pill to swallow for those on the left who supported him in 2008.

Is there anything in Clinton’s history that suggest she would change this policy? On the contrary, I’m concerned she would maintain and expand the drone program, perhaps acting on her support for further intervention in Syria. To say nothing of any kind of serious rethinking of America’s unconditional deference to Israel or seemingly eternal imperial posture. That would be out of the question.

Yet as problematic as her foreign policy stances are, it’s on domestic policy where a gap between her and the more populist elements of the Democratic Party is exposed, and where the enthusiasm for a potential primary challenge may lie.

Clinton is at first glance in line with liberals on most domestic policy issues. She supports higher taxes on the rich, universal pre-kindergarten, and admirably pushed for universal health care when her husband was president in the 1990’s. Since leaving the Obama administration, she has expressed support for marriage equality and voting rights.

But while these are laudable policy stances, they obscure the larger picture. Ultimately Clinton is a defender of the post-1980 economic consensus that has further enriched the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. It’s not surprising that Politico reported last month many on Wall Street, even Republicans donors, would be fine with Hillary as president.

This manifested itself most prominently during Clinton’s Senate career in her support for Wall Street-backed bankruptcy reform that made it more difficult for some consumers to escape debts when filing. (She voted for a version of the bill that failed to pass in 2001, but missed the vote for the version that passed in 2005.)

This is just one sign of her comfort with the corporate and financial elite. Clinton served for six years on the board of Walmart, which has a track record of sins against workers, consumers, and the environment that could fill multiple books. The advisors that populated her 2008 presidential campaign, particularly the odious (and as a pollster, incompetent) Mark Penn, have a comprehensive history of corporate clients that have engaged in decidedly un-progressive behavior that often seemed at odds with Clinton’s public stances.

Most recently, Clinton’s post-Secretary of State paid-speaking tour included two separate events at Goldman Sachs, (reportedly for around $200,000 per speech) one of the financial institutions chiefly responsible for the 2008 global financial crisis. The content of her remarks as reported by Ben White and Maggie Haberman of Politico were especially concerning:

But Clinton offered a message that the collected plutocrats found reassuring, according to accounts offered by several attendees, declaring that the banker-bashing so popular within both political parties was unproductive and indeed foolish. Striking a soothing note on the global financial crisis, she told the audience, in effect: We all got into this mess together, and we’re all going to have to work together to get out of it. What the bankers heard her to say was just what they would hope for from a prospective presidential candidate: Beating up the finance industry isn’t going to improve the economy—it needs to stop.

If that doesn’t scream “SHE DOESN’T GET IT!!!” to Democratic voters, then I don’t know what does. It’s just a complete distortion of what happened, papering over the noxious practices banks engaged in like predatory lending and securities fraud. Wall Street played a central role in promoting and profiting from the housing bubble and subsequent securitization of debt without any consideration for the long-term consequences. As you might remember, the financial industry was punished for its misdeeds with…oh right sorry, they got a massive government bailout and basically nobody faced legal consequences. Meanwhile millions lost their homes and the slow recovery from the recession is ongoing.

But according to Clinton, pointing this is out is “banker-bashing” and “unproductive.” For most on the left, the above paragraph is old news, a political reality to be reckoned with and responded to (see: Occupy). For her it’s cheap populism.

I don’t think Clinton, with these policy preferences, is someone who deserves the support of people in the Democratic Party who consider themselves committed to social and economic justice. If it’s the 2016 general election, against a Republican, I would probably vote for her if she was the nominee. But that hasn’t happened yet. There’s plenty of time for other candidates to emerge. It’s worth considering who those people might be and the merits of their potential candidacies.

Vice President Joe Biden clearly has interest in a 2016 bid, but popular enthusiasm is absent. Biden is similar to Clinton from an ideological perspective, having voted for both the bankruptcy bill and the Iraq War. Anyway, someone who also served in the Obama administration will not be able to be the candidate who acknowledges its faults.

Few others have spoken publicly of challenging Clinton. Former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer made some noise about a presidential run, and his more liberal stances on health care and his critiques of interventionist foreign policy and the national security state are appealing. But Schweitzer’s positions on gun rights and oil drilling would likely be deal-breakers with constituencies he’ll need to challenge an established candidate, and so stridently opposing Obama while campaigning for the support of party that nominated the president twice won’t help.

Bernie Sanders is right about everything and is a genuine ally of the progressive movement in the Senate, but it’s tough to see a 72-year-old white guy who isn’t even technically a member of the Democratic Party winning the nomination. He might raise a few issues, which is undoubtedly important, but he won’t be taken seriously. Besides, I think the main reason he is publicly pondering a big to pressure a more viable candidate to run.

Which brings us to Elizabeth Warren. 

The Massachusetts senator gained the affinity of the progressive grassroots in the aftermath of the financial crisis, scrutinizing the disbursement of Troubled Asset Relief Program funds and shepherding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from concept to reality after Dodd-Frank passed. Her victory over Scott Brown in 2012 was seen as a major victory for the left.

Warren has not disappointed. Her relentless focus on economic inequality, the hollowing out of the middle class, and Wall Street wrongdoing has made her has been sorely needed. And she gets results.

Warren’s first Senate Banking Committee hearing was marked with tough questioning of financial industry regulators on why they tended to pursue settlements without admissions of guilt rather than go to trial with big banks. While video of the moment went viral, what’s more important is that Warren followed up with regulators. Ultimately the Securities and Exchange Commission announced they would seek admissions of wrongdoing more often.

Warren also played an instrumental role in ensuring that the problematic Larry Summers was not nominated to be Chairman of the Federal Reserve. While Senators Sherrod Brown and Jeff Merkley rounded up no votes among Democrats, reported Noam Scheiber in a New Republic profile, Warren’s role was critical, making clear to the White House they she would mobilize her numerous supporters in opposition to Summers if he was nominated.

Her impact has been impressive, particularly in the context of a 113th Congress that is one of the most unproductive ever. Warren also proposed legislation to lower student loan costs and reinstitute an updated version of the Glass-Steagall, which separated commercial and investment banking before it was repealed in 1997. In advocacy for additional stimulus, a more forceful response to the foreclosure crisis, and a higher minimum wage, it’s clear she is an ally for working people.

It’s my belief Warren would be an appealing candidate if she runs for president in 2016. Not just because of her policy agenda, which is fantastic, but because of the unique passion she evokes in Democratic voters. She raised $42 million during her 2012 Senate campaign, more than any other congressional candidate that cycle, and half of it was raised online. That is remarkable for anyone, much less a first-time candidate. A recent Quinnipiac University poll rated her as the “hottest” politician in the country, higher than Clinton, when asking respondents to rank politicians they knew on a scale between 0 and 100.

This raises two obvious questions: will Warren run and if she does, can she win the primary and the general election?

Warren says she isn’t running, but she also uses the present rather than future tense (“isn’t running for president” rather than “will not”). This parsing of words is warranted because she just released a pre-campaign type book and is heavily promoting it. She also gave a speech in February about foreign policy and national security, an issue she hasn’t really addressed thus far but would need to discuss in a presidential campaign. 

Encouragingly, Warren focused on civilian casualties in her speech, a particularly shameful aspect of American militarism in the Middle East and one that would lend itself practically to a critique of Obama and Clinton that could resonate with Democratic voters. Added up, this represents what political scientist Jonathan Bernstein terms “a standby candidacy,” in which Warren is keeping her options should circumstances change.

Could she win? Probably not if Clinton runs (if she doesn’t, all bets are off). Again, she is the overwhelming favorite in the early polls and has all the institutional party backing. But it’s impossible to predict the future. Clinton led all Democratic candidates in 2008 by large margins in polls as late as October 2007, and we all know how that turned out. If Warren actually began to campaign, increased her name recognition, and directly criticized Clinton, her support would almost certainly increase and Clinton’s erode, at least slightly.

In a general election, she would benefit from many of the same factors Clinton would: an increasingly diverse Democratic base, a more liberal-friendly presidential election electorate, and a discredited Republican Party. She could absolutely win if she were the nominee.

But even if Warren doesn’t win the nomination, a presidential campaign could positively influence the debate and the policy agenda of a future President Hillary Clinton. The Democratic Party post-financial crisis is much more skeptical of the financial sector and prioritizes the issue of income inequality. A Warren campaign could pressure Clinton to move left in the primary on issues like breaking up the big banks, resurrecting Glass-Steagall, and regulating derivatives that Clinton might be inclined to avoid discussing. 

What does Clinton want to discuss? What are the issues she would champion? Because specific policies doesn’t seem to be the source of her appeal, as I see it. It seems to be a sense that it’s her turn, a feeling that she should be the first female president combined with vague nostalgia for the prosperous 1990’s. 

The Democratic Party needs to be about more than that.

While articles from Matt Yglesias (and the less trollish Ryan Cooper) might suggest otherwise, presidents do have influence over domestic policy. When Barack Obama had huge Democratic majorities in Congress, he didn’t push for a stronger economic stimulus, single-payer or public option health care, strong financial regulation, or a reform of the filibuster  (or reconciliation) that would’ve made all of the above easier to accomplish. Those policy choices demoralized the Democratic base and led to the 2010 Republican bloodbath that defines American politics to this day.

Congress and state and local governments are hugely important. Democrats should pay more attention to reducing the midterm/presidential turnout gap and working to prevent the kind of gerrymandering that so disadvantages them. But the presidency is far from unimportant or meaningless, especially when it comes to foreign policy.

Will Elizabeth Warren save liberalism, as Yglesias suggested? Is she perfect? No. She is a human being who has her own policy baggage and flaws. Some level of disappointment is inherent in electoral politics.

But at this moment in time Warren, not Hillary Clinton, is the best the Democratic Party has to offer. I hope she runs. It sure beats the Clinton coronation we’re on course for.

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