Dan Balz talks about a potential presidential run by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in today’s Washington Post.
Some people believe Sanders has little to lose in such a campaign. Perhaps. When asked if he is concerned about the prospect of [Hillary] Clinton claiming the nomination without being challenged, he said, “It’s not just acclamation for Hillary, it’s that there are millions and millions of people out there — I see them every day — who are hurting, who are struggling. . . . Somebody has got to defend those people.”
Balz got Sanders to express his admiration for Clinton’s work on women’s rights and children’s issues. And Sanders was generally unwilling to badmouth her or her potential candidacy. But he did say this:
“If she does run, will she be as strong as the times require in taking on the billionaire class that has so much power? I’m not sure that she will be,” Sanders said during an interview in his Senate office. “Will she be as strong as needs be to address the crisis of climate change? I am not sure that she will be. Will she be as strong as needs be to take on the power of Wall Street? I’m not sure she will be.”
…
“These are extraordinary times, which require a boldness and an aggressiveness that I’m not sure her past history suggests is there,” Sanders said. “I am not sure that she has been — ” He paused and caught himself. “Well, that’s all. I’m going to leave it at that.”
Not a word about foreign policy.
My problem is that Hillary Clinton, or any other potential president, can be as aggressive as they want to be about campaign financing and regulating Wall Street and addressing climate change, but they can’t make the Republicans pass a bill to even keep the government open or force them to pay our bills on time, let alone get them to pass progressive legislation.
If Hillary Clinton becomes our next president there is a decent chance that she’ll sweep into office with huge majorities in Congress. But, if she doesn’t, about the only area where she’ll have a mostly free hand is in foreign policy. As Secretary of State, was she an advocate for getting us mired down in Syria? Has she learned anything from her vote to authorize force in Iraq? Does she have the right kind of judgment to prevent us from having another foreign policy disaster?
I want a progressive challenger who will explore these questions. Because we could magically make Bernie Sanders our president tomorrow and he wouldn’t be able to do one thing more than Obama is doing on the issues Sanders seems so concerned about.
Desire is not enough. You have to destroy the Republicans’ power to resist if you want to make any progress.
Nonsense. By leading, with leadership, and the sheer rightness of his ideas, Congress would be forced to bow to his will.
That’s how Bush got to privatize Social Security. That’s how Reagan got us to invade Nicaragua and El Salvador.
Sheer will.
Imagine there’s no Congress…
It isn’t hard to do.
No Senate seats to run for,
And no down-ticket, too.
Even if he couldn’t do it, Obama doesn’t even want to. He keeps pushing Republican ideas like Chained CPI and TPP.
And he’d pass them too if only the Republicans would let him! Thank god the Republicans are protecting us from the madness of Obama.
if we’d had President Hillary Clinton
be honest……….
it’s not just domestic policy that makes me say HELL NO to Hillary Clinton.
Actually, I’m more concerned about Clinton on foreign policy – and that’s saying something for the former Senator from Lower Manhattan.
That concern is blunted a bit by her performance as Secretary of State – until I remember that advocating diplomacy was part of her job description, and that she was serving President Obama, who, while no jewel, was significantly less bellicose than she was during the time both were in the Senate.
The Senate was where she had free reign to speak and vote her preferences on foreign policy. It was for good reason that her nickname in the Senate Armed Services Committee was “Madame Yes.”
You talk like Obama personally led the raid instead of just ordering it. Yes, HRC would have ordered the raid. It was good politics.
really? You honestly believe HRC would have had the strength to order the raid,considering what could have gone wrong?
really?
Unlike rikyrah, I don’t claim to know what Hillary Clinton would have done in Obama’s position. But we do know that the intelligence was considered only about 50% reliable. If Osama bin Laden had not been there, the raid would have been an international disaster since the US was never supposed to be conducting military operations within Pakistan’s borders. So your argument that ordering the raid on bin Laden’s compound was good politics is just demonstrably false.
You talk like Obama personally led the raid instead of just ordering it. Yes, HRC would have ordered the raid. It was good politics.
Your first part is spot on. Your second part, not so much. And both go back to something that happened in the late 1970’s. Remember the Iranian hostage crisis? Remember what Carter approved to try and free the hostages? It turned into a clusterfuck and Carter paid the price.
It turned into a clusterfuck because they paid military politics so that every service had a piece. If the bin Laden raid was handled the same way, it probably would have resulted in disaster also. I’m really surprised that Jimmy Carter, who had been a professional Naval officer didn’t see that. It probably should have been a Marine operation, but picking any of the services would have been better than picking all. Then the aircraft carrier crew in the middle of nowhere in the Persian Gulf was kept in the dark for “security”. (I can guarantee you that if the carrier crew knew what was up, the choppers would have been tuned like a Stradivarius.
Actually, in my opinion, Jimmy Carter should have taken the Israeli offer to have the Mossad rescue the hostages. They had people who knew the target, the target country, and looked and spoke like natives. Jimmy probably did not want to incur the political debt since he was the first pro-Palestinian President.
No — It’s the economic inequality, un/underemployment, and foreign policy, stupid.
Would prefer to see a fifty-year old Bernie Sanders on the ballot, but if the choice is another Clinton, another Bush, or a seventy-five year old Sanders, I’ll go with Bernie.
I’d prefer to see Eugene V. Debs on the ticket, but he’s dead.
well, she said she’d obliterate iran. isn’t that good enough?
Freudian slip of a usually clever psychopath or another sickening instance of the donkey getting blown?
Inquiring minds REALLY want to know!
The same is true of any candidate who is not a Black guy with a foreign-sounding name in 2016.
I wish I believed that. I really do.
Is Hillary Clinton’s popularity based on anything lasting and substantial or is it ephemeral?
The way I see it, Clinton is mostly riding on nostalgia and low-grade identity politics (I’m Southern and/or a woman and the idiocracy like leaders who are like themselves) along with enjoying the fact that she’s in that enviable position of being able to soak up accolades without being credibly attacked. That can and of course will change once the rubber meets the road.
Will her numbers hold up after she hits the campaign trail and she has to advocate certain policy — or defend her positions or potential positions against challengers from the left or right?
You created a binary choice there but the answer is that she will of course see her numbers go down once she reenters the arena, but that she also is probably the strongest presidential candidate we’ve seen since Reagan sought reelection.
There are virtually no Obama voters who will vote for the Republican candidate, no matter who we nominate. Some people may stay home or vote third-party, but that’s only losing half a vote.
But there are a lot of people who will vote for Hillary because they liked Bill. Or because she’d be the first woman president. Or because they just couldn’t vote for the black guy. Or because they relate to her for regional or cultural reasons. She also has undeniable experience in the spotlight and on the international stage. You can’t say that about Bobby Jindal or Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or even Jeb Bush (although, he comes closest).
Before she spends a dime or makes one campaign appearance, she starts out with a huge lead that looks insurmountable from an Electoral College perspective. Is she going to lose Virginia or Ohio? I find that very doubtful.
If you oppose Hillary, that’s fine by me, but you should oppose her for her record or her policies, not because you think she will be a strong candidate who could potentially lose.
But there are a lot of people who will vote for Hillary because they liked Bill. Or because she’d be the first woman president. Or because they just couldn’t vote for the black guy. Or because they relate to her for regional or cultural reasons. She also has undeniable experience in the spotlight and on the international stage. You can’t say that about Bobby Jindal or Rand Paul or Ted Cruz or even Jeb Bush (although, he comes closest).
Those are not definitive reasons. You could’ve construct a similar list of undeniable positives about Bob Dole or John Kerry — but those will only seem strong in absence of any strong opposition.
Unless her opponents in the primary and general election are incompetent, in the absence of mudslinging she needs a really desirable set of policy goals or a major accomplishment that she can point to that will convince middle America to give her a chance. Yes, things like looking good and having a nice resume are tiebreakers in politics, but they don’t convince people to stick with you if someone comparable comes up with a list of popular initiative or if the opposition comes up with a strong line of attack.
I worry that unless Clinton busts out the Perot charts or comes up with a liberal version of Contract With America, her popularity only lasts until she gets swiftboated or makes a major gaffe. If people strongly like your policy (or what they think is your policy) people can overlook that but if you’re running a campaign based on glittering generalities that stuff is murder on your chances. Which is why Obama was able to survive Wright and ‘cling to guns and religion’ and other post-Nixonian Democrats weren’t able to.
I would be interested in seeing the set of non-Obama voters who would vote for Hillary but would not vote for Biden (or insert random Democrat) – I have my hunches about how small of a population that actually is but I would really be interested in seeing those numbers.
Without having a firmer grasp of Hillary’s political positions, it’s really hard to say. I could see Hillary competing in TN and IN and MT and MO in ways Obama couldn’t even with similar policy positions — but it depends on what the policy positions are. She could sell, say, a platform of a background check + gag rule on guns, international bellicosity, increased at-border deportations, protectionist trade policies, and UHC trade policies much better than Obama or pretty much every other Democrat, generic or actual, that’s been floated. But if she’s advocating for significantly more liberal policies like deficit spending or strong immigration reform or gay marriage then she’s not going to do much better than Generic Democrat.
Hillary’s inevitability and electoral infallibility is being bandied about as if it should be self-evident – regardless of the positions she takes on various issues. I just want to see the data that identifies those non-Obama voters that would obviously vote for Hillary but would not obviously vote for Biden or Sweitzer or O’Malley or…or…or…
My new mantra – Show Me The Data!
If the Clintons are thinking of Castro to make Texas competitive, that’s forethought greater than any they had in 2008 when they couldn’t even count delegates.
I can see why Sanders doesn’t mention Foreign Policy. Any candidate other than Joe Biden who even brings up the topic will get the same condescension that Senator Obama got in ’08. They will be thought of as naive and inexperienced and not worthy to even be on the same stage as her. Doesn’t matter that she’s been wrong on pretty much everything the whole time. I cringe at the thought of her as President.
Look, Bernie Sanders is not going to win a primary against Hillary Clinton. And he’s knows that. If he runs, it will be to give voice to progressives and the people and values we care about.
It wouldn’t be a vanity run to sell books or get a radio show or to somehow enrich himself. Bernie is sincere when he says he feels that there are millions who need someone to fight for them.
But, to be honest, there isn’t shit that can be done about domestic policy unless the Democrats get back the House and a supermajority in the Senate. There won’t be a lick of difference in what Biden or O’Malley or Clinton or Cuomo or Schweitzer or Warren or anyone else can accomplish unless they bring massive coattails. So, if you want to raise concern about Hillary, you should raise it where it counts. She’d be a lot different than Biden on foreign policy. She signed off on going after bin-Laden and Biden didn’t. That’s to her credit. On every other internal debate where they disagreed in the first term, Biden was right and she was wrong.
So, for me, the beef is on foreign policy and what I might call the Lanny Davis Syndrome, which is the Clintons’ amazing ability to surround themselves with moral lepers. Barack Obama has Valerie Jarrett. Bill Clinton had Dick Morris. Okay?
But this idea that Wall Street will be adequately regulated and we’ll have public financing of elections and we’ll solve climate change if only progressives whine harder about those issues?
It’s not worth the breath spent to make that case, because it simply isn’t true.
But, to be honest, there isn’t shit that can be done about domestic policy unless the Democrats get back the House and a supermajority in the Senate.
And even then, what? We had close to 60 Senators and all that got us was an incremental health insurance bill. Do you really think Michelle Nunn, if she wins, will be of much help? Speaking of which, has anyone polled the Democratic primary for the honor of replacing “Mad” Max Baucus full time?
Ben Nelson gave us ObamaCare.
While that is all well and good that still leaves the insurance companies in the driver’s seat. The point being that a lot more needs to be done to put the screws to the .01%
Sure. And without Ben Nelson, where would the insurance companies be?
Right where they were, reneging on coverage, issuing annual and lifetime caps, denying sick people coverage, and leaving anyone who couldn’t pay uninsured.
Ben Nelson is the reason that situation doesn’t exist anymore, so put him on Mt. Rushmore.
Can Michelle Nunn help us. Of course she can.
She’ll be, if she wins, just as much help as Ben Nelson was. A vote for Harry Reid, or whomever, for Majority Leader. That’s it. Have you been paying attention to her campaign?
I think you are basically correct in this analysis. There are multiple challenges ahead and if we don’t recognize the correct ORDER in which to engage, we can dissipate our energy drastically. The ongoing neocon wars and subversions, the last (next!) acts of a dying empire, are still opaque to many Americans because of our media co-option. Hillary would, by most objective analysis, feel right at home with the long term plans of empire. So, not so good. But she is the one person well placed to do a major sweep of the Repugs and bring in a new wave of Democrats. And nothing can be done in either domestic or foreign policy with Repugs stopping up Congress. That is the ‘bottom line’ to this discussion. Accepting that as a foundational understanding, some things come into focus that we have to realize and accomplish to take full advantage of the sweep, while simultaneously seeing that the downside (further warmongering) is attenuated.
Candidates, candidates, candidates! We need to be very aggressive in fielding sincere candidates. They will be the bulwark against Hillary (MIC) overreach. We can’t let the Wash DC sickness choose our new leaders. As Howie at DownWithTyranny has been amply pointing out, we could easily lose our chance to regain the House because of the corrupt practices of Steve Israel, the DCCC head.
We must be VERY vigilant and never ceasing, watching like a hawk, for hawk like symptoms from Hillary. From right now, we need to say no way! We know politicians have to talk it up to constituencies, but that’s are far as it goes when it comes to warmongering, Hillary!
Oh, yes. There are big differences in how accommodating those candidates would be to the lure of DINO bait. Can you imagine Cuomo?
I want a progressive challenger who will explore these questions. Because we could magically make Bernie Sanders our president tomorrow and he wouldn’t be able to do one thing more than Obama is doing on the issues Sanders seems so concerned about.
Oh, I realize this fits right into the Obama-did-all-he-can narrative, but is it really true? I’ll give one example: administration of the Congressionally-authorized HAMP program. All information available now indicates that although the law authorized the administration to use the funds to help homeowners who were underwater because of the 2008 crash the Obama administration simply chose not to. Instead, they used the funds to help the creditors.
Yes, that’s from term 1, and thankfully Rahm and Larry and Tim are now gone. But even so, without knowing the details of every law I use that example to suspect that a different administration could do a lot more for the middle class than they have been doing, without any extra authorization needed from Congress.
All this is just academic – Sanders will never win. Like Rand Ayn Paul, he’s just not acceptable to enough of the core power holders to be allowed to run a successful Presidential campaign. And I’m of the cynical frame of mind that having him run in order to bring up the issues will have zero impact on the end result of the election.
That’s a good point.
Yes, there are things on the margins of existing law that can be done or not done. Obama is exploring many of those things now in his second term. Approve or don’t approve the Keystone pipeline. Delay the employer mandate. Implement clean air regulations. Etc.
So, it does matter what a president wants to do.
It just matters vastly less than people think.
A president can’t fix our election laws. They can’t do anything close to adequate on climate change. They can’t get resources to regulate Wall Street.
I’m not very knowledgeable about HAMP but my understanding was that a part of the problem was a burrowed-in Bush holdover at the Housing Finance Agency who refused to follow Treasury orders. Here’s a Krugman piece discussing him:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/03/opinion/krugman-debt-depression-demarco.html?_r=0
If Obama is constrained by the institutions of Congress, wouldn’t a hawkish Clinton administration be constrained by the problems created by Bush 2.0?
Obama was considering action in Syria, but he was constrained by both popular opinion, Congress and a lack of international support. Would HRC be any different?
The cost of inaction is impossible to calculate. That’s why Obama continued with a lot of the NSA programs he inherited. If he “does something” and there is an attack, he “did something”. If he doesn’t “do something” and there is an attack… why didn’t he “do something”.
The same thing applies to Clinton or Jeb Bush or Sanders or Paul.
So Presidents will err on the side of “doing something”. But will they listen to contrary voices? Obama has shown he will. I think HRC would, too.
I’m much more concerned with her relationship with Wall Street.
This. H Clinton will bring in a different set of Democratic legislators than B Clinton had, or that Obama had in his first term. The party is further to the left than in 1992 or 2008, and the electorate is, too.
The party is further to the left than in 1992 or 2008, and the electorate is, too.
The electorate is(especially economically), the party elite a lot less so.
Go back and look who the party elite were and where the party was in ’92. Twelve years in the wilderness, including ass-stompings in ’84 and ’88 pushed the Democrats to the right. Clinton came from the DLC. Look at some the “Democratic” Senators back then:
Richard Shelby, Dale Bumpers, Richard Nighthorse Campbell (who promptly switched parties), Wendell Ford, Byron Dorgan, Kent Conrad, John Glenn, Fritz Hollings, Bob Kerrey, Dennis DeConcini, Joe Lieberdouche, David Boren, Jim Sasser, Chuck Robb and Robert Byrd.
You will have to accommodate the squishes in order to govern, but the party is a lot further to the left than it was in ’92.
Are the elite more to the left on social issues? Mainly, yes. Notice how the elites aren’t fighting so much for a woman’s right to chose. On economic issues the Democratic Party elite is to the right. Look at who the leading lights in the party are and who they nominate for key positions.
I sure don’t remember the situation leading to the current Syria policy as the President being “constrained” from action.
At the time, it looked to me like Israel, France, the American foreign policy establishment, pundits, and many leaders in Congress were demanding military action, even though they knew what a terrible idea it was. It seemed to me that the establishment, either intentionally or simply through incompetence, put Obama farther out on a limb than he was actually prepared to be when he issued his “red line” warning. A lesser man would have jumped under those constraints because it was the “manly” thing to do and “everyone” in Washington just can’t stand to see threats not backed up with dead bodies, but the President, to his credit, stalled, took some heat, and found a different way out focussed on the more concrete issue of removing Syria’s chemical weapons. How successful that policy will ultimately be is impossible to know now, but President Obama defied the gravitational pull toward direct military action and found a policy that better addressed the concerns of the moment and resisted the McCainite fantasies of how the Syrian rebels are all good guys and the Syrian government are all bad (actually lots of bad to go around and we’re better off keeping our distance). It was ugly, and there’s still plenty to criticize, but the President, at times seemingly almost alone, changed the situation in a way that drastically dialed down the building pressure to get further involved in a very messy civil war.
I don’t see how anyone can read that situation as being “constrained”. It’s true that public opinion was against intervention, but since when has Washington actually been concerned about the public’s ambivalence towards war; they usually accept it anyway.
The constraints in Washington are built to push towards bellicosity. Obama has been more resistant to those constraints than any other President in my lifetime (which is an admittedly low bar). A hawkish Clinton administration would, by definition, be operating with fewer constraints. That concerns me a great deal.
I think he was constrained by public opinion, perhaps especially British public opinion. When Cameron couldn’t get a “yes” vote, that made a huge difference. Britain, France and Italy had led the way in Libya. When they weren’t going to lead the way in Syria, the process slowed down considerably.
<quote>Because we could magically make Bernie Sanders our president tomorrow and he wouldn’t be able to do one thing more than Obama is doing on the issues Sanders seems so concerned about. </quote> Not tomorrow no, but in 2008? You better fucking believe it.
Whoops, forgot it’s blockquote here and not simply quote.
Interesting
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I don’t think Bernie Sanders would be attacking Social Security or pushing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. THAT is clearly different from Obama.
The only thing that matters is the SCOTUS. Has nobody been paying attention?
People are dying, right now, today, because we have 5 reactionaries on the SCOTUS.
.
nalbar, you are ever so right. Too bad, forever. Let’s reminisce about how the Democrats fought tooth and nail to keep Alito and Scalia and Roberts off the court. They almost self imploded with anger and rage, if I remember correctly.
yes, but then Mrs Alito cried
I did too.
Yes, it was quite a sight to see Russ Feingold consumed by anger and rage. Not
Yes it was, the hypocrite.