We saw House Majority Leader Eric Cantor get taken out in a primary by a political novice. We saw John Boehner resign as Speaker of the House because he couldn’t control the mouth-breathers in his own party. Now we’re seeing Donald Trump roll over eleventy-billion other Republican candidates to most likely seize control over the party of Lincoln. It’s incontestable that the Republican Establishment has lost control.
And I think it would be a mistake to see this as quarantined on the right. While the president remains relatively popular, and extremely so on the left, the power of Bernie Sanders’ challenge shows that discontent is widespread among liberals.
As for the rest of the electorate that is either weakly aligned with the left or right, or that is typically disengaged from the political process, they’re dismayed with the gridlock in Washington and unhappy with all our leaders. Some are attracted to Trump’s angry nativism and others are drawn to Sanders’ call for revolution, but they’re not looking for more of the same.
This leads many people to conclude that Hillary Clinton is the wrong person to put up against Trump. And it’s hard to avoid seeing why this argument is compelling. Running for Obama’s third term without a theory for how to break the gridlock that stalled progress in Obama’s last six years is not very inspiring for liberals, and there’s a huge block of voters who don’t want a third term for Obama’s policies.
But there’s a counterargument.
For starters, the country’s bipartisan Establishment may be on its heels, but it’s still incredibly powerful. They’re never weaker than when they’re evenly split, but should they collectively decide that only one candidate is acceptable, they can really bring some huge guns into the fight.
To get an idea of what I’m talking about, check out Ryan Lizza’s new piece in The New Yorker where he lists out the many influential and powerful Republicans who have already pledged not to ever vote for Donald Trump. You may also want to take a look at the piece I wrote for the Washington Monthly earlier this week: How Will Trump Unite the Party?
It’s true that Trump got a boost yesterday when New Jersey Governor Chris Christie endorsed him, but less noticed was the response from a former Republican governor of New Jersey. Christie Todd Whitman, who served as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency in President George W. Bush’s first term, answered Christie by endorsing Ohio Governor John Kasich. But she also said that she’d vote for Hillary Clinton before she’d ever support Trump.
First, she says she’s planning to vote for Hillary Clinton if Trump gets the nod. She’s keeping her options open, in case we find out something new and horrible about Hillary. But that’s her plan now:
“You’ll see a lot of Republicans do that,” Whitman told me. “We don’t want to. But I know I won’t vote for Trump.”
The real juice came when I asked her about Christie’s move:
“I am ashamed that Christie would endorse anyone who has employed the kind of hate mongering and racism that Trump has,” she said. “I would have thought being from a diverse state would have given him more awareness and compassion.”
Whitman’s sentiment of shame is identical to mine, which shows that New Jerseyites think a lot alike even when they’re implacable political foes. I can understand the political calculation behind Christie’s move, but it’s just not consistent with the values of New Jersey.
Now, Christie Todd Whitman isn’t going to move a lot of voters, but she doesn’t have to. She already speaks for a large swath of the right in this country. Too often, the left is so busy being offended by the right that they characterize all their political opponents as subhumans who have absolutely no character, standards, or sense of moral decency. That’s a very big exaggeration. It’s simply not true that everyone will hold their nose about Trump because they see Clinton as the greater evil. If you don’t believe me, go read that Lizza article, seriously.
When you look back at why George McGovern fared so poorly in the 1972 election, it’s because the Democratic Party was badly split. And it was, like today, a time when the nation’s Establishment was largely discredited. McGovern’s success in the primaries was entirely due to this anti-establishment feeling, and it had a lot of juice that would carry over in the decades to come. But it was nowhere near powerful enough, or consolidated on the left, to avoid catastrophe at the ballot box in 1972.
McGovern, like Trump, was able to roll over the party leadership and the country’s opinion leaders, but all the talk of him bringing out the youth vote (18 year olds could vote for the first time in that election) never came to anything.
We live in different times with a much different electorate and no incumbent on the ballot, but 1972 is a warning sign that you never want to go into an election when your party is divided and the Establishment is against you.
Why, then, would the Democrats want to go into the election divided when they are already nearly assured of the Republicans being so?
Like Trump, Sanders doesn’t have endorsements from more than a small handful of officeholders. His hostility to corporate America should remind us of Mark Twain’s admonition to: “Never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.”
It’s true that there is real energy behind Sanders and that the left is split over who would be the better nominee. But the party apparatus and power brokers are not split. They are about as unified around Clinton as they’ve ever been around any non-incumbent in our nation’s history. Should Sanders nonetheless prevail, the party will begin to look a bit like the basket case we’re seeing on the other side.
So, these are the two arguments.
The first is that the country is in an antiestablishment mood, and if the election is between the antiestablishment Trump and the establishment Clinton, Trump will win.
The second is that a united party with the support of the Establishment will crush a divided party that is opposed by the Establishment and that is suffering massive defections.
Like I said, you can quibble about how united the Democrats will really be under Clinton. I know that some disillusioned Sanders supporters will stay home and a handful will even vote for Trump. Overall, however, I have to say that I’d place my money on Clinton over Trump.
Of course, this is almost strictly an electability argument. And that’s not the only argument worth having. Perhaps, either of the Democrats can win, and win easily. If you believe that, you probably ought to go with your heart. If your heart is with Sanders, and you think he can thump Trump, then support him now while he still has a fighting chance.
But, be clear, the argument that Clinton can’t win is highly contestable and not very convincing in my view.
That’s not to say that Trump doesn’t scare me. He does.
He scares me a lot.
That’s why the electablilty argument is important to me.
