The Democrats in the Post-Clinton Era

At this point we haven’t had the chance to pick up a copy of “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign,” a recently released book by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, but it’s being so widely quoted in all the papers that we soon won’t need to read it. We should issue a spoiler alert, but apparently the Clinton campaign was very badly run.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, of course, but the early reviewers have been surprised that it was run even more badly than they thought. The authors were granted complete access to the innermost circles of the Clinton campaign in exchange for an assurance they wouldn’t make anything public until after the election, probably because Clinton wanted someone to chronicle her long-presumed victory, and it looked even worse from the inside than it did to the public. Although Clinton had years to plan and plenty of money to spend, as well an ex-president husband and a decades-old political machine, the book describes a series of amateur mistakes, missed opportunities, and a complete lack of a coherent campaign strategy.

The book describes volunteers being sent out to knock on Wisconsin doors with any campaign literature or training, a campaign manager who declined to spend any money on polling in the crucial state of Florida, a once politically astute husband who agreed that Clinton had the state “in the bag,” and a frustrated aide whose warnings that the director Federal Bureau of Investigation’s statements about her e-mail practices should have prompted a change in tactics went unheeded. There’s also a conclusion that the campaign also failed at the fundamental task of providing a persuasive argument why Clinton should be president.

To be fair, making that argument would be a tough job for even the shrewdest and best-run campaign. Clinton was touted as a former First Lady and Senator and Secretary of State and and presumptive First Woman President of the United States, but her time as First Lady was spending defending her sexual predator husband’s appalling behavior, her brief Senate tenure was entirely unforgettable, and her four years as Secretary of State brought nothing but a lot of baggage about re-set buttons and Benghazi and those e-mail practices the FBI found to be “extremely careless” but not quite illegal. She was indisputably a woman, which some voters found a compelling argument for a candidacy, but that was never going win a majority.

She did wind up winning the popular vote by about three million or so, but that only makes it all the embarrassing she couldn’t figure out how get just a few hundred thousand more in Florida and the Rust Belt states that wound up long the electoral vote. That she lost to Donald Trump, who had plenty of baggage and campaign chaos and no relevant experience and the lowest approval ratings of any president on Inauguration Day, does require a book-length explanation.

We expect that most Democrats will gratefully accept Clinton’s awfulness as a candidate and the awfulness of her campaign as the reason their party couldn’t hold on the White House for another four years, because it doesn’t require them to admit that their party’s control for the previous eight years also had a lot to do with it, and that the party itself is in disrepute some key parts of the country. The 40 percent or so of the party’s primary and caucus voters who much preferred the self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders have already convinced themselves that their guy would have won, and that all the party has to do overcome the Republican’s majorities in both chambers of Congress and most of the nation’s legislatures and governors’ mansions is to become even more insistent on racial identity politics and high taxes and hyper-regulation of the economy and an ever-expanding welfare state.

In other words, do more of exactly what drove just enough voters in Florida and those Rust Belt states as well as all the more reliable red states into the arms of a thrice-married casino-and-strip-club-and-professional-wrestling-and-scam university mogul and reality television star whose only compelling argument for his candidacy was that he was the antithesis of all that.

Had the Democrats chosen former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb or the former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, the relative centrists who were knocked out early in the race while polling in the low single digits, we suspect they might have made easy work out of such a flawed candidate as Trump. Some day we’d love to read the inside account of why the party poobahs preferred such a scandal-ridden and charisma-free nominee as Clinton, who was far enough to the left to scare everyone on the right and a whole lot of people in the center without firing up all those Sandersnistas on the left. Trump was scary enough to the left that they would have preferred anyone with a “D” after his or her name, and he was scary enough to a whole lot of people in the center who would have preferred any number of possible Democrats who weren’t Clinton or Sanders, so the Democrats should ponder that.

Trump is now as unpopular as any president has ever been after such a short time in office, and it’s going to take a lot more winning than he’s done so far to change that, so the Democrats are presented with yet another opportunity to blow. They came uncomfortably close to winning a special election here in Kansas’ Fourth Congressional District a week ago with a candidate who liked to be photographed firing semi-automatic rifles and talking a fairly centrist line, and they still have a chance in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District with a young whippersnapper who’s cultivating a very pragmatic public image, but in such a reliably Republican district he’s also likely to come up short, so all the Democrats we drink beer with will probably conclude they should have gone full socialist with a transgendered bisexual of some indeterminate race.

Clinton was an awful candidate who ran an awful campaign, awful enough to lose to the likes of Trump, but the Democrats would be well advised to admit they have bigger problems than that. The Republicans are bound to have their own problems with Trump, but they once again might not be enough.

— Bud Norman

Webb Withdraws and the Democrats Lurch Leftward

Former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb never did have a chance to win the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, so his withdrawal from the race on Tuesday won’t much affect the race. The reasons for his early departure say much about the current state of his party, however, so we do find it noteworthy.

Once upon a time, not so long ago that we can’t recall it clearly, Webb would have made a formidable candidate and an even more formidable nominee, but his parting speech frankly acknowledged that at this particular moment in history “my views on many of the issues are not compatible with the power structure and the nominating base of the Democratic Party.” This should have been apparent to Webb even during his little-noticed campaign announcement speech, but it simply could not go unnoticed after the party’s first presidential debate. Webb was forced to defend his past support of the Second Amendment and his past opposition to race-based affirmative action policies, was the only candidate to voice any commonsensical skepticism about the last seven years of foreign policy in general and that awful Iran nuclear bomb deal in particular, and even as he went along with the rest of the candidates he was clearly the least enthused about providing subsidized health care and other expensive government benefits to the untold millions of illegal immigrants that the Democratic Party is intent on inviting to the country. Throw in a few other heresies against the latest Democratic orthodoxy he uttered during his few minutes of airtime, and Webb was the glaringly obvious answer to one of those “which one of these does not belong” questions on all the standardized tests.

Webb was even so gauche as to note that he not only fought in Vietnam but had also served his country as Secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, which one liberal Politico “tweeter” immediately characterized as “Jim Webb admitted he killed people.” We don’t remember any liberals being so critical of John Kerry, who “reported for duty” as the Democratic nominee on the basis of his dubious war record rather than the more indisputably documented anti-war activities that launched his career at another radical point in Democratic party history, or raising any objections to President Barack Obama’s boastful claims about killing Osama Bin-Laden, as if he’d rappelled down from the helicopter and done the deed with his own bare hands, but with Webb the reaction from the debate audience and the attending press was plainly apoplectic. We found ourselves almost liking the guy, despite his unenthused support for expensive benefits to untold millions of illegal immigrants and his many other heresies against conservative orthodoxy, but of course that only further confirmed his unsuitability to the current mood of the Democratic Party.

Our liberal friends love to repeat that old cliche about how the Republicans have lurched so far to the right during the past decades that even Ronald Reagan could no longer win its nomination, and we’re sure it seems so to them as they lurch ever further to the left. From our perspective, which has admittedly been fixed here in the middle of the country at the same rightward spot ever since we started reading National Review back in junior high, it is hard to see how GOP’s nominations of George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole and George W. Bush and John McCain and Mitt Romney demonstrate any rightward lurching since Reagan, and we don’t see anyone in the current field that’s likely to lurch it the right of that sweet spot, and yet all that leftward lurching on the Democratic side seems apparent.

Our beloved Pop still likes to recall how President Harry Truman stood firm against the Commies, we were raised on tales of PT-109 and that John F. Kennedy speech about bearing any burden and paying any price to ensure the ultimate victory of democracy, and from our childhood we recall how President Lyndon Johnson had the hippies outside the White House chanting “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” despite all his Great Society liberalism. From our own adulthood we still remember when Washington Sen. “Scoop” Jackson and a few other hawkish Democrats had prominent standing in their party, not to mention the Bosnian-bombing President Bill Clinton and peacenik war hero Kerry and Bin-Laden-killing Obama among other recent Democratic warmongers, so the sudden Democratic repulsion to Webb’s much-decorated martial spirit strikes us as a significant development.

Webb’s admitted support for the right to self-defense and opposition to affirmative action policies that favor Obama’s Sidwell Friends-educated children over some Appalachian coal miner’s more promising kid were also respectable opinions within the Democratic circles of our relatively recent recollection, too, and even that unmistakable hesitancy about giving expensive benefits to untold millions of illegal immigrants and the rest of his unforgivable heresies he uttered would have easily been forgiven by the power structure and nominating base of the Democratic Party. At this particular point in the party’s history, though, the putative front-runner Hillary Clinton is running against her husband’s record of tough-on-crime measures and defense of traditional marriage and insouciance about sexual assault while the self-described socialist and surging insurgent and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is arguing that even after seven years of Obama the economy is horrible because we jut haven’t lurch far enough left yet, the party seems to agree that Black Lives Matter and others don’t,  and from our fixed position seem awfully far left at the moment.

Although admittedly situated to the right, we suspect that our position and Webb’s is closer to the center than his former rivals. There are still an awful lot of white people and even among the Democrat kind of them there’s bound to be some resentment that Obama’s Sidwell Friends-educated children have some legal advantage over their own kids, and Americans of all colors and party affiliations have become accustomed to the right of self-defense, and a commonsensical appraisal of the past seven years of foreign policy in general and that awful Iran nuclear in particular will be skeptical, and it takes a certain sort of Democrat to be sufficiently enthused about paying expensive benefits for untold millions of illegal immigrants, so Webb’s departure does not seem to bode well for the Democratic Party’s general election fortunes. The Republicans seem intent on screwing up such a golden opportunity, of course, but it still does not bode well.

Webb’s much-decorated martial spirit was still on display as he retreated, saying that while his party is not comfortable with many of his policies “frankly I am not comfortable with many of theirs.” He hinted at a third party-challenge, a one-in-a-zillion shot that seems his best bet for the presidency at this point, and we’d like to think it might drain a few votes from Democrats who still believe all the traditional Democratic nonsense but aren’t so leftward lurched that they buy into all the latest nonsense. We’re not sure how many Democrats fit this projection, though, and he might wind up stealing a few Republican votes if Donald Trump wins the nomination, so at this point we’re not sure how noteworthy is withdrawal really is.

— Bud Norman

Hillary, the Press, and the Present Moment

Hillary Clinton has been getting such bad press lately that you’d think she was a Republican, and one can’t help wondering why. The recent revelation that she used only a private e-mail account during her tenure as Secretary of State is an important story, involving security risks and avoidance of public scrutiny and possible violations of federal law, but the Benghazi fiasco was an even more important story, involving four dead Americans and outright deceptions of the public and a galling disregard for the First Amendment, and the press was largely willing to give her a pass on that. One might attribute the Benghazi coverage to the press’ loyalty to President Barack Obama during an election years, but scandals involving Clinton have been popping up perennially over the past 25 years, and none have been covered by the more polite press organs with such scathing skepticism, so it all seems very curious.

The timing, for one thing, is downright suspicious. Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State ended nearly two years ago, and the e-mail account was set up before she even began her four years on the job, so a more diligent Washington press corps might have discovered the story long ago, and the story is breaking nearly two before she assumes the presidency that the press has long been assuring us is her destiny, which suggests a few possibilities. One theory we find plausible is that someone in the White House leaked the story to complicate Clinton’s candidacy, partly out of a long held spite and partly for fear that she’ll take a politically expedient stand against the disastrous deal that the administration is trying to make with the Iranian government regarding its nuclear weapons. Some have suggested that the press is doing Clinton’s bidding by unveiling the story now so it can be long forgotten by the autumn of ’16, and any Republican complaints or investigations can be made to seem petty and vindictive. Our preferred explanation is that much of the press has simply decided of its own accord, and with the tacit approval of the Obama administration, that it doesn’t want Clinton to be the Democratic party’s presidential nominee.

If the press is trying to do Clinton’s bidding by covering the e-mail scandal now, they’ve done so to a point of killing her with kindness. The most established of the establishment press have all frankly acknowledged the security risks and the avoidance of public scrutiny and the possible violations of federal, and treated her explanations with a skepticism of the sort that Clintons are not accustomed to, and even threw mentions of all those past scandals they once obligingly downplayed. Nor is the timing at all helpful to Clinton’s presidential candidacy. The scandal might be long forgotten by election day of ’16, but now is the time that the Democrats need to be scared into finding other candidates who can start raising the necessary funds and putting together the sophisticated campaign operation that will be need by that not-so-far-off date.

In addition to all those damning stories about the e-mails, the press has also been producing a steady stream of stories speculating about possible candidates the Democrats might choose other than Clinton. Most of those pieces are frankly alarmed that the Democrats don’t seem to have many appealing options, and it would be hard to pretend otherwise. All the speculation includes Vice President Joe Biden, which always induces rubbing of palms and gleeful cackling from Republicans, and the equally ridiculous but not as widely ridiculed Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who insists she is not running, and it looks as if somebody named Jim Webb, who apparently was a Senator from Virginia for a while and wrote some books and ran the Navy, is also running. Lately there’s also been a lot of talk about somebody named Martin O’Malley, who apparently used to be governor of Maryland, and who did such a swell job of it that he was succeeded by the state’s first Republican governor since Spiro Agnew, as well as some wishful thinking about Vermont Rep. Bernie Sanders, who admits he is a socialist, and Deval Patrick, who admits to having been a governor of Massachusetts. It’s not an all-star lineup even by press standards, but with the old press narrative of Clinton’s inevitability out the way a knight in shining armor might yet be enticed onto the field or perhaps one of the aforementioned candidates can be transformed into one.

The press already seems somewhat smitten with that O’Malley fellow, running pictures of him looking buff and stylish as he plays guitar in some club that looks like the ones the “Friends” sit-com characters would haunt, and he’s so little-known that the possibilities for creating a legend are nearly endless. Patrick was also succeeded by a Republican, the first in his heavily Democratic state since some fellow named Mitt Romney, and he’s currently facing ethics, but he’s black, which no longer has such presidential novelty but still has some significance in Democratic politics, and he also has the advantage of being little-known outside his state. Webb’s one term as Senator was undistinguished, his books have riled feminists and his stint as Navy Secretary will surely unnerve party’s pacifists, but the press could probably do something with him. The nomination of the first admitted socialist as the Democratic party would be a generations-old dream of the press come true, but so far they don’t seem to dare wish for it. They are clearly pining for Warren, who is just as female as Clinton but even more liberal and thus far so much less known that the possibilities for her legend are endless, but it will seemingly require Clinton’s exit from the race to Warren’s entrance.

Some of the press seem to worry that Warren’s stridently populist rhetoric might scare away the big money donors required to fund even a Democratic presidential campaign, but the big money donors don’t mind stridently populist rhetoric so long as the Fed keeps printing money and interest rates are low and regulatory policies remain favorable for warding off pesky competition. Wall Street happily funded six years of bashing by Obama, the investment has paid off handsomely, and there’s no reason to believe that Warren or some similarly tough-talking candidate won’t be just as agreeable. With plenty of money on hand, and the press back to its usual job of aiming all its scathing skepticism at Republicans, and the Republicans doing their usual job of obliging the press with bone-headed mistakes, any liberal Democrat will have a good shot at retaining the party’s control of the White House. Thus the sudden realization that it doesn’t have to be Clinton.

They waited until almost the last moment, but all those reporters and pundits cloistered in the capital also seem to have realized that Clinton might well be the least likely winner among the contenders. She’s still leading in all the polls, but at this point that’s all due to name recognition, and her namely is widely recognized largely because she’s been mentioned in so many scandalous stories. She’s also been mentioned in conspicuously few stories about actual accomplishments, and her “reset” diplomacy with Russia and war in Libya and her assessment of Syrian dictator Bashar Assad as a “reformer” and her friendliness toward the Muslim Brotherhood and the rest of her Secretary of State years are looking about as good as her time in the Senate, and the $300,000-a-pop speeches and corporate board memberships and multiple mansions that she struggled to pay her mortgages on are going to make the “economic fairness” shtick a hard sell, and her husband’s flights on a billionaire pervert’s private plane to his island full of underage girls won’t help with the feminist pitch, and Clinton’s unpleasant personality on the campaign trail is unlikely to smooth it all over. Without the full support of the most prominent media backing Clinton, any conservative Republican might have a good shot at taking the White House, so the press has to knock Clinton out of the race early or hope that their past reports will soon be long forgotten and then back her until the end.

— Bud Norman